The challenges of managing file formats and in market review
Selling in international markets offers a significant revenue stream for many businesses. For example, for online retailer ASOS, almost 60% of their sales come from overseas markets. But how can managers of Magento-based sites make the most of its functionality to maximise sales across the globe?
Multi-store functionality
One of the best features of Magento is its multi-store functionality. It enables users to display different product ranges in the relevant language of the country each store (website) is for. It also allows you to display and collect payments in multiple currencies – so you don’t have to worry about customers understanding conversion rates. Setting a new store up for each country may take a little while initially, but well worth it in the long run. Using a quality translation service is key to this too, to make sure your customers can read and buy with confidence in their own language. Don’t forget to localise any images or other visual elements of the site to suit relevant tastes and styles.
Optimise for mobile customers
The UK is at the forefront of Europe in using mobile devices to make purchases. But many others are catching up. Setting up a mobile-optimised website can be done quickly and cheaply using Magento, and the tools for this are fantastic. For tablet visitors, adapting the desktop version of your Magento site to ensure its navigation is touch friendly can be the best way to go. Given the meteoric rise of mobile usage over the last couple of years, this really should be a top priority for you. Extensions such as Couchcommerce and Tenfoot are great, and you can choose a responsive theme like Argento or Magento Mobile HTML 5 Themes. Remember to customise for each site/country.
Loyalty & Segmentation
Magento offers a very powerful solution for voucher code offers, as well as the ability for customers to create wish-lists and earn reward points. Each market that you trade in will probably have a different preference or comfort level with these functions, so tailor each of your international sites and promotional activity accordingly. Segmenting your customers and sending bespoke offers via email is also very easy to do in Magento, so you can be very targeted with your promotions.
Optimise for speed and performance
Yes – it’s the basics that work well. Whichever country you have a site for, it needs to render quickly and work properly. In particular focus on the search functionality (tags can be very useful) and product pages, as these are the most frequently used. Good quality images are important, as are good product descriptions and nice-looking pages. The better your pages look and work, the higher the conversion rate. The faster they load, then so much the better. Every page should be as fast as possible, especially the checkout.
This can be quite tricky to get right, so do have a read through this excellent guide on how to enhance the speed and security of a Magento website. Basic tips are to minimise the amount of JavaScript code lines for each page, clean up your CSS by removing the unnecessary rules, and to optimise all images.
Upgrade your theme
Many retailers use a theme from the (admittedly very good) selection of free options provided by Magento. But if you’re really looking to maximise your sales, it’s worth spending time to get a custom theme professionally designed. This will give a better presentation of your brand image and will mean you can have more bespoke functionality that might not be available through a free theme. Using a customised theme will also mean you can access technical support, and you will be less likely to run into problems when upgrades are made by Magento. Sometimes the free themes can get left behind, whereas custom ones are much easier to upgrade.
*Photo credits: graja / Shutterstock.com
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Do you know if Magento has been able to solve the issue of supporting multiple currencies within the same storefront?
Hi Jamison
Magento does support multiple currencies via a single store view with a currency switcher but there are a number of advantages to setting up each currency as a separate store view. Depending on how you want to use multi-currency, there are a different ways to handle this. Are you wanting to charge customers in their preferred currency or display multiple but charge them in a single currency?