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1- Establishing local fulfillment or warehousing
Alexandre: “Often, merchants expanding into new markets start by setting up local fulfillment operations, either through a 3PL partner or by opening their own warehouse. While this approach may seem essential for international shipping, it can often lead to unnecessary costs.. This strategy aims to offer faster shipping times, leverage local expertise, and focus solely on that market. However, the return on such a project often doesn't justify the investment.”
Why this is a mistake
Alexandre explains: “Data reveals that the conversion rate improvement from faster shipping times often doesn't compensate for the increased operating costs. Additionally, the time-to-market for setting up local fulfilment can be lengthy, involving tasks like finding and qualifying a reliable local fulfilment partner, integrating systems, securing a suitable location, etcetera.
Establishing a local stockholding operation could end up limiting the product catalogue. Even if the full catalogue is available, managing stock remotely adds significant complexity and cost, including duty fees.
To give an example: a European merchant relocating stock to the US will have to pay taxes and duties on the imported items when they’re above the local duty-free threshold of 800 USD. However, if the merchant’s AOV is under this amount, then orders sold directly from Europe to US customers will not be liable for duties. A cross-border shipping approach would avoid these additional charges, except for those cases where the basket value surpasses the threshold.”
What merchants can do differently
Alexandre: “At Global-e we have assisted numerous merchants in analysing these scenarios, helping them optimise their local operations setup and reduce operational costs. We have found that merchants should keep their full-scale domestic operation in other markets only if the annual revenue from that country justifies the investment. With Global-e merchants can seamlessly sell worldwide, from their own market’s domestic warehouse, without the need to maintain a complex operational setup or establish overseas hubs, to drive cost-effective international expansion.”
2- Translation without localisation
Alexandre: “Merchants often believe that translation is a crucial first step in international e-commerce expansion, particularly within the EU. The underlying idea is to localize the shopping experience through language, while overlooking more critical factors like local currency, local payment methods, cross-border taxes and duties, local compliance, and relevant delivery and return options.”
Why this is a mistake
As a starting point, translation is not a bad decision — but it shouldn’t be the first step. Alexandre: “An English-language website is often sufficient to initiate international efforts. Today's savvy online shoppers are more visually oriented and accustomed to the standardized user interfaces and experiences offered by various e-commerce brands.”
However, without a comprehensively localised buying experience, translation alone is often ineffective in driving conversion and growing sales. “While translation can be valuable, especially for markets with proven potential, it’s not enough.”
This is Code’s observation as well. Different countries or regions not only have different languages, but also different shopping preferences – from currency and rounding rules to delivery and return options. Your store might attract a completely different audience in another country, they prefer different payment and shipping methods, celebrate different holidays, or have standard sizes different from the ones in your store’s home market.
What merchants can do differently
Alexandre: “To drive conversion in global markets, start with localizing your online store and offering consumers an experience that is closely modelled on what they are used to when buying domestically.” Many visitors will be put off by anything that doesn’t fit their expectations, and either lose trust or simply move on when things get too unfamiliar. After the main obstacles that prevent shoppers from buying cross-border are removed, such as currency and unclear final cost of their purchase, merchants can then look into specific markets where translation could further boost conversion.
3- Driving traffic to a non-localised store
Alexandre: “In today’s global digital landscape, shoppers worldwide discover brands outside their country via social media. Merchants often invest in marketing to drive traffic to their e-commerce stores. However, without a fully localized shopping experience to meet diverse shopper expectations, they are unable to convert international traffic into sales and maximise their marketing efforts.”
Why this is a mistake
Alexandre: “This is the online equivalent of a bland, visually unappealing brick-and-mortar store offering terrible service and turning customers away, while heavily investing in big billboards on prime locations to advertise the store. An online store that is not localized or even transactional to visitors from certain countries will not convert international online shoppers.”
What merchants can do differently
By tailoring the experience to the local preferences of each market, including currency, pricing, taxes and duties management, payment methods, shipping and returns, merchants can deliver a seamless customer experience, boost conversion and significantly improve the return on advertising spend.
How to expand globally in 2025
Alexandre: “In 2025, profitability is paramount. Diversifying international presence could help merchants generate new revenue streams and mitigate economic slowdowns. While focusing on top-line growth, it's essential to offer a compelling value proposition across markets while maintaining a detailed profit and loss (P&L) strategy to ensure profitability across 200+ markets. A one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective, therefore the time to act local and be global is stronger than ever.”
Of course this is a complex undertaking. Hence, many e-commerce businesses partner up with a Merchant of Record: a global enabler that acts as a proxy for your company in other countries, under its local entity. As such, it can take care of tax registration, compliance and payment, and import regulations, while handling all international logistics for the merchant.
→ Read about your options to sell internationally with Shopify
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How to choose the right international setup for your business
Looking for the best setup to expand your business to new countries?
Code has helped a number of clients such as Alpinestars, Mercer Amsterdam and Kabrita to scale across the globe, including Europe, the UK, the USA and the Middle East.
Interested in partnering up with Code, or looking for advice on using Global-E? Get in touch!
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