How a change of language can increase your online profits
It’s very easy to forget that the web is worldwide! It’s the WWW!
This is particularly true when you’re comfortably taking a decent amount of orders from UK buyers and you’re all wrapped up in your own little world of national sales. So, I’m not surprised that a huge number of online sellers – particularly eBay sellers – don’t bother trying to expand their sales reach by using the most simple of strategies – and that’s by listing on other eBay sites – i.e. going international.
This very simple manoeuvre can increase your traffic and sales many times over. In fact, this is probably one of the easiest, most effective ways to build both traffic and sales.
Just to make things clear, by listing on other eBay sites I don’t mean simply putting an extra tick in the ‘Worldwide’ box when you fill in your shipping options. I do mean literally translating your product descriptions into the appropriate language (if necessary) and listing your products on eBay.com, eBay.fr (France), eBay.it (Italy) or eBay.de (Germany).
Your eBay ID is universal
Which means that you can visit any eBay site in the world and list your products for sale exactly as you would on eBay UK.
The snag is that unfortunately, eBay’s rules are such, that they won’t allow you to add international visibility via your UK listings for the Buy It Now format, although you can do this with auctions. So, for Buy It Now listings, going directly to the site you want to list on is the strategy to ensure your products are seen in other countries.
Hang on though, because you can’t just jump straight in and start listing your whole product inventory on every eBay site you can think of! It is essential that you test with one or two of your products on one or two sites first so that you can see just how well this strategy can help you – and this can be advantageous in more ways than one.
Remember that even if viewers in those other countries that you list within don’t buy the product you’ve listed there, they will almost certainly take a look in your eBay shop and at your other listings and may purchase one of your other products, so this is a great way to increase traffic AND potential sales at the same time.
Listing on other eBay sites is simple, but there are a few things that you must ensure you get right in order to get the most out of this strategy. After all, you will have to pay for each extra listing you add, so you need to give yourself the absolute best chance of making sales from your extra listings.
If you already have a great listing formula going on then do keep the layout the same, so..
- Don’t change your description format, but,
- Do emphasise your fast dispatch and good customer service
- Do speak the language of the site you are listing on
- Ensure you have enough stock to fulfill extra orders
I’ll run through each of these now in brief.
Don’t Change Your Listing format
You should already have a hot product on your hands before you start to expand your listings to other eBay sites because the chances are that if it’s not selling well over here, sales won’t improve massively over there unless you are absolutely certain that your product is more in demand in certain countries compared to others!
So, once you are successful with a particular product on eBay UK, this is the time to look further afield and start listing on the other eBay sites. What you want to aim for is to duplicate your current eBay UK sales so that you are literally doubling your profits, then when you add your listings to a third site, you are tripling your profits and so on.
Imagine if you had 10 hot products and each of those was then listed on 4 different eBay sites – what an impact on your traffic and sales that would make.
So, assuming that your listing is selling well in the UK, don’t change your description format at this stage. If it’s a formula that works, stick with it before you start tweaking your listing for different eBay sites.
Listing on foreign eBay sites is exactly the same as listing on eBay UK except that the sell your item form, categories, submit buttons etc will all display in the language of the site you are listing on. Simply log in using your usual ID and password.
The categories will be pretty much self-explanatory and in a similar order to eBay UK but honestly, it really doesn’t take much common sense to work it out.
Do Emphasise Your Fast Dispatch And Good Service
This is very important. Because you’re listing internationally and dispatching from the UK your delivery times are bound to be longer. When you list on another eBay site, the search results will show that your item is ‘From United Kingdom’ or in the case of the German site for example ‘Ort: Grosbritannien’.
This happens whether you list in English or the language of the country because your original listing has been submitted via your UK login.
With this in mind, it is super important that within your listing description, or by way of adding a subtitle, you emphasise your really fast dispatch and your excellent customer service. Why? Well because your buyers will want reassurance that you will dispatch their goods promptly and offer them help and support with their order should they require it. This will give potential buyers much more confidence to purchase.
Parlez Vous Francais?
I know that speaking your buyers’ language really works, because of something that happened to me a little while ago. Sometimes it is possible that products are in huge demand in some countries and not in others in which case listing on other eBay sites can be even more successful, even if sales have only been warm with regard to UK buyers.
Here’s what happened to me a few years ago. I had researched and sourced a really great product and I knew it would sell well in the UK. I listed 100 of this particular item on eBay UK and set my shipping terms to dispatch worldwide as I always do. At the time, this was a 10 day listing and within 3 days I had sold the lot! But that’s not my point here….
The amazing thing was that about 80% of the buyers from my UK listing were from France and I got a lot of feedback in French telling me how amazing my product was.
It became obvious to me from the feedback comments and the amount of French sales, that French people couldn’t buy this product in their own country (don’t worry, it wasn’t illegal – it was a kitchen gadget just in case you are wondering) and so I ordered more stock and listed it specifically on the French eBay site – www.ebay.fr – and what’s more I made sure that this time, the description was written in French too.
This time I pulled in even more sales than the first time round, simply because my listing was written in my buyers’ own language and on their own site.
Although many buyers from around the world look to buy from sellers on eBay UK, some won’t because they can’t speak English and don’t understand the descriptions or they just prefer to buy from their own country’s site. So, by listing this way, I had targeted the exact market that wanted to purchase my product.
So, how did I manage to translate my listing in to French? Well I used an online translation service. I used Free Translation.com but I do recommend you go for the ‘professional’ translation rather than the freebies, as in my experience the freebie translations don’t always make complete sense.
If you don’t want to use the free translation website then here’s another way to get your listings translated, and actually this is often a cheaper way to do it. Go to the freelancers outsourcing website Upwork.com post your job and then wait for the quotes to roll in.
Once you have got your descriptions translated, simply list them on eBay France, Germany or whichever site you have chosen and watch the sales happen. You will be able to see all your listings even if they are listed on other sites independently through Selling Manager Pro in ‘My eBay’ although your pricing will appear in Euros.
Ensure you have enough stock to fulfil orders
So, this all sounds great doesn’t it. But I am am well aware that with expansion, come extra costs and you may well now be thinking that if you are going to list your products internationally, you’re bound to need more stock to be able to keep up with the orders. And yes this is absolutely true.
You will certainly need to invest in more stock to ensure you can fulfill orders but my advice would be to not go mad and order excessive stock for international sales – remember you need to test the products first to ensure they will sell at a good rate internationally.
So, initially it would be quite feasible to allocate part of the stock you already hold for new international sales. Once international sales start to come in you’ll be able to work out how much extra stock you will need to continue selling on multiple sites with no fulfillment issues.
Try this and you could double or triple your sales in just a couple of weeks!