Setting your sights on serving customers in other countries represents a HUGE opportunity. A greatly expanded customer pool, increased brand exposure, and the chance to make more profits than ever are just three of the advantages that embracing the global marketplace can bring. However, to maximize your chances of thriving on the international scene, you must supercharge your website with a rich set of capabilities and features that will set you apart from your competitors. Only then will you inspire trust in shoppers from other nations.

1. A design that welcomes shoppers into your store.

One of the best-kept secrets in international ecommerce website practices is that they need to reflect everything you should already be doing for your domestic digital presence. Providing optimal ease of use and clarity for shoppers is a prime case in point. To that end, you should take care to do the following.

• Design a homepage that introduces your brand in a straightforward, uncluttered way — one that is easy to understand and navigate.
• Provide a search bar.
• Feature easily navigable category lists.
• Be flexible and responsive. This means that your website should include mechanisms that can detect the type of device your customer is using so that it can seamlessly provide the best layout for your user.

Having these characteristics helps to ensure that your international customers will remain on your website long enough to see what you have to offer, allowing them to overcome any initial reservations they may have about doing business with an offshore seller.

2. Be mobile friendly.

With every year that goes by, more customers browse and shop either partly or exclusively on their mobile phones. For that reason, you must ensure that your ecommerce site accommodates screens of all sizes. Other mobile-related characteristics include the following.

• A call to action that is understandable and easy to find.
• Place only essential content on your homepage.
• Simplified navigation. One way to do this is to include a “menu” button that expands into an array of drop-down suggestions.
• Accepting guest checkouts. This means that buyers can make a purchase using your payment gateway without needing to create an account or having to log in.
• Cross-selling. This encourages your patrons to view “customers who purchased this product also bought” pages.
• Cropped, high-resolution images that load quickly.
• No flash pop-ups or native app advertisements.
• Geolocation. Especially useful for international customers, this feature means that the site is set to display products based on where the customer is located. This helps to personalize each shopper’s buying experience.

As a seller in the global marketplace, you’ll find that incorporating these elements into your website will help to draw even your most faraway customer closer psychologically to your store and the products you sell.

3. Provide multiple payment options.

When you want to attract shoppers outside of your own country, it is important to make your customers feel comfortable with every aspect of their purchase. This includes how you accept foreign payments. After all, you are not operating in a vacuum, and there are most certainly numerous competitors who are ready, willing, and able to give buyers the chance to make their payments in the customer’s monetary denomination of choice.

When you accept multiple currencies, you are sending a strong message that you care about the buying experience and are willing to do everything possible to be transparent. That should also mean that you provide merchandise descriptions in your shoppers’ native language and, ideally, that you offer virtual and/or human customer service that is clear and easy for everyone to understand without needing to find a translator.

Additionally, you should provide customers flexibility in the payment forms they use. In addition to standard credit cards, let people complete purchases using other vehicles that are preferred in their home country. Additionally, you might want to provide a “buy now pay later” or “split the payments” option.

4. Feature 24/7 customer service.

Your store might be thousands of miles away from its customers but that doesn’t mean you should be unreachable. Thanks to today’s technology, you can use chatbots that communicate with online browsers in their native languages at any time of the day or night. While these virtual customer service bots cannot answer every inquiry, they can take care of most concerns, funneling the more complex ones to you for direct, personalized, and immediate attention.

5. Describe your products in detail.

While your homepage should be sparse in terms of content, the same is not true of your detailed product pages. These are where you can convince your international customers that they should take the risk of buying from your business even though you may not have a local physical presence.

To accomplish this goal, be sure your product descriptions are comprehensive, including details about materials, origin, size, what sets the product apart, etc. Augment this with high-quality photographs from every angle, and don’t be shy about also providing video content and reviews from satisfied buyers — ideally in your target countries. The more you can bring a potential buyer closer to your merchandise, the better the chances that they will complete the purchase.

6. Clearly explain your product delivery and returns policies.

This requirement, already important for sites that sell domestically, becomes all the more essential when marketing merchandise to people living abroad. To take the leap of faith that happens whenever someone clicks that “complete your purchase” button in your payment gateway, buyers should be absolutely clear on what will happen next. Therefore, you should prominently display information including the following.

• The average time it takes for a product to leave the warehouse for shipping.
• Average shipping times for long-distance deliveries.
• A list of alerts and emails they will receive regarding the progress of their delivery.
• What they should do if they need to return or exchange a product.

Finally, keep emphasizing the fact that you and your staff are available to answer any questions or concerns that may arise. Then — and this should go without saying — stand behind your promises every time.

As you hover on the precipice and prepare to dive into the deep and turbulent pool of international ecommerce, never forget that it has the potential to bring numerous new customers and pathways for expansion to your business. As long as you set yourself up for success by creating and regularly updating your customer-facing website, you can look forward to a broadened scope and numerous opportunities to expand beyond your wildest dreams.