In business, it can be hard to know when the right time to grow is. Growing too quickly could mean that you struggle to make enough money. But, if you grow too slowly, you could miss out on money. Of course, going international with your business is a big step in growth. It’s worth taking into consideration some things before taking the leap. So, this post will go through a few of them, to see if you’re up to it.
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When selling internationally, you’ll almost certainly be using your website to do it. This means that your website needs to be appropriate for different countries. For one, you should make sure that the currencies on your site include all of the countries that you target. This means that symbols need to be correct, which can be a hard job. Thankfully, loads of sites have been setup to help people in positions like this to get a copy of a symbol, check them out here. Being inclusive like this will help to make people from other countries feel comfortable buying from you. You will take away the need for them to convert currencies themselves, giving them more motivation to buy from you.
Alongside this, your website may also need some different languages. This is quite a large job, updating a website so that it has lots of different languages on it. Tools like Google translate aren’t really cut out for the job. They can take the words into account, but not the context. So, ideally, you need a professional translator to do the job for you. Thankfully, this is a job that can be done by lots of companies online. In fact, you can even hire people directly to do it for you, on a freelance basis. This sort of move will aid in making people confident in buying from your site.
Shipping to places outside of your country will always cost more. You need to take this into consideration, as it can be quite a big difference. This means calculating the costs for each country, and then updating the website to deal with it. It can be hard to estimate postage prices, so it can be worth simply going into the post office to ask. When sending things via airmail, there’s the law to consider, as well. Some products can’t be sent by air. And, some products are illegal in other countries. So, you also need to know the law of the countries that you plan to serve. As well as the rules of your postal service and aviation authority.
If you don’t prepare yourself for this sort of thing, you could end up losing money or even customers. If packages get lost or confiscated, you’ll have lost sales. So, it’s important to make sure that you do plenty of research before taking on an endeavour like this. You’ll almost certainly know when you’re ready to go international. But, you don’t have to. Some businesses stay within their home country forever and don’t lose out on business.
