International Selling on Amazon & eBay

Selling internationally on Amazon and eBay does present difficulties for most UK sellers, but it would be short-sighted not to reap the rewards and benefits of trading across boarders just because it was a challenge.

Expanding your market internationally can deliver sizeable growth opportunities, especially if you are an early adopter within your category. Amazon, in particular, make it very easy to for sellers to gain immediate access to these markets through their FBA service.

By using either Amazon’s Pan-European FBA, EFN, or MCI – all your picking, packing, shipping and fulfilment related customer service is handled by Amazon. Sellers can now also fulfil orders from other channels such as ecommerce sites or eBay stores, using Amazon ‘Multi-channel Fulfilment’.

However, even with the great benefits offered by Amazon’s FBA service. There are still many considerations sellers need to face when selling internationally:

• Systems and Processes – you need to make sure you have the proper system in place to list products in the respective languages and correct currency. But also to have looked as other factors such as payment gateways, shipping options and customer service, especially if self-fulfilling.
• Competitor & Market Research – it is important to understand your market and competition whether you are selling at home or abroad. You could invest a lot of time and resource to find that your products won’t sell or you cannot compete on price. Know your audience!
• Shipping & Fulfilment – if not using FBA, you need to consider shipping costs and where the items will be positioned, at home or locally?
• Are you Legal? – without doubt one of the biggest challenges – covering many aspects from data protection, customs and duties, to the laws on selling different types of goods locally. And taxes certainly should not be overlooked, as the consequences of getting this wrong can ruin a business.
• Language – another key challenge for retailers looking to sell in foreign countries and marketplaces. In an ideal situation, accurate translations would be the best options to avoid misinterpretations that can lead to a higher return rates. However, it is not always a feasible option and there are now some very good translation services available.

This is not an exhaustive list and each should be researched thoroughly and considered against your business case to decide on the weather selling abroad will be profitable and right for you business.

How can Cloud Commerce Pro help?

Cloud Commerce Pro’s platform has been developed to help sellers trade internationally and across foreign marketplaces. Some of the key features include:

Selling internationally is by no means simple but at Cloud Commerce Pro we aim to give as much help and advice as we can. Give us a call to see how you can benefit.