Want more sales for your online business? Localize your shopping cart!

 by anthony on  |
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During the website localization and translation process, companies generally concentrate on things like homepages, blogs or product pages. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as these are the pages that will most frequently be visited when people land on a website. However, something that’s often forgotten is the shopping cart and it’s only after some potential sales drop off that it’s remembered.

Localizing your site to drive sales will be a futile effort if you don’t continue it into your shopping cart, and below are 6 ways you can build a more localized shopping cart.


1. Use correct currency
Selling to other countries means you need to be able to cater for a range of different currencies. Your localized product pages will already display the prices of your products in the currency of your visitors, but your shopping cart should match this currency when they place items into their basket. This not only depends on a 
user’s location, but also their browser settings. For example, they may have their browser set to French, but be based in the US and want dollars instead of Euros. The wrong currency will confuse potential customers as to the true price of an item and result in lost sales. The correct exchange rates must also be used to ensure the customer is not over or undercharged.

2. Implement country-specific shipping and returns policies
Make sure you have the capability to ship to every country you target. There’s no point localizing your site and bringing customers to the point of purchase if you have no way of getting your product to them. Once shipping is in place, provide a range of shipping options that cater for the needs and expectations of each country. For example, customers in China expect extremely fast shipping times and if these aren’t met you’ll find that you won’t have many returning customers. The same goes for your return policies, which need to be adjusted in line with country-specific laws and cultural tendencies. Bolster this by setting up a local returns address to make it quicker and easier for customers to send items back.

3. Provide the right payment methods
Payment methods are also country-specific and the right ones need to be provided to make sure the customer is given the most convenient method possible to make the purchase. PayPal is 
the best-known payment gateway in the world, but services like Google Wallet and Apple Pay are catching up fast. Do your research and figure out what gateway is the most popular in each country you target and then add the relevant payment option for that country. Referring back to China, AliPay is by far the most popular payment gateway and should be used when selling here.

4. Place recognized trust seals
Trust seals like “PayPal Verified” can add an extra element of authority to your checkout page and assure customers that your site is legitimate. Localized trust seals work even better as customers will easily recognize them and feel comfortable enough to make the purchase. A survey of US adults by Baymard found that over 35% of people felt “Norton Secured” seal gave them the greatest sense of security when paying for goods and services online.

5. Set the right price
Simply converting your price to another currency isn’t enough; you must be competitive on price relative to the rest of the market. The perceived value of goods will change across countries and the painful truth is that someone will always be willing to do it cheaper than you. Where the product is cheaper, there’s usually a 
tradeoff in quality for the customer. The key is finding a price strategy that best suits the quality of your product, your target customer base and keeps you competitive in the market.

6. Adapt localized forms
Word length varies across languages, as do phone numbers, where country codes and regions change. This can cause discrepancies in shopping cart fields that have character limitations, or text boxes that are fixed in width. Online forms (e.g. billing details) will need to be localized individually or given a universal template that is flexible enough to cater for any the needs of every language. This will maintain a solid user experience and ensure customer details are all correct. 

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