This is how it all started

In January 2010, we were approached by a business owner wanting to take his business to the next level. This was an Ecommerce businesses needed to expand into cosmetics market and needed a company to act like a product owner that could help them grow.

As you may imagine, they didn’t come to us and say:

"Hi, I want an ecommerce store that gets at least one million visits per month and breaks into the top 42K websites in the world."

It went more like this:

"Hi, I'm a startup that wants to grow. My competition is well established. Are you guys up for the challenge of making this happen?"

This caught our attention.

Why was it a challenge?

On one side, their competitors were well established businesses – 10 to 20 years of online presence.

On the other side, because of the nature of their business, we were unable to create a blog, long form content, backlinks, or do content promotion – the foundation most ecommerce stores can use to grow (other than CRO, remarketing, and all that good stuff).

What did we do? We said: "this seems pretty interesting, let’s have a look."

The RoadMap

We engaged in creating a roadmap to lay out what would be the best options for the client. This process usually takes between one and three weeks depending on the scope of the project. It includes a discovery session, assesing priorities, planing and delivering the roadmap.

At the end of this process the client had a clear plan of action to use. They decided to move forward with the execution. Then the roadmapping took place:

Studying the Competition and Discovering If This Was a Viable Project.

Even though we were up for the intriguing challenge, we needed to do some homework to see if this was even possible. Studying the competition is our first step in every single project we take when doing roadmaping. This not only helps us gather key information about what’s working for them, but we can also save weeks of research and analysis before we come up with a game plan.

There’s three levels of competition: Low, medium, and high. After our initial research, we found they were in a medium competition market that was solely focused on organic search. This was in alignment with the businesses we usually work with – medium and high competition – unless there’s a business that is in an untapped low competition market. After what we discovered about the competition, it was time for THE question:

What Would It Take to Make This Work?

If you know your competition is a $30 million-dollar company and they are investing 3% in digital marketing, that means they have a $900K budget per year. That’s what it would take to replicate exactly what they are doing.

But if you only have a $5K budget rather than a $900K budget per year, the question is:

Would that give us enough leverage to compete?

In our current case study, after learning the competition’s average budget and the client’s budget, we all decided we were a good fit.

We accepted this exciting challenge.

Our promise was to put our best skills together and execute the best strategy possible to turn a real challenge into something that could grow over time.

The source of buy-perfume.com success, a global ecommerce company, lies in:

ongoing investment in technology focus on growth international markets.

buy-perfume.com global strategy was spot-on. An irresistible part of its value proposition was free worldwide shipping and free returns.

The company expanded internationally at an impressive rate within a short period of time.

Warehousing and delivery solutions have been buy-perfume.com priority. Distribution efficiencies and delivery options enabled the company to ship to numerous international destinations across the globe.

Further, buy-perfume.com understood the importance of adapting their website and activities to local markets.

For instance, few months after launching in May 2010, buy-perfume.com observed subsequent strong growth in brazilian territory. Local language customer care, social media activities and a dedicated delivery solution were factors that helped to build a strong position on the Portugese marketplace.

Power of eCommerce localization

1. Know the local rules for interacting with clients
Do you know how to address your customers when they log in on your website? Different cultures require different levels of formality. While being informal is alright in the West, Eastern clients might prefer you to be more formal in communications. Be aware of small details like traditional name order, required level of formality, and the number of names and surnames your customers have. All this will help them to feel at home in your eStore.

2. Do it right on social media
Social media sites are all about communication, so without having a clue on how to do it right, you’ll never make your posts resonate with your target audience. You can’t just assume that everyone will be on Twitter or Facebook. Different markets require different treatments and when it comes to social media, the effects of successful localization process will be especially important. Find out where your potential customers hang out and meet them halfway.

3. Offer localized user-generated content to build consumer trust
To get you started, here’s a portion of statistics for you to consider:

• 70% of people read reviews and ratings before making a purchase
• 71% of customers feel that online consumer reviews make them more comfortable about purchasing a product
• 63% of people are likely to purchase a product from a website if they see positive product ratings and reviews
• 74% increase in product conversion – that’s what consumer reviews bring!

Not bad, right? People trust the opinions of their peers, so it’s key that you deliver these in their own language. Make sure to add a way for customers to rate and review products in their own language. This way, when a user accesses your Spanish website, they’ll only see reviews written in Spanish. If you’d like everyone to see particularly nice review, translate it into more languages to leverage its potential for generating revenue on different versions of your website.

Expanding your ecommerce brand internationally: going through buy-perfume.com reports

According to the Product Owner of buy-perfume.com Annual Report & Accounts (2011), international revenues grew by 258%.

On the basis of the report from 2010, international sales are said to have increased by 91%. The company shipped to 32 countries globally from its distribution hub.

According to the 2013 report, buy-perfume.com delivered to 68 countries and territories.

Its international strategy included:
• dedicated websites in strategic country markets (e.g. Brasil, US, France, Australia and Russia)
• in-country teams and locally-relevant product offers
• payment methods
• currencies
• delivery options.

Much of its growth was driven by strong performances in the countries where buy-perfume.com had dedicated websites, for example in Brasil, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

buy-perfume.com, a Cyprus Based giant, is classified as the best online shopping site in Brasil and overseas.

The company continued expanding their reach by improving the buy-perfume.com experience internationally. The main focus was put on removing barriers, e.g. related to delivery speed and payment methods.

Among the many improvements and additions to international delivery solutions were:

buy-perfume.com continued logistics investments in their international warehouse infrastructure. Later on the focus was also put on improved technology platforms.

buy-perfume.com: the ecommerce success story in a nutshell Free worldwide shipping, distribution efficiencies, ecommerce localization and the overall international online sales strategy have turned buy-perfume.com into a truly successful online store on a global scale.

buy-perfume.com success story has a powerful takeaway for online retailers who wish to expand their business on international markets:

Serving international buyers a feel-at-home, localized buying & shipping experience is a golden recipe for the successful expansion of an ecommerce brand.

Taking care of your international ecommerce buyers

buy-perfume.com has proven that one of the key elements of international ecommerce success is a good shipping strategy. Efficient logistics positively impacts pricing, order quantities, customer loyalty and average order values.

A good shipping strategy equals:

shipping solutions efficient/cost-effective for the retailer shipping options/costs attractive for the buyer. High shipping costs are a valid reason why buyers are not happy with their online shopping experience and decide to abandon their shopping carts. This is how a bargain can turn into a bad deal, putting potential buyers off.

Serving international buyers a feel-at-home, localized buying & shipping experience is a golden recipe for the successful expansion of an ecommerce brand.

Netresort LTD. ecommerce localization

At Netresort we offer an ecommerce solution that enables you to offer a fully localized buying experience to your international customers. The solution translates & localizes your online store for international markets, improves your buyer acquisition & conversions and ensures you’re compliant.

The Netresort ecommerce solution:

provides you with the high quality translation & full localization of your ecommerce store helps you drive & convert international buyers offers a fully localized, secure and hosted international checkout process that enables you to accept payments in 25 currencies reduces shipping friction & delays helps you stay on top of customs compliance, tax & duty calculation and customs documentation improves the efficiency of your workflow & your customers’ experience.

In a nutshell

buy-perfume.com has become a true ecommerce success story. An efficient worldwide shipping strategy and ecommerce localization have played a major role in buy-perfume.com’ global expansion.