Today, I'm going to give you three crucial tips that you need to know
for selling your handmade or physical products online when you're based outside of the USA.
Hi, my name is Mei Pak.
And I help makers artists
and designers make a consistent income from selling their handmade products online
and you may not know this about me but I'm kind of new to the United States.
I came to the US for college,
but I was actually born and raised in Malaysia and I started my business in Malaysia.
Most of my first few sales happened in Malaysia and I was selling primarily to customers in the u.s.
I should also mention that I do affairs. Of online shopping myself and I'm a tiny person.
I'm five foot one and I have tiny hands
and that's why my business is called Tiny Hands
and let me tell you it's really hard to buy clothes that fit me in the u.s.
At least not in the women's section.
Anyway, don't tell anybody
but sometimes I go and buy things in the kids section short people problems.
Am I right? Needless to say,
I've been a business operating outside of the United States.
I've bought a ton of stuff as a customer. Murmur from non us or International shops.
And I also get this question all the time from people who live
outside the US who want to make their online
businesses work my quick answer to this is it doesn't really
matter the top countries that spend the most
money from online shopping are the United States China
and United Kingdom.
Now unless you can speak and write fluent Chinese.
It's not like we're going to hit the Chinese market anytime soon.
So I highly recommend that you focus.
To the US and UK. I found a great research paper from World retail
Congress that published in 2019 that says the u.s.
Is a formidable online force. It was the birthplace of the Online Marketplace
and largely Americans are very trusting online Shoppers who have a high level of
comfort shopping online around 79 percent of the population
or 250 8.5 million people has made a purchase in In the past year this level of comfort is also
evident in both the amount of money spent on average per Shopper,
which is 1951 US dollars annually and the size of the overall us e-commerce Market.
This is what I've always told people Americans
are so comfortable buying from in shopping from international stores.
And if you want to be one of those stores we shot from then stay on to
watch this video to catch my three tips
for how to be successful selling your hand.
Products when you're based outside of the US
and here is the kicker a key metric that has placed the u.s.
At the top of our ranking this year is the number of cross-border online Shoppers.
The US has the second highest number of cross-border online Shoppers in the world.
That's eighty two point seven two million people if you're curious China is first,
but China's first with so many of these metrics
because China is just a huge country with a much larger population.
Ian than the u.s. My point with all of those numbers is regardless of what country you operate from.
It's likely that most of your online customers are going to be from the
US and if you're serious about making Sales Online,
then you'll definitely want to focus selling to people in the US.
Otherwise, if you live in say Canada and you only want to sell to Canadians,
you're going to be limited by a much smaller pool of people to sell to
and that will just make it harder to do all online.
Okay, so tip number You want to make sure that your brand conveys trust which is super important
for an international seller.
If you're selling to the US just know that American sellers are going to always have small
advantages over you they're shipping is going to be cheaper
and it's going to get to the destination faster which already gives them a leg up,
right? So what's really important is that
you as an international seller counteract that by having really on point branding
so that means not only having a great graphics and great.
Photos but also making sure that you have reviews
and social proof to build trust this may mean having a review plug-in on your website
or having an email that goes out post-purchase asking
for people to leave you a review you could also Post customer generated photos on your social media
or in your email newsletters another facet of building trust.
That's super important is having error free product descriptions,
especially if you are a non-native English speaker,
that means not only A having error-free descriptions in English
but also descriptions that match the tone of the customer that you're trying to reach
and if this is especially challenging for you,
you can always find a copy editor that will go through
and make sure your copy is good on a site like Fiverr
or upwork this cost in my opinion is so worth it.
I am personally a very terrible product description copywriter
and I got all of my jewelry's copy written many years ago.
It didn't even cost that much
but my Copy is now an asset that just lives on forever
and I don't have to change it
or maintain it a final little component that builds trust is accepting widely used payment methods.
So something like PayPal which uses all credit cards also
significantly improve someone's Trust of your shop.
Now. I know a lot of people
as shop owners don't like using PayPal just know this my shop does 50% of all my sales from PayPal.
So consider that you would be losing out on a lot of sales if you don't offer.
Her PayPal number two. Let's talk about shipping first.
It's really important to go through what your settings with a fine-tooth comb?
Okay, so things like accurate shipping information and accurate shipping prices and delivery times.
Those are things that you want to make sure are correct.
I encourage you to get really serious about how you charge
for shipping as you start shipping internationally small differences in weight
or even box size can make a really huge difference.
So if you're running your own website, there are Means you can get
that will accurately assess the shipping cost
and allow you to charge exactly the right amount
because you definitely do not want to be in this situation where
you have a package to ship internationally,
but it's twice what you thought it was and now you might be losing money on that sale.
So in addition to really getting your shipping streamlined between your website
and your shipping system,
you will also want to go ahead
and run a few tests cases where you attempt to shift to other countries.
This does a couple of things one. It makes sure that those systems are running smoothly
and to it gives you an idea of estimated delivery times customers are actually really flexible
and open about ordering from overseas
and they know what to expect
but being able to accurately sure expectations is really important year.
For example, I always tell my International customers that it takes anywhere from two to eight weeks
for their orders to arrive
and it usually gets there a lot sooner
but sometimes my packages get held up in customs
and that can take a while
as long as your Customers know what to expect you won't have any problems here.
Also, if you're using a third-party site like Etsy,
make sure your shift two countries are
updated because that affects the search results and where you're going to appear in the results.
Now if shipping is just super expensive to do with International packages for you.
You have a couple of options here. You can do some pricing tweaking by adding all
or part of your shipping fees into your product prices
because one of the biggest turn offs for customers online.
Is a high shipping price. It's been proven that customers don't mind
higher product price if it means shipping is free
or very low cost but if your product prices low
and your shipping prices High people will most likely Bounce from your site
and not buying the second option is if you want to or you're ready to grow big in the US market,
you might want to consider a Fulfillment company.
So you basically ship a bulk package with multiple
quantities of your To a Fulfillment company in the
US and they store your products and inventory and they even new packaging and shipping for you.
So this cuts down on shipping prices per item
and your customers don't have to pay too high of a shipping fee.
Plus it gets to your American customers a lot faster number three,
you want to make sure that you're including all of the relevant information that a person
would need to really get accurate information about your product.
So specifically if we're talking about Americans that means
making sure Sure to include Imperial measurements like
inches and ounces.
If you want you can include both metric and Imperial measurements.
Just so nobody feels left out. It's very easy to just use a calculator online.
Right but most customers aren't going to take the extra time to Google that information themselves.
And if they don't see measurements in a metric,
they're familiar with they might leave your site without buying anything.
You want to make the purchase action as quick and seamless and easy as possible.
Other thing that helps convey sizing information is lifestyle photos.
So if you have a product that can be held in some hands
or put in a lifestyle setting this gives the customer a very clear idea
of the sizing you just want to make sure that
when you're doing your photos that you're thinking
of what items that are great reference points all around the world,
right? So something that you may think is a great reference point like your refrigerator
or something like that actually isn't a very good reference
point because different countries He's have different standards
for what size refrigerator is
so finding reference points that tend to be more Universal like a paperback book,
which isn't even I don't know about that
as much because there are a lot of different sizes of books,
but maybe a pencil or an iPhone can be really useful here.
I also wanted to mention this
because I work with a lot of students in my osela T Business System
Program who are international shops whose
mother tongues are a different language from English there is
Tendency to want to write your website in your
country's language & price your products in your currency
and then using one of those currency converter plugins that allows the visitor to choose
what currency and language to show the website in right my take on this is
It's usually more work than is actually helpful
for most of you.
Now. I understand the need to be accessible to all customers from all countries,
but most small business owners don't pull off creating this experienced well,
and they just end up creating too many Hoops
for every customer to jump through
and as a result your conversion rate and sales are going to drop across the board.
So for example, if your site is in French by default and all the prices are in Euros,
most Americans coming to your shop are going to be alienated.
So in business, you have to accept
and be comfortable that you cannot please everyone
and that you should make your business decisions based on the majority of Who You Are
Customers are which most likely will be customers from the
US and if you do decide to make your website user friendly
for different languages and currencies really make sure you invest
and commit to the best most seamless Solutions
and experience for your customers that's available
to you because going halfway
or choosing the cheapest solution is only going to confuse your customers and lower your sales.
So all of these tips are just to help you on your business Journey if your base Outside of the u.s.
Selling online the bigger message is that it really doesn't matter where you live
and you can be successful.
Even if you don't live in the u.s. There might be a bit more Hoops
for you to jump through but the upside is the huge potential of sales.
You'll get on the other side of it.