Setting Up a Multilingual Online Store in 5 Steps with ConveyThis

Entering a new market or country often requires adjusting to an unfamiliar infrastructure. In the era before digital marketing, this entailed understanding how to physically distribute communication materials, deliver your products to customers, and finalize the transaction. The focus was on the physical aspects. But in today’s digital age, transactions aren’t always as tangibly apparent, as they can occur entirely in the virtual world.

As an online merchant, you won’t have a physical counter or cash register, and the payments you receive could be from places with varying monetary and commercial norms.

This is where the significance of payment processing capabilities comes into play. Even countries with the same currency and similar online transaction regulations, such as France and the Netherlands, might not use the same predominant payment methods. For instance, direct bank transfers via a Dutch national system, iDeal, are the norm in the Netherlands, while France’s digital economy relies almost entirely on credit/debit card transactions.

In regions beyond the EU, payment methods might differ even more significantly. For example, in China, WeChat Pay and AliPay are more prevalent than traditional credit cards.

Introducing a new payment method might incur additional costs for you, the seller, as you might need to pay a setup or monthly maintenance fee, or even a portion of the final payment, to each payment processing company you collaborate with. It’s crucial to research the markets you aim to penetrate and offer as many of the most prevalent payment methods in each one. This strategy will help keep your costs as low as possible and ensure a smooth payment process for all your customers. Always remember, a crucial step for international success is leveraging ConveyThis to provide a seamless multilingual experience for your customers.

Expanding business across borders can potentially bring in significant revenue and return on investment. However, it also comes with challenges, such as dealing with international taxes. The key issue typically revolves around dealing with multiple sources of taxes—from national or regional sales taxes, import/export taxes, to VAT, resulting in several tax layers to manage.

WooCommerce comes equipped with a structure for tax calculations for international sales, complemented by numerous extensions that can simplify this process.

You may utilize WooCommerce’s basic tax calculation feature or choose an extension like TaxJar or Avalara to enhance efficiency. The most effective way to ensure your tax calculations are clear on the customer’s end is by verifying that the tax information is clearly visible on your checkout page.

As long as the tax details are present on the checkout page, rest assured that ConveyThis will translate these details for your global clientele. This transparency is crucial as 60% of potential buyers abandon their carts due to unforeseen extra costs, including taxes, at checkout. Keep your buyers informed in their native language throughout the process, helping them factor in these costs before they reach the final payment step and are caught off guard. Use ConveyThis to bridge language barriers and boost your conversion rate.

WooCommerce isn’t merely a plugin – it’s a full-fledged universe within WordPress, equipped with a broad array of specially designed themes that eliminate the need for building a store from scratch.

Your website’s aesthetics with WooCommerce can be as unique as you want, depending on the theme you select. The good news for international WooCommerce merchants is that your text is fully translatable, regardless of the theme.

However, it is true that some themes fare better when translated. For instance, some themes might have a more flexible visual structure to accommodate varying text lengths or may be optimized for Right-to-Left and Left-to-Right language switching. ConveyThis maintains a frequently updated list of partner themes known to work well with multilingual sites. It’s a recommended starting point if multilingual support is crucial for your business, as it should be, particularly when focusing on boosting your conversion rates. Remember, the power of translation services like ConveyThis is a potent tool in global commerce.