5 Tips for Taking Home Businesses to the Retail Worldwide

Thanks to the explosion in popularity of shopping at online marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, adflyer, Folksy and others, small retailers and home businesses are now able to sell their goods to customers around the world.

If you’ve got a home business selling anything from handmade jewelry or vintage clothes to pet accessories, chances are you’ve already dabbled with an online store at the major English language online marketplaces like eBay. But have you considered expanding beyond English?

There are nearly two billion people online worldwide, but only around 34 million are native English speakers – and the vast majority of online shoppers require information in their native language before making a purchase. That means if you’re only selling online in English, you’re reaching less than 2% of your potential online audience!

Here’s how you can get a greater slice of those international markets…

eBay is undoubtedly the world’s biggest online marketplace for small retailers, with 38 localized versions for all the main European and Asian ecommerce countries, and it makes a great starting place for international versions of your online store.

However, there are also other popular online marketplaces in different countries, which are worth looking into. Taobao is China’s largest online marketplace, generating an annual turnover of more than $80 billion USD. It operates similar to eBay, and there’s also a thriving economy of Chinese consultants helping foreign businesses to sell via Taobao.

Likewise, PriceMinister is the most popular online marketplace in many European countries, and MercadoLibre has established itself as the ‘eBay of Latin America’. It’s worth doing a little online research before entering a foreign market to find out where people are shopping.

The key difference with foreign online marketplaces, of course, is language – eBay España is in Spanish, eBay Portugal is in Portuguese, etc. This means that you’ll need to get your shop and product descriptions translated into these languages by a professional.

Online machine translation programs ought to be sufficient to understand incoming orders, or to create your profile in the first place, but they’re not accurate enough to be trusted for your sales pitch – incorrect terminology or bad spelling and grammar will destroy a potential client’s view of your trustworthiness.

Before you jump in with an online store for Taobao or MercadoLibre, though, it’s worth checking what price you can charge for your goods in the local economy, and whether that will present enough of a margin to make it profitable.

One of the major barriers to shoppers around the world buying from foreign stores is the comparatively high prices, created either by high exchange rates or differing local product values. For instance, the current strength of the Australian dollar means that it’s often cheaper for Australian shoppers to purchase goods from foreign online shopping sites and pay for the shipping than it is for them to buy locally. Conversely, small Australian retailers are finding it hard to sell overseas without dramatically reducing their prices.

By looking at the exchange rates and the prices set by your competitors in foreign markets, you’ll get a good idea for potential profit margins. Even if the profit margin is small, you may find over time that the sheer quantity of goods sold makes up for the lower prices – or you may gradually whittle your international efforts down to just a few foreign stores.

The second major barrier for online shoppers is payment systems – if you only accept credit or debit card payments, but your customers in China don’t use credit cards and prefer to pay by Alipay, then you’re going to see a lot of abandoned shopping carts. Before launching your online store, it’s worth doing some online research, or purchasing market reports from consultancies like Econsultancy or yStats, to figure out which payment systems you’ll need to offer for each country.

The last step to ensuring profitability and practicality is making sure that you can actually ship your goods to the foreign countries in question, and at a cost which won’t price your goods out of reach for the locals. How reliable is the local postal service? What postage options can you offer to make your products trustworthy and attractive for local consumers? Indeed, would it be cheaper to ship your goods en masse to the country in question and employ a local agent to post purchased items locally?

These are all questions you need to consider before going multilingual across foreign online marketplaces – but the potential for new sales vastly outweighs the hassles of making your home business international.

Source: Common Sense Advisory

Christian Arno is the founder of professional translation agency Lingo24, and a regular industry pundit on the foreign language internet. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries, including the likes of MTV and World Bank. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

View the original article here

Clutter Clearing: Removing Barriers to Retail Success

Your retail space is so appealing, neat and organized. But, look behind the checkout counter. Check the storeroom. That’s another story! And, the office. . . let’s not even go there! It’s quite common for the public spaces in retail establishments to shine while the work areas that are visible to staff and management are littered with clutter of all kinds.

You may be thinking, “It’s the public areas that affect the bottom line, right?” Think again. All areas of a business affect the bottom line. Feng shui teaches that everything is connected. Clutter, dirt and disorder in one part of the establishment are sources of negative energy and that negative vibration will affect all other areas of the business. If that energy happens to be located in the area that holds energies associated with wealth and prosperity, the business may suffer financial challenges. If it is located in the area that holds energies associated with fame and reputation, it could experience difficulties with visibility and attracting business. If it is located in the areas associated with children or family, there could be difficulties with employees. And, if that source of negative energy is located in the area that holds energies associated with helpful people, the business could have difficulty attracting customers.

In addition, clutter in those out of sight places has a profound effect on staff morale, behavior and efficiency. A cluttered environment attracts more of the same. In retail it could manifest in a fuzzy, cluttered brain that is less able to make good decisions with customers. Or, a cluttered space with its annoying, irritating energy could lead to irritations among staff members. If nothing else, clutter in the areas of the business that are visible only to staff creates a double standard. The public gets and deserves to have a pristine environment, but the staff must tolerate clutter and visual chaos. What message does that send to staff about their importance to the business?

If a business has an office on site, think of it as the physical brain of the business. A cluttered brain operates ineffectively, is unable to make good decisions consistently, and tends to be reactive rather than proactive. Can you really afford to have a cluttered business office?

So now what? First, if you have neglected those out of sight places in your retail establishment, you must begin viewing those areas as just as significant as the public spaces. You may not worry as much about their decor, but investing energy to make them neat, clean and organized will have a big payoff on many levels.

An initial cleanup will be necessary plus the establishment of procedures for maintaining order and cleanliness. Job descriptions should include clear expectations about maintaining both the retail and the out of sight spaces of the business.

And, the business office. Clear it of anything that does not pertain to the current operation of the business and management of employees. Old records should be archived in another part of the building or off site. Keeping only current documents and records, with the exception of old records necessary for current operations, keeps the business alive and vital. Old records can be distracting and take up prime real estate in the brain of the business.

Clear the clutter. Create a new order. Commit to maintaining a clutter-free environment and watch employee behavior and interactions both with customers and other employees improve. Pay attention to your own ability to think clearly, handle problems and make decisions. And, watch the bottom line. Having removed the clutter barriers to success, you are more likely to experience positive change in many areas of the business.

View the original article here