Guidelines for Choosing the Right International ecommerce Platform Five features to look for when choosing your international ecommerce platform Taking your business global requires numerous decisions and countless hours of research and planning. One of the biggest decisions you will make is what ecommerce platform you should use to tackle international ecommerce. This decision alone requires a lot of careful research and consideration. To help you on your search, we have compiled the top five features you need to look for when selecting your international ecommerce platform. Allows for International SEO In order to become successful online in a foreign country, you must first be able to be easily found on search engines. The ecommerce platform that you pick needs to allow you to create custom domains and subdomains for each of the countries that you are selling in. An example would be ending your web address with “.cn” for China as a domain and “china.domainname.com” for a subdomain. The platform should also let you have country or language specific URLs. Optimizing your ecommerce site to be found on search engines in regions located outside of your home country requires a little more work but the potential benefits are worth the effort. Easily Handles Customs, Duties, and Taxes Having to deal with customs, taxes, and duties is just a part of doing business internationally. Luckily, there are some platforms that make it simple. The platform that you select should have the capabilities to help you handle customs, duties, and taxes for every country you sell in by showing customers estimates before they make purchases. The platform should also be easy to update to adjust to future changes in taxes and trade agreements that would have an effect on customers, taxes, and duties. Accepts Payments in Foreign Currencies If you are selling to a country half way across the world, chances are they use a different currency than the one that you do. When searching for international ecommerce platforms, you need to find one that allows you to accept that most widely recognized currencies in the regions that you are aiming to sell to as well as the regions that you would like to sell to in the future. Integrates with International Shipping Providers The ecommerce platform that you pick also needs to be able to integrate with international shipping carriers. You should be able to show your global customers the shipping price when they are checking out or possibly even when they are still shopping. The integration can also include tools that allow you to create and print custom shipping labels and documents. You and your customers will be able to easily check the status of and track orders because of your ecommerce platform and shipping integration. Possesses Translation Capabilities The ecommerce platform that you choose to handle your international online business needs to be able to translate pages of you site into the language of the regions that are viewing it. Ideally you will have had your most important pages translated by a human translator to make sure that your message comes across clear. The rest of your site will be translated from your home language into your site visitor’s regional language. You should also look for a platform that allows for integration with external translation services, if you choose to use a translation services instead of the one built into the platform. Clarity Can Help With over 300 years of combined experience, our expert developers can help you find, implement, and customize a global ecommerce solution to work for your business. Our ecommerce platform, Clarity ecommerce, was designed to work for international businesses, making it easy for our clients to do business in other countries. To find out more, call or click to contact us today!