The rate of e-commerce businesses expanding internationally has seen significant growth in recent years. Global e-commerce sales have been rapidly increasing, with international expansion becoming a crucial strategy for many businesses​.

Currency, language, shipping, and payment are the natural ‘must-haves’ for selling to customers in international regions. However, the real opportunity to drive brand awareness and regional sales comes from tackling the challenge of balancing a broad, international reach with the nuanced needs of local markets.

For merchandisers and e-commerce teams, this means developing strategies that cater to diverse cultural preferences, regional trends, and local shopping behaviors. Over the past twenty years, Crownpeak Product Discovery solutions have enabled many retail leaders to succeed in thinking global while acting local.

In the recent Internet Retailing Top 1000 EU listings, Crownpeak powers nearly a quarter of the Top 50 EU retailers. In this paper we take our experience in driving successful international e-commerce to uncover the best practices of thinking global and acting local with product discovery combining search, merchandising, and recommendation strategy into one solution.

Understand Regional Preferences

One of the most crucial aspects of successful international e-commerce is understanding the unique preferences, tastes, and cultural nuances of each target market. This involves extensive research into local consumer behaviors and adapting merchandising strategies accordingly.

Price Sensitivity: Different regions have varying levels of price sensitivity. For example, in less price-sensitive regions, featuring higher-margin items or full-price products prominently can be more effective. Conversely, in more price-sensitive areas, prioritizing lower-priced or sale items can drive better engagement and conversions. McKinsey’s report on the power of price and its importance to sales performance further backs what we see as Crownpeak — whereby applying price as a weighted factor to recommendations and merchandising strategies drives better sales performance based on considering regional price sensitivity.

Cultural Nuances: Beyond price, consider other cultural factors to resonate with shoppers in their region. This could include understanding cultural terms used, regional color and brand preferences, fit in regard to clothing, as well as popular product categories, and shopping habits. For example, the UK shopper generally prioritizes convenience and value so will seek out promotions, discounts, and free next day delivery. This may suggest having products with high customer reviews, next day delivery, and recent promotions being prioritized in your search results or category listing pages.

On the other hand, a shopper in France will prioritize quality, origins, and brand loyalty. So, a worthy A/B test to run would be to promote locally made products vs those sourced from outside the country. Further, personalization is highly regarded in France so driving tailored 1:1 recommendations and tailored customer messaging could see higher click through and conversion as we have seen with La Redoute .

Understanding these elements again effects the merchandising strategy that will best perform in engaging and converting per region.

Tailor Campaigns and Product Assortment to Local Trends

Localized marketing campaigns and product assortment can create a strong connection with consumers by aligning to what they see, feel, and do in the region. Accenture found that 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase from retailers that recognize their needs and provide relevant recommendations.

Merchandising should be influenced by regional events, holidays, and lifestyle choices. For instance, promoting winter clothing in colder regions during their winter season or aligning with major local festivals or influencers can drive higher engagement.

Where we have seen the highest return is when marketing and eCommerce are aligned. eMarketer report that localized campaigns can increase customer engagement by 40%, although typically these localized campaigns stop at marketing. To make a real impact the e-commerce merchandising should be aligned to said campaigns.

For example, marketing collaborates with a German fitness influencer, a brand ambassador in region, it would be prudent to have those products being promoted by the in-region ambassador prominent at the top of lister pages and search results. However, you wouldn’t want this same strategy for those category pages or search results in Spain as the brand ambassador may not have as much of a platform in Spain as they would in Germany.

Adapting e-commerce beyond just content marketing, but to the actual merchandising strategy of the site against regional trends and marketing campaigns pays dividends in localized engagement and sales.

Language Localization

Effective communication is vital for international success. Investing in professional translation services ensures that your website, product descriptions, and marketing materials are accurately translated and culturally appropriate.

Accurate Translations: Avoid relying on automated translation tools alone, as they can often miss subtle language nuances and idiomatic expressions. Professional translation services can provide more accurate and contextually appropriate translations. Common Sense Advisory found that 72.4% of global consumers prefer to buy products in their native language — the shopper wants and expects to be served and shop online in their region as they would experience if they went into their local store.

Localization of Idioms & Expressions: Ensure that local idioms and expressions are used correctly in product attribution and how this differs per region. The basic example of ‘pants’ in the US refers to a different product to ‘pants’ in the UK. Equally ‘thongs’ in the UK means a very different product to ‘thongs’ in Australia. Therefore, understanding this and ensuring the right product is returned in a search result or promoted on the product listing page based on localized meaning and expressions is important to stay not only relevant but getting the customer to the right product on their path to purchase.

Optimize for Search Intent

Tailoring your SEO and search strategies to reflect local language and search intent is crucial for improving visibility and relevance in local search results.

Localized Keywords: Use keywords and phrases that local consumers are likely to use. This can be identified through keyword research tools and analytics data. This could traditionally be quite challenging, which is where AI can now help take on the burden by continually optimizing for locality and search intent.

Understand Intent: This challenge is ever increasing. According to Marketing Profs , 43% of searches are 3-5 words long. Meanwhile, 70% of consumers expect online retailers and brands to understand their most complex of search queries and deliver relevant results, according to the CI&T Retail Consumer Study. This is before even considering language, localized keywords, phrases, and idioms.

It is not uncommon from Crownpeak’s experience to see search examples such as “verstido with floral pattern.” Here we not only have complexity in terms of length, but also two languages being used in the same search query. On average, 20% of all search queries fall into this long tail of search returning zero or irrelevant results. This presents a missed opportunity to direct the customer to the right product and in turn hindering your ability to engage with them and gain that conversion.

By optimizing for these queries, you can improve user experience and capture potential revenue. Forrester Research found that improving site search can increase conversion rates by up to 30%. Semantic search is one mechanism to address the challenge but without AI, the burden in terms of manual effort and time is greater.

Continuously Iterate and Adapt

The e-commerce landscape is dynamic, requiring constant adaptation to stay ahead, as all businesses seek to gain more from what they have rather than investing in bigger teams or higher levels of process and tasks. Leveraging AI to be data-driven is crucial to remaining efficient and agile to the ever-changing demands of consumer preference.

A/B Testing: Regularly test different hypotheses to see what resonates best with your audience. Some of the examples shared in this paper absolutely should not simply supersede existing merchandising strategies without A/B testing to prove the hypothesis and optimize based on the results.

Invest in Experience Consulting: With over twenty years as a leader in product discovery, Crownpeak have a team of experience consultants to advise and help e-commerce teams optimize and drive successful outcomes based on knowing what proves successful per region, vertical, product, and customer demographic. Investing in experience will accelerate your success in Thinking Global and Acting Local.

AI Integration: Utilize AI to automate product assortment and merchandising strategies. AI can adapt in real-time, ensuring that your offerings are always aligned with current market trends and consumer preferences. McKinsey reports that AI-driven personalization can increase e-commerce revenues by 10-30%, equally our own studies at Crownpeak have shown a 60% improvement in team efficiency by removing repetitive manual merchandising tasks.

Conclusion

Mastering global e-commerce merchandising requires a nuanced understanding of regional preferences, trends, and trading behaviors. By adopting a localized approach and implementing best practices, businesses can create tailored shopping experiences that resonate with consumers worldwide and convert to higher online sales and success.

However, 50% of eCommerce teams feel their existing technology stack is unable to meet their needs to meet these challenges and opportunities. Investing in the right product discovery solution to compliment your e-commerce engine will enable e-commerce teams drive success in Thinking Global and Acting Local.

Next Steps

Ready to optimize your e-commerce strategy and capture more revenue opportunities? Sign up for a free site audit today and discover how Crownpeak can help you tailor your approach to each market and drive global success.