How to Sell Online Abroad (2)

Previously, on Oleoshop blog, we started a set of posts on how to internationalize an online store.

Beyond clarifying whether it is worth selling in other countries and what the benefits and challenges we must face are, we wanted to delve into the details, provide real examples, and, ultimately, take a practical approach.

Logistics is one of the most critical areas because it directly affects user experience, your credibility as a brand, and service costs. As you can see, it involves three key points in any business plan.

You will face the interesting first decision that any eCommerce wanting to internationalize must make:

Which is the best solution? It always depends on your business. In any case, unless you have a very high investment capacity and are not afraid of risk, the option of creating your local logistics network seems the least suitable.

It is better to opt for either of the other two, as it will allow you to validate your business model abroad with less commitment. In the first phase of internationalization, it is particularly important to be agile, but we cannot grow on a model that is not sustainable.

Probably the most interesting thing is to consider some logistics tools for eCommerce, they will not only be useful to unify the management of different markets, but they will also simplify the task of negotiating with local couriers. By doing so massively for all their clients, they will always get you better prices.

Take the example of one of the most important online stores in Spain. If you look at the screenshots, you will see that globalization makes us have the same product in different markets.

The product sheet looks identical: same value proposition, same garment, same photos… but there is a significant change.

Three markets and three different prices. Why? Because of margins, rates, taxes, brand positioning, logistics costs that are passed on… but, in reality, it is all a matter of strategy, nothing more, nothing less.

Let's quickly see five types of pricing strategies for the internationalization of an eCommerce:

Additionally, I recommend that you keep an eye on the competition when setting prices. The market sets trends that you should know. You can take notes on a notebook, or an Excel sheet, and monitor changes on competitor pages, but that is not very practical.

If you remember, in the previous post, we told you how monitoring tools work on Amazon. This already gives you a good clue, but it remains a marketplace with its own rules.

For an online store that sells abroad, it is best to resort to other types of monitors and repricing tools. Some of them allow us to dynamically track the products we are interested in controlling, automatically changing prices within a previously defined range. If you are interested, we will publish a post about these tools in the future.

The topic of eCommerce internationalization is very interesting… and very extensive, so we will stop here for now. In future posts, we will address tax issues, adapting eCommerce to other languages, international SEO, and online marketing.