3 Ways Merchants Can Maximize the Cross-Border E-Commerce Opportunity

Technology has long paved the way for consumers to shop beyond their own domestic markets. Today, a growing number of international e-commerce brands, including Temu and Shein, are enticing overseas shoppers with unique product offerings, competitive pricing, and more.

Demonstrating the opportunity, over half (52 percent) of U.S. and U.K. online shoppers have purchased at least one product from an e-commerce store in another country in the last 12 months — and a further 23 percent have considered it, according to research from commerce experience platform Nosto. Younger consumers are particularly happy to shop cross-border, with 67 percent of 35-44-year-olds having bought from international sites in the last year.

Nosto’s research found that fashion and accessories (70 percent), sporting goods and hobbies (57 percent) and health and beauty (55 percent) are the products cross-border shoppers are most likely to consider ordering from abroad.

However, 92 percent of consumers admit to concerns about shopping cross-border, with 60 percent trusting international e-commerce stores less than those at home. How can merchants overcome these worries? Success requires a focus on three areas:

1. Making key information visible and accessible on your website. Sixty-nine percent of survey respondents say stores can increase trust by making policies about returns/refunds, delivery times, and additional cross-border taxes/duties clear and easy to find. Furthermore, 65 percent said they would have more trust if there was a customer support telephone number in their home country. That means that merchants should review the information their e-commerce store provides on these topics as a priority. They need to make sure it’s clearly displayed, uses transparent language, and is well-highlighted across the store, particularly at critical conversion points such as product detail pages (PDPs).
2. Provide localized social proof. Nearly two-thirds of consumers (64 peercent) say they’re likely to trust brands more if they see positive on-site reviews from other customers in their country, and 55 percent if they see on-site product photos from peers in their home country who have made purchases (i.e., user-generated content). Similarly, 52 percent said they’re more likely to trust brands based in other countries if they’re active and mentioned positively on the social media channels they use. Forty-three percent would be reassured if a brand’s products are mentioned positively by influencers they follow. Merchants therefore need to focus on two areas: being active on local social media to generate brand and product exposure and then delivering social proof through influencers — and, more significantly, real customers — to engage shoppers and instill the confidence needed for them to purchase.
3. Enhance trust with on-site localization. Smooth the shopping experience by automatically showing prices in the shopper’s home currency (mentioned by 64 percent of respondents) and recommending relevant products based on the shopper's location (40 percent, rising to over 50 percent amongst 16-34-year-olds). Essentially, merchants need to go beyond the basics of translating their websites in order to nurture trust. For example, 71 percent of consumers said that if a site didn’t grasp their language or the meaning behind their search queries, they’d be less likely to shop there. International e-commerce sites therefore need to focus on key product discovery experiences such as product recommendations and site search. It's important that the search experience, in particular, is localized for international shoppers given that those who interact with site search generally have much higher purchase intent.

In an increasingly connected world, cross-border shopping is on the rise, opening up lucrative potential revenue streams for merchants. However, consumers do still have concerns that have to be overcome. Therefore, retailers need to build trust by focusing on the overall experience and delivering localized social proof to tap into the cross-border e-commerce opportunity.

Jan Soerensen is general manager, North America at Nosto, an e-commerce personalization platform.