The UK provides great opportunities for trading, but virtually the whole world could be available to you as an online business.
If you’re thinking of selling abroad, one of the most important things you need to think about is working with multiple currencies. Many customers will want to pay in their own currency, but how do you manage all this? By thinking and working smartly, it could be easier than you might think.
Here’s some things to think about:
- Does your e-commerce software support multiple currencies? Your software may support multiple currencies out of the box, but there may be add-on modules that you need to install. Will these modules affect other modules? Is there a cost to adapt your software to work with more than one currency?
- Does your payment processing provider support all of the currencies you want to work with? Make sure that you can accept payments in these currencies and look out for any additional costs involved, including costs for converting the money back into your home currency.
- Will your e-commerce site pass currency information on to your payment provider? It’s important to check this. What you wouldn’t want is the sale amount being passed on, but not the currency!
- What’s your base currency? You need to choose a base currency (usually your home currency) from which all the other prices on your website will be worked out.
- Is it easy for customers to choose the currency they want to buy in? Is it really clear to customers how they can change their currency? Will the change in prices be consistent right across your site?
- Is the checkout process still smooth for customers? Make sure everything works together and carry out test transactions from start to finish. Try to cover every eventuality, for example: what happens if a customer adds the first item to their basket in pounds and the second item in euros?
- How will you keep your currency conversion up to date so customers pay the right price? Exchange rates fluctuate constantly during every trading day – over the course of a day you can sometimes see big jumps. The difference could be significant for your business. Left unchecked, an incorrect exchange rate could be the difference between making a profit and taking a loss on a sale. Make sure you keep your exchange rates up to date behind the scenes, so that customers are always shown the right price in all the currencies you accept. This is time-consuming, but necessary. We recently implemented a fantastic system where every night, the currency exchange rates on an e-commerce site were automatically updated using official central bank rates. The business owner doesn’t need to do a thing.
- Be careful when mixing language, currency and location options. There are tools available to auto-detect the customer’s location and browser language. By all means use these where it provides a better experience, but don’t assume that because someone is in a particular country that they speak a particular language or want to use a particular currency. With the global society that we now have, everyone’s needs are different, so provide the best customer experience by respecting their preferences, either through automated means or through the customer making their choice on your site.
There are lots of other things to think about when trading internationally, not least shipping, customer service, language matters, VAT and other taxes, importing/exporting procedures and more, but for many, the returns and other benefits far outweigh the administrative implications. But we’re not lawyers or tax advisors! So do take a look at Government websites or speak to independent advisors about these issues.
Hopefully the tips in this article will help you expand your horizons and trade in multiple currencies with confidence. For more information on how we can help you build an e-commerce solution with the power to trade internationally, or upgrade your existing website, please get in touch.