Pros and Cons shipping worldwide?

Get more business shipping worldwide

This is probably an obvious questions but when you have a website and shipping worldwide how many different languages should you have that customers can choose from and how many currencies on your website?

There are quite alot and im not sure if just using English would be helpful. Do i need English, Spanish French etc and sterling, dollars, euros etc?

Thank you

I have shipped quite a few shirts worldwide, and by far the biggest problem is the cost. The second biggest problem is the paperwork and time it takes.

A lot of it depends on the cost of the item you are shipping. Most of my shirts run in the $13 - $16 range. Not many people want to pay $10 to ship a $13 item, but some will depending on how bad they want the shirt. The other thing is that I usually can't just throw it in the mailbox. I usually have to take it to the Post Office and do some customs paperwork. The extra time required for this makes it hardly worth the profit.

was your tshirts based on the size of the package or both the size and the weight? Id really like to ship some of my stock worldwide but some items mayb just be £9 and say adding £3.99 for shipment im not sure where the profit would be. Ill be shipping single items so it wont be large bulk orders itll be single ones going through the post office sending them to various locations
I would like it to work and for candles etc to be shipped worldwide but im not not sure on costs and whether to invest time in building my website for worldwide etc..

Hmm...I'm not sure that I see it the way Bill sees it in #7 above. Maybe that was the case 10 years ago but not now, at least not in the USA (I'm sure the UK is no different).

You just need the right software/systems.

I ship products worldwide, in fact with one of my businesses my best customers are in Asia. These are products which sell for $15 - $25 each and an average order value is around $55 - so given the rates of exchange I'm in the same ballpark as the OP.

There's no additional paperwork whatsoever, the software takes care of everything.

Shipping times are very reasonable, even for the slowest shipping method which for me is First Class Parcel International. Usually it takes 5-7 days to arrive. Sometimes it takes a little longer but it's rare these days for it to take more than 10 days.

Here's how it works - just about every popular shopping cart these days has a hook-up with the main shipping services in your Country. In your case it will be with the Royal Mail, in mine here in the USA my cart hooks up to the USPS and UPS websites.

So you enter a shipping weight in the shopping cart for each of your items. You should also create a shipping table, if for some reason the live hook-up doesn't work (occasionally the USPS site might be 'unavailable' for a few minutes).

Now when people shop at your site, they add items into the basket/cart. When they checkout, the shopping cart software shakes hands with the Royal Mail website and gets a shipping rate to the destination country and that rate is displayed to the shopper before they enter any payment information. The rates are the actual rates you will pay, so long as you've entered the weights correctly and accounted for any oversized packaging. You can mark-up the shipping rates by a percentage if you want to make a profit on the shipping.

You tell the cart if there are any specific countries where you won't ship, but basically it handles International shipping just like domestic UK.

That's the first part. Now you want to make it easy to process the order in your facility. I use a program on one of my stores called 'Shipworks'. It's basically a desktop application and it talks directly to your online shopping cart. Each day my shipping folks press a button and all the orders are sucked from the website into Shipworks. Names, addresses, ordered items, weights... everything.

Now it's a simple case of pressing 'Print Shipping Label'. The software does all of the customs paperwork automatically. Actually, for First Class mail there's very little paperwork. It all prints out on a standard 6"x4" adhesive shipping label. For Priority Mail it prints out 4 A4 sized pages which are slipped into a plastic envelope and attached to the parcel.
There's nothing to fill in, nothing to sign. You just drop the parcel at the PO like you do all of your other parcels.

So if you have the right system, shipping a widget to Malaysia is just as simple as sending it down the street.

And it's cheap too. One of the shopping carts I use is free (Virtuemart). The shipping plugin for the cart was $50 I think.
The Shipworks software is $15 month, but goes up based on volume.

Also, the Shipworks software connects easily to eBay, Amazon and other stores if you have them. So all of your orders from all of your stores can be sucked-in and handled from the same interface.

So to answer your question, there are no real cons to shipping worldwide. It used to be a pain in the ass but technology has made it much easier. And fraud seems to be minimized too. With the new measures in place by credit card companies I see very little fraud from overseas, the stuff that does come through is generally easy to spot.
Remember though that your customer may need to pay an import duty based on the value of the order. Your software adds a value declaration to the shipping label for customs, and there may be a charge for the customer. So you should make that clear on your website. It's never been an issue for me.

ive got a link on my site on the left saying currency converter and it takes the customer to XE - Universal Currency Converter is this ok?

should i have the words 'currency converter' wrote in different languages like Spanish or have country flags under the link, or i might be confusing myself. Is the currency converter used at checkout or they can check things on all products.

its eCommerce package i build with 123reg so im not sure as there's different package levels. i think the package im on is just one language and one currency but think ill need to change this so i can have gbr and euros maybe? and just the one language englsih.

very true for example a Spanish text ad and then an English website wouldn't be very good for thhe customer journey.

so to summaries then ill do the website

Ofcourse its worth having systems making your life easier for you, but before planning sending worldwide its good to consider if the customers could pay the shipping cost - if it's worth doing so..for example big candles are ok I think to send to europe, but very expensive elsewhere...you can see prices depending on the weight at royalmail site.... It all depends on the weight and value....for example, if you sell something to Spain, for 15 pounds and they pay 15 + 3.50 shipping...normal airmail, thats fine, and if it gets lost-wich happens a lot in some countries, like portugal, spain and greece, you can have a compensation from royal mail...a while ago that compensation was up to 40 pounds? You can claim providing them posting receipts and item value, and they grant you with the total of the value+shipping costs If it was to send though just airmail, the same item to canada, the shipping could cost about 9 pounds, which is again very expensive. ( if you use international signed for that is another 7 pounds on top..which makes it expensive for someone to buy, so you loose that potential customer)
In my opinion, light items ( up to 200gr) are ok to send plain airmail worlwide, as long as their value stays within the compensation range royal mail gives you ( about 40 pounds).
For more expensive items, you have to use recorded delivery with insurance, so in case of loss, you take the value and postage back....but shipping may seem to be expensive to customers.
Items with more weight, could be ok ( refering to shipping costs of just airmail) for europe, but not ok for the rest of the world....you can still have them in your website, for customers that buy like 5 or 6 items from you, with combined delivery, which brings the shipping costs down.
Another point: making profit from the postage paid not a very good idea, as customers can see on the label how much you paid, and it is not professional to charge them more than you paid. you can add though a very very small percentage to the item price to make up for the packaging cost ( padded envelopes, wrapping paper, etc..)
You can have royal mail collect items from your business address, so you do not spend time queing at the post office, just make sure they provide you with proof of shipping.
Also, people that are surfing on internet to buy, know english and conversin rates, so you should not bother too much about the language.
Hope this helps

I would think you would open up your customer base but you have to decide whether it's worth the time and effort.

Shipping worldwide will increase the amount of orders that you get... but shipping costs can get pricey depending on your shipping provider (USPS, UPS, etc), and it can dramatically eat into your profits.

Hi QuirkieGifts,

I'd figure I would chime in since my 9 - 5 is logistics. I actually do international shipping but on a small scale you have 3 options: UPS, Fed Ex and DHL.

Of the 3 DHL will be the cheapest and I would suggest you open an account. They will supply you with an account number and you can login to the DHL website & process orders.

If you are in the UK and have a UPS Store or a FedEx Store like we have here is the USA - DO NOT walk into those stores and tell them to ship your item.

They run a franchise system and run up the cost around 30% for ground and 15% on air. Intl shipments they really run those up.

Visit those websites, speak to a rep and ask to open an account. Explain what you do and what your expected volume will be. Then they will place discounts for all your shipping.

1) FedEx probably has the best handling - little breakage and loss packages. Also their discounts are great
2) UPS - is good because they deliver more small package then any carrier but they lose and damage packages all the time.
3) DHL - real cheap

I hope this helps you save money on your shipping. Take it from me I do this crap all day

Woops....I forgot to mention your local post office. The post office will have cheaper rates but usually the tracking stinks.

Here in the states small packages over 3 lbs - usually get expensive with the post office.

Hope that helps.

Hi there... Im used to sell physical products before... Shipped to worldwide..

So here my thinking of pros and cons

Pros
1- People outside your country will know your brand item
2- You will have business friendship all over the world ( trust me, when you send an item, customers satisfied.. They will make bulk order, also come to your country to discuss about long term bisz.. )

Cons
1- Delay in time.. When you used cheap postage, there must be delay in shipping time.. Late delivery item.. When you used the expensive one, it will cut off your profit.
2- Item broken due to long journey to other country

Theres many more.. But those are the important you must know..

I hope this will help you a little

Hi K,

Please review this shopping cart : Ecwid: E-Commerce Widgets

You can add this shopping cart on Custom Sites, WP, FB, Joomla, Twitter and a string of others.

So by customizing only once in ECWID panel, the same products can be seen in all of your CONTENT CHANNELS. Easy maintenance.

Easy to use, easy to manage, quick, can hook up with almost all of the popular courier companies and EVEN CUSTOM your own postal costs.

I can't describe everything here. Just visit their site, join for free and test it. Their paid version has awesome features.

To reach an even wider audience for your products, you can sell on EBay and Amazon - which provides shipping options.

As for language, I recommend to maintain them in English for Malaysia and Singapore. This way, you can focus on developing your site content. USE SIMPLE ENGLISH and MORE PICTURES, throw jargons out the window.

Maintain 1 currency only, USD. East Asians' preferred international currency for small purchases is the US Dollar. It is a familiar one for them, so less purchase friction.

Hope this helps, as an addendum to Rooze's awesome tips !

Latin America's and China's customs will give you a lot of trouble.

Thank you for all your comments

You certainly make more sales shipping worldwide, but if you are just starting out, stick with reliable carriers and markets (US, Canada, UK). Then as you get a better understanding of the challenges involved in catering to customers worldwide start by adding other shipping zones gradually. That'll help you handle it all better. Though there are more sales, but that comes with certain risks and pitfalls in catering to customers worldwide.

thank you

I sell on eBay but I don't ship overseas because I can't control the delivery time.

If you decide to ship to Asian countries like Malaysia (which is where I came from), I am really not sure how reliable the postal system is.

If there is any delay, you get complaints from customers and it takes time, effort and money to track the item.

It is just too much trouble for me.

Dominate your country first, then think about conquering the world....... :-)