Choosing to expand your business abroad is much more than a day-to-day operational commitment. It requires considerable preparation and foresight, as well as flexibility to navigate success and failure. Indeed, the likelihood of failure is high, especially if the organization has never done business abroad, but it can still be necessary and important. In response, it is essential to constantly adopt a trial-and-error strategy while exploring new locations.

So, if you've decided to expand internationally, here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Understanding local taxes, duties, and customs

Each country has its own set of rules, regulations, and laws that must be considered. Therefore, it's important to use technological solutions tailored to the country and consult with professionals when setting up a business abroad and integrating payments.

While you should always be fully aware of your legal obligations, it's important to remember that the process should be as simple as possible for your client.

Tariffs: Customs tariffs are a form of tax or fee levied on products when they cross from one country to another. This increases the cost of importing products.

• Customs Fees: You may be charged additional fees for duties and taxes. These may include customs processing fees or fees for the services of a customs broker.
• VAT and other costs: Countries may also add a “Value Added Tax” to products when customers purchase them.

Things to remember:

Double taxation is a common problem when importing and exporting goods between countries, especially if your company will be trading extensively between the two regions. Make sure you know the country's tariffs and taxes so you can properly integrate them when paying. Transparency is key when it comes to customs costs.

2. Offer local payment methods and multiple currencies

Each region has its own payment system, just as each country has its own currency. There are more than 250 local payment methods available worldwide, but this doesn't mean your business should overwhelm your customers with all of them at checkout. It's best to do a little research and showcase the most common payment methods in each country.

3. Customer interactions must be tailored to the country.

Adaptation goes far beyond translating your website content. Each consumer must receive a highly personalized shopping experience, representative of local conditions, and operationally efficient. It requires personalizing and individualizing the overall online experience in the following areas:

• Provide the target audience of the new country with the correct information.
• Local context regarding measurements and units.
• Select the appropriate media channels and assets.
• Language

4. Experience and product information

While language is a tool for attracting more customers to a store's products, it's also important to include relevant and appropriate details within that translated information. Product size, weight, quality, and other attributes, for example, are important for a customer to consider when deciding how to use a product and should be presented in a way that's easy to understand.

• Ensuring quality and standards: Countries have their own set of quality standards and risk management processes that companies in a given sector must comply with. Therefore, your team should be actively involved in identifying and understanding these procedures.
• Accelerate time to market: In the modern era, speed is critical to a company's success. Therefore, your team must race against time to optimize the workflows and processes associated with collecting, enriching, and distributing your product catalog.
• Improve conversions and return rates: With all of the above efforts, it was found that the end results would be more accurate and relevant, provide engaging product information, and improve product experiences. Over time, this should also translate into an improved customer experience. And as we know, when the customer experience is improved, shoppers are more satisfied, which increases conversions and, naturally, reduces returns.

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