Putting the "World" in WWW: Strategies for Selling Globally

International sales can take online retailing to the next level, an option not open to most offline retailers. The global reach of the Internet and the experience that retailers have gained in their home territories make overseas sales an obvious way to ratchet up sales. But selling to overseas customers is a complex undertaking. Almost all systems and procedures need to be adapted to selling to foreign customers, including language of product descriptions, nuances of merchandising, customer service, fulfillment, distribution and so on. Our first speaker in this session will walk retailers through what they need to know to create a viable strategy for selling overseas. Forrester analyst Tamara Mendelsohn recently completed a study on strategies for international e-commerce. She will talk about whether merchants should set up sites in each region, how to leverage existing e-commerce platforms, how to manage language and currency translation, and how to make sure content management systems are able to handle foreign transactions. Federico Marchetti will discuss how international fashion retailer Yoox.com uses the web to sell into 27 markets and how it had to adapt its systems, marketing and content to meet the needs of global customers.