Alex Baar | International Digital Marketing | E-commerce

Last week I visited Club Ecommerce it's Digital 1 to 1 conference in Barcelona. I had a great time! Very well organised (compliments to the organisation) and it gave me many new insights in tooling, solutions and the ecommerce in southern Europe. On the lookout for new digital tooling at Digital 1 to 1 in Barcelona The event consists of more or less 2.5 day in a conference/hotel in Barcelona. During the days there are generic sessions and presentations but also 1 to 1 sessions with potential vendors or other webshops that are open for collaboration. The 1 to 1 sessions take 25 minutes each and it looks like this: In the evening they organise a big party including a casino, DJ and quiz! I even learned some new dancing moves at this party! :) Source I did not plan to write a blogpost about the event but I do mention a few vendors in this post that I met with very interesting solutions, for easy reference in the f...

I am currently in Jahorina, try to ski somewhere different, a little bit more adventurous. First I made a stop at Kapoanik, and now I am here in Jahorina. That really worked out, it is fun to ski somewhere completely different, if you have skied in many major ski resorts. I am in a real funny hotel here, very, very friendly people. Unfortunately their car broke down today, so I did not go to the slopes today, but decided to write something, as it is very cloudy today as well, so skiing is not optimal especially not above the three lines. I always like to work a bit from abroad or to write something about my interests from abroad. Internet is so awesome that these things are all possible you can work and study from everywhere! Fun! All of the hotel including me, packed in a small car on our way to the slopes. Language or country selectors in crossborder ecommerce: Many international websites, have a language or country selector. Either everybody sees it and you first have to ma...

International SEO can be an important aspect of your digital strategy. The search engine market is still very much dominated by Google, however there are local differences like Baidu in China, Naver in Korea, Yandex in Russia or Seznam in the Czech Republic. This chart shows this quarter's (4th quarter 2015) search engine shares across the world.  The source of this chart is this site , where you can make your own search query and analyse the search engine market. Each search engine has it's own specific (international) requirements but a few general important aspects to keep in mind with international SEO are these: Always use real local content. Don't translate via "Google Translate" or similar tools. Use real local unique content, use translators who understand seo and give them access to for example a tool like www.brightedge.com , www.dragonmetrics.com or "search volume checkers", from the various search engines". Yan...

16 ways to prevent parcel returns in ecommerce Parcel returns. Every e-commerce company has to deal with returns. In Europe customers have the right to withdraw an order up to 14 days after the parcel arrived at the customer. Returns cost a lot of money for e-tailers.  Below you find 16 ways to reduce your return percentage. Make use of "product" reviews and user generated content (UGC). Experiences and pictures/video's from others will help meeting expectations from your customers and will reduce returns. Use High Resolution product images. If you have a "living" product (f.e. plants) be clear about the product that people receive and how it looks like when it is mature. This can be done by images but in the case of plants with "time lapse" video's.  It depends at your competition and long term strategy, but you can charge (shipment costs) for returning ordered goods. Especially for Europe, mention this in your terms and co...

I was at holiday, a few weeks ago. Traveling to Hong Kong, mainland China, Cambodia and Thailand. Time to read a few books. One of the books I read was " Global Marketing and Advertising " from Marieke de Mooij. A very interesting book about cultural differences in advertising and marketing. The book is not an "online" book, it focuses at marketing and advertising in general, many offline marketing cases are described as well. The book consists of many in depth research of cultural aspects. I recognize a lot of cultural aspects described in the book from traveling, now it is related to advertising. I will not do a complete review of the book this time. I will highlight a few interesting parts of the book instead. Just go and by the book. You won't regret. Global Marketing and Advertising from Marieke de Mooij, very intresting book, I read at a recent holiday as you can see...the book traveled with me across many cultures...:) There may be global product...

It is almost 2014. So, one of my last posts this year about 2013 figures.. But an interesting post! ATKearney  released an interesting report a few weeks ago. The so called "Global retail e-commerce index 2013".For everybody who is interested in cross border marketing and e-commerce, this is a must read report. Very useful for those who are busy with a global e-commerce strategy. The report ranks the top 30 countries for their online market attractiveness and it explains differences in e-commerce approach for a few major e-commerce countries. China tops the report, as ATKearny expect China e-commerce to explode in the next few years, thanks to improvements in infrastructure, urbanisation and the increase in consumption inside China. This article for example explains a path to a consumer led grow in China and explains about improving consumer protection (and thus more trust in online sales) China tops list of top 30 e-commerce countries AtKearney describes three g...

You are a (small) retailer, and you want to expand your online business abroad. But how to start? In a series of blog posts, I will try to find some answers at questions like this. However every retailer has it's own current situation and a "one answer fits all" is impossible: If you do not have enormous budgets, for developing new websites and hiring international e-commerce experts, you can do things yourself. In my opinion a localized site and localised promotions are absolutely the ideal situation. There are to many differences in culture, legal and commerce, to just copy paste your website. First make sure you have (or find someone who has) e-commerce or website experience in your home country. It will give you many insights that will help you make you succesfull abroad. It is not of any use to sent traffic to your website, if the website is not delivering what you want it to deliver (orders, leads, brand value etc). If your current website is not performing, d...

Today, I am in the mood for writing something. Just a quick blog post today about international e-business. A few things to take into account when practicing international e-commerce. Email marketing E-mail marketing is an excellent channel to use for generating traffic to your website. A lot of people often forget about "deliverability". Deliverability means the percentage of the e-mails you sent out, that arrives at the subscribers. I won't go into details now. But if you go abroad with your email marketing campaigns, make sure you focus at deliverability. If your  e-mail does not arrive at many people of your database, you lose a lot of money! Make sure your e-mail service provider can help you with e-mail deliverability in the countries you are active. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing can be a good alternative source for traffic and sales. At this moment there are no global affiliate marketing agency's. Note that the affiliate marketing maturenes...

Many company's who are into e-commerce, sooner or later will ask themselves the question "is it an advantage or disadvantage for us to promote our products at third party websites like Amazon, Ebay or local variants"? This question is not so easy to answer. It really depends per organization, but we tried to establish a list with pro's and con's. You have to remember that the philosophy of many of the real large "third party" marketplaces like Amazon, Rakuten, E-bay, is that they expect, that in a few years time there will be only a few real large webshops available for the mainstream products. They are tend to be one of them! They need your product feed to establish that! The position of third party advertising in your e-commerce strategy? Pro's (why sent your product feed to a third party webshop) Reach Third party webshops usually have an enormous reach! Millions of people search for a product and because of price of reputation...