In 2017, the value of the global e-commerce market should reach 23.445 trillion dollars, or 6.3 percent more than a year earlier. By 2020, it will be 27.726 trillion dollars, according to the research firm eMarketer. Some of this money could go to Polish companies, provided they decide to develop online sales on a larger scale beyond the country's borders.
Making the decision to leave the local market and go abroad is difficult. As a rule, it is accompanied by fear of the unknown, which applies equally to large and small companies. However, it is worth taking this step to guarantee the development of your own business. Smaller companies can use industry-specific or horizontal e-commerce platforms for this purpose (such as Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress), through which you can quickly and easily start selling worldwide. However, this involves agreeing to a significant commission. For this reason, for larger players, having their own e-commerce platform is a more advantageous solution.
Why is it worth selling through your own platform?
Our own uniform platform will make it easy to manage website content in many different languages and transactions in different currencies, while maintaining a centralized database of customers and products, as well as the specific characteristics of individual markets (cultural, pricing, and legal conditions). Your own platform also allows easy and flexible integration with external systems used in the company, and, if such a need arises, with the IT systems of business partners.
„A solution for a large, international e-commerce business is something more than a system for a local online store. The difference is not only quantitative but also qualitative. When thinking about international expansion, we need a tool flexible enough to respond to the requirements of new markets and implement the assumed business model” – says Łukasz Łagudza, Senior Solution Architect at e-point, which specializes in delivering extensive e-commerce systems in Poland and worldwide.
A uniform platform for many markets lowers the costs of creating, maintaining, and developing e-commerce systems. Thanks to it, we can easily and cheaply introduce new modules and innovations that immediately become available in every language version. Our own platform will also allow us to seamlessly adapt to the legal and cultural context in individual countries, because its subsystems can differ from one another in functionality and business logic.
„The costs of creating such a platform are attractive, because as a rule it is not built from scratch but based on frameworks, for example SAP Hybris. During implementation, these solutions can be adapted to your own needs and requirements, while also giving you the ability to offer customers an omnichannel experience, that is, consistent communication across all sales channels, including online, physical stores, mobile applications, or the call center” – explains Łukasz Łagudza.
Amway's good practices
A great example of how to succeed in international e-commerce is Amway. This American corporation has for years operated as a distributor and manufacturer of cleaning products, selling them through a direct sales system. Amway took its first steps in e-commerce back in 1999, developing its online sales platform for so-called Amway Independent Business Owners (IBOs) in Western Europe. Since 2001, Amway also began creating separate solutions for Eastern European countries.
In 2006, the company decided to create one common e-commerce platform for Eastern Europe. This task was entrusted to e-point. The platform was intended to make it possible to serve a much larger group of users, as well as to adapt easily and more cheaply to the requirements of different markets. An important goal was also to provide a new, clear, and attractive information layer of the system, which was to make ordering easier and encourage people to become involved with Amway.
„The new system was initially implemented only in the countries of Eastern Europe. However, the scale of the success of this project, measured by order volume, the percentage share of online orders in the total, and a significant reduction in operating costs, prompted Amway to extend the platform to 16 Western European countries as well” - says Jarosław Walczuk, E-commerce Strategist at e-point.
In this way, Amway significantly reduced both operating costs and the costs of maintaining its e-commerce platform across Europe, and shortened the time-to-market for new functions and countries. This results from the fact that the platform is now maintained in one common hosting center, and all changes are introduced through the same application. Also, the time needed to create dedicated versions of the platform for new countries is very short. For example: from December 2011 to March 2012, that is, within just 4 months, Amway was able to make its platform available for 17 different countries! In total, there are now 35, in 46 language versions. It is used by 1.5 million users.
The platform allows Amway to use an interesting strategy, which consists of including a new country first in e-commerce sales and testing the market's interest in the company's offer in this way. Only when these tests turn out positively does Amway expand its physical presence in the new market. The company used such a strategy, for example, in the Baltic countries and Bulgaria, which split off from Poland and Romania, respectively. Currently, such a process is underway in Kazakhstan – splitting off from Russia.
It is worth adding that Amway's platform was adapted to the legal regulations specific to each country where it was implemented. Since 2012, the system has been expanded with a mobile version, which is currently one of the basic tools of daily work for representatives cooperating with Amway.
Adapt to Every Market and All Target Groups
As the Amway case shows, the key to success in the international e-commerce market is adapting to the preferences of users and the market of a given country to the greatest extent possible. This applies equally to individual customers and business partners, as well as to the legal conditions in a given country.
„Offering customers the ability to shop in their native language and with respect for cultural differences, paying in their own currency and using the method most popular in a given country, as well as adapting to their preferences regarding delivery and meeting legal requirements concerning returns or complaints – these are the absolute basics of international e-commerce. Without this, it is difficult to achieve real benefits from operations on the international market” – explains Jarosław Walczuk.
We should approach the needs and expectations of business partners (B2B) in a similar way. At the same time, it should be remembered that they change under the influence of new solutions in areas such as payment methods, delivery of goods, or the growing emphasis on mobile.
„E-commerce is a very dynamic environment. Therefore, in order to think about long-term success, it is worth securing peace of mind on the technological side in advance and focusing on other aspects of developing our business on the international market” – summarizes Jarosław Walczuk.
