How to Improve the E-commerce Conversion Rate of International Sales

Story of a Local Business that Went Global (and Viral!)    

Meet Mr. X, a souvenir shop owner who struggled to stand out from the competition in his local market. Despite running a unique shop, Mr. X doubted his business's potential as it struggled to attract enough customers. A well-travelled globetrotter suggested taking his business online to showcase his unique collection of souvenirs. Overcoming his fears, Mr. X set up an online store with the help of local techies. To his surprise, his business flourished with an influx of international orders. Word of mouth and social media influencers spread the story of Mr. X, turning him into an internationally acclaimed antique collector. Now, fans from around the world seek out his rare and exquisite collection of souvenirs.  

The Result and His Secret!  

Mr. X's incredible success story proves that bold decisions and perseverance can pay off. His secret to success was a user-friendly website and a digital commerce strategy that catered to global customers. By engaging with customers in their language and familiar currencies, leveraging social channels, and providing efficient shipping and customer service, he saw a surge in international orders and revenue. Initially, he was worried about needing more resources and investments. However, he managed to unify engagement channels and various digital touchpoints on an all-in-one CX platform, to elevate the customer experience, managed by existing resources, within budget. Thanks to the local tech community, Mr. X's journey is a testimony to the potential of going global.  

Now, It's Your Turn!  

E-commerce has become the backbone of the global economy, with sales crossing trillions of dollars annually and is projected to surpass $6.5 trillion this year. It's time to seize the opportunity presented by the global market and it is always a good idea to beat your rivals and competitors and gain an advantage over them by optimising your sales conversion rates, especially for international sales.  

Don't let fear or doubt hold you back, embrace the opportunity to grow and succeed on a global scale! In the following sections, we'll explore the actionable steps you can take to improve the conversion rate of your international store and tap into the global market.  

6 Ways to Improve Your Global Conversion Rates  

1. Streamline Your Sales and Marketing Approach with Data  

By leveraging a centralised customer data pool, you can optimise your sales and marketing efforts. Focus on quality leads who have shown interest in your product or service, and nurture them effectively by providing personalised service and retargeting ads. Cater to your customer's expectations by meeting them where they are and delivering what they need. Finally, redefine your offer by highlighting the benefits, offering complementary services or bonuses, and providing personalised support.  

To create a truly customer-focused digital ecosystem, consider adopting a cloud-based, open-source solution like CINNOX.  

• With its all-encompassing platform, you can easily create a 360-degree view of your customers’ journey by syncing your existing tech stack and unifying data about their behaviour, preferences, and past interactions with your business from various channels such as your CRM, website, social media, emails, and phone interactions.  
• With centralised, real-time data and comprehensive insights, this will enable your team to offer personalised recommendations and first-time resolutions.  
• Capture and track labelled data, conduct sentiment analysis, optimise responses, and identify customer intents.  
• By sharing this data across teams, you can also break down silos and provide seamless experiences that exceed customer expectations.  

• Make your customers feel like a VIP. Pair them with the right experts based on their needs when their initiate first interaction with your business and, match them with the same expert who served them in the past to build a rewarding relationship through CINNOX’s relationship mapping and smart routing capabilities.  

2. Build Trust with Social Proofs  

Mr X, in the beginning, said that he saw a tremendous success with social media, do you get it? He is a part of the blooming social commerce market today, an industry that is expected to grow at an annual rate of 10.66%, reaching a total transaction value of US$9.04tn with a staggering number of 5.46 billion users by 2027.  

A strong digital commerce and social media strategy is critical for your business. Your online reputation can greatly influence customer decisions. Creating business accounts on multiple social channels and showcasing social proof, like customer reviews and testimonials, can build trust and credibility gaining more market share. Partnering with social influencers can broaden your audience.  

However, it needn't be complicated as you might think. When you unify all social channels into a single platform like CINNOX, gain a competitive edge over businesses that only use a few channels. With a consolidated view of customer behaviour across multiple channels, your teams can provide better service, enhanced customer experience, and ultimately boost conversion rates.  

3. Tweak your CTA  

You've caught your audience's attention with your social ad, and they've landed on your profile with an interest to buy. But here's the catch: will they bother navigating through your website, scrolling through multiple products to find what they liked and making the purchase? The answer is most likely no. Lost sales and slipping conversion!  

To ensure that your potential customers don't drop off during the buying process, it's important to provide a clear and convenient call to action in your marketing efforts. This can be achieved by strategically planning your CTAs so that they're highly visible, simple to understand, and placed intuitively for customers to take advantage of what you offer. Make it clear where supporters are going when they opt in for a specified offer such as a free trial period or a money-saving coupon code.  

Optimise Your CTAs with CINNOX for Higher Conversion Rates  

With CINNOX, you can enhance your CTAs to drive higher conversion rates. Here are a few examples of how CINNOX can help:  

• Simplify Customer Support: Include a QR code on the customer's parcel that allows them to instantly connect with your customer service team for returns and refunds. This eliminates the need for customers to search through your website to find support.  
• Minimise Friction: Avoid lengthy forms and email conversations by strategically configuring your web widget. Provide a directory of teams within your organisation, such as product, customer service, and finance. This enables customers to connect directly with the right team members for personalised support and recommendations.  
• Social Channel Integration: Place enquiry buttons on your Facebook ad campaigns that lead to your FB Messenger. With CINNOX's integration, all customer enquiries through social channels like Facebook, WeChat, Line, and WhatsApp Business are seamlessly routed to your CINNOX dashboard. This allows your agents to respond quickly and improve conversion rates.  
• Offer Personalisation: If you are running a store that offers customisation of products or services, placing a CTA button at a strategic location can do wonders for your customer’s shopping experience. For example, if you are offering customised printing for T-shirts, you can place a CINNOX CTA button around your ‘Add to cart’ button, and name it ‘Create my design’. When the customers hit the button, the CINNOX web widget will pop open, and they will be routed to the intended designer for a quick chat, call, or video call to customise the design.  

• Initial Enquiry to Continuous Loop of Engagement: After you have put all your effort into generating a lead, don't let the conversation end there. Create a continuous bond with the leads by sending them follow-up SMS or emails including a quick direct call or chat link which will take customers straight to your agents for further engagement, thus turning cool relations into warm leads again. A unified platform like CINNOX supports both inbound (customers can click web call or chat links to quickly reach you) and outbound interactions (you can reach out to them via the channel of their choice, right from CINNOX’s dashboard).  

By leveraging these CTA enhancements with CINNOX, you can streamline the customer journey, reduce friction, and increase your sales conversion rates.  

4. Leverage the Power of Web Widget and Chatbot  

If global visitors to your website seem hesitant or uncertain, they could easily engage with the web widget for quick round-the clock service. With their ability to gather data and assist with repetitive inquiries through Chatbots, your agents can save valuable time while focusing on customers with more complex enquiries. Plus, pre-chat information helps your agents get straight to the point. Did you know that 57% of businesses say chatbots bring in great returns for a small investment?  

• Proactively engage customers and assist with issues, common enquiries, and actions; guide customers to specific webpages and actions; transfer inquiries to agents with matching time zone or previous interactions.  
• Empower customers with self-service and assisted options for a better experience.  
• Serve as a reliable knowledge hub with instant access to product-specific FAQs and advanced data retrieval for more complex queries.  
• Facilitate smooth agent handoff for more personal support without the need for interruption or starting over.  

• Ramp up sales and revenue through hassle-free shopping, post-sale support, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.  
• Record interactions in real-time to generate valuable data on customer behaviour, preferences, and challenges for informed business decisions.  

With the combination of web widget, chatbot, and dynamic routings, CINNOX streamlines the sales process, enhances customer satisfaction, and drives conversions.  

5. Transform Your Contact Centre for Enhanced E-commerce Conversions  

Upgrade your contact centre to a modern, cloud-based solution and revolutionise your customer interactions. Gone are the days of traditional contact centres that provided only traditional customer service. Today's contact centres offer a range of features that are not only cost-effective but also have the potential to significantly boost your e-commerce conversions. Here's how:  

• Smart Routing for Seamless Customer Experience: With solutions like CINNOX, you can leverage features such as smart routing, chatbots, and real-time data to connect customers with the right agents. By ensuring that inquiries are directed to the most suitable representative, you can provide personalised assistance, resolve issues more efficiently, and increase the likelihood of conversions.  
• Instant Global and Local Presence: Utilise virtual numbers offered by cloud-based contact centres to establish an instant local and global presence. By leveraging International Toll-Free Numbers (ITFS), Universal International Freephone Numbers (UIFN), and Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers, you can engage audiences locally from anywhere in the world. This localised approach builds trust and confidence, leading to higher conversion rates.  
• IVR Automation for Efficient Call Handling: Integrate Interactive Voice Response (IVR) into your contact centre to automate phone interactions and reduce costs. With CINNOX, you can streamline your IVR system, eliminating the need for separate software and infrastructure. IVR can personalise messages, gather caller information, and efficiently route calls to the right agent based on customer preferences. This ensures a smooth customer journey and improves the chances of conversion.  

By adopting a cloud-based contact centre solution with IVR integration and virtual number functionality, you can enhance customer service, improve scalability, and reduce costs. The seamless customer experience, global reach, and efficient call handling offered by these solutions directly contribute to increased e-commerce conversions.  

6. Optimise Your Strategy for Regional Relevance  

Boost your global e-commerce sales by optimising your website and channels for regional relevance. The e-commerce market is dominated by many countries like the US, UK, South Korea, Japan, and China, with China alone accounting for 46.3% of all retail e-commerce sales worldwide. You could be missing out on significant revenue if you stick to a monolingual website.  

• Instead, consider making your site multilingual and displaying information in local languages and currencies, also providing different payment and shipping options based on the visitor's location, currency, language, and preferences.  
• Be transparent about any additional customs fees, duties, and shipping info and charges.  
• It is important to understand the import and export criteria of different regions, as each country has specific product restrictions. For example, the US has a list of prohibited items, and embargoed areas may have trade bans that affect the delivery of products to customers. Therefore, it is crucial to know and clearly state any restrictions that may apply to your product line.  

• Localise all marketing materials, not just your website. Consider offering multi-language social media accounts, targeted regional ads, hyper-local landing pages. You can also lead the visitors to CINNOX’s web widget on your website or link social ads with social messenger service, like FB messenger or WhatsApp, which can then be configured into CINNOX. This allows you to connect your customers from specific regions with agents serving the region or language. Consider regional differences such as cultural associations with colours to avoid missteps; for instance, Pepsi lost market share in Southeast Asia in the 1950s after changing the colour of their vending machines and coolers to light ice blue as it is associated with death in that region. Ultimately, meeting customers wherever and however they come across your e-commerce store is crucial for success.  

Don't leave money on the table – make your e-commerce site accessible and appealing to a global audience.  

In conclusion, improving the e-commerce conversion rate of international sales requires a multi-faceted approach. By incorporating tools like CINNOX you can leverage its smart unified ecosystem, Web widget, chatbot, and IVR system to give you an edge in providing quick and efficient customer support and improving the overall experience.  

Remember, in the world of e-commerce, a satisfied customer is a loyal customer, and loyalty is the foundation of a successful business. So don't settle for a low conversion rate, take advantage of these tools and strategies to elevate your e-commerce game and take your international sales to the next level.

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