Map Your International Ecommerce Strategy

The benefits of global ecommerce expansion are obvious: Tap into new markets and revenue streams, increase brand awareness, and boost your bottom line. Foreign sales drive an estimated 39% of revenue, on average, at companies that sell internationally. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? The fact is: International ecommerce can be complex.

There's a lot to consider when it comes to cross-border commerce. Before you even get started, you need to determine which regions and locales have the greatest market potential. And each potential market may have different barriers to entry. What are the unique local nuances when it comes to shopping online and the customer experience? Will the investment and risk outweigh the potential reward — and vice versa?

In this guide, you'll learn the key steps to map your global strategy based on Salesforce's experience helping hundreds of brands expand globally.

Contents

1. Identify your brand's market potential

2. Understand the complexities of international ecommerce

3. Harmonise your omnichannel experiences

4. Localise your experience by market

5. Determine payment and tax methods

6. Tap into partner expertise

Every country differs dramatically along verticals and in their demand for foreign products. To understand the intricacies of each market, it's key to know who the buyers are and how to build custom experiences for them. There are a number of crucial factors to assess, such as:

• How many people live in your target country?
• What are the demographics?
• What are the population's technology preferences?
• What is their level of awareness of your brand?
• Are you able to manufacture, ship, or import products to your target country?

Let's look at how to evaluate each.

Dig into the demographics.

The CIA's World Factbook is a valuable source of information to compare countries at a granular level. For example, if you're selling baby apparel and gear, you can use this data to identify a given country's median age and birth rate for a more accurate estimate of the market potential.

Assess the level of digital adoption.

Digital maturity, particularly in new and emerging markets, is a major consideration. Are consumers just beginning to adopt technology? If so, it may be worthwhile to make the strategic investment to be one of the first digital players before others claim the position.

Understand your global brand awareness.

Search for customers abroad who know your brand. Capture as many data points about them as possible, including web tracking data, which will uncover the countries where people browse your site. Google Trends can also help break down regional interest based on foreign consumers who use its search engine — simply search for your brand or product names.

If you have a presence in international markets with a nontransactional site, analyse traffic volumes and trends from your site as well as referrals and signals from social media. This will help you discover the countries ripe for growth. If brand awareness is low or unknown, it will take a greater investment in time, cost, and effort to build it up.

Identify global and regional competition.

Will your biggest competitors be local brands or established global players? Is there a need for your products that no competitor is currently meeting? Create an action plan to show how you will break into a new market with a competitive strategy and how your brand will fill a void.

Tap into local resources.

If you already own overseas stores but don't have an ecommerce presence, leverage regional store and retail managers for valuable insights about market conditions, cultural conundrums, the competition, and target audiences. Local knowledge and the ability to negotiate local contracts are huge benefits.

Determine if you should manufacture, import, or ship products.

Work with local country contacts and partners to understand requirements for manufacturing, importing, or shipping goods within your target country. By tapping into your available resources, you can get a sense of the economic environment, trade tariffs, and other restrictions to help you map your approach.

As soon as you uncover a business opportunity, consider the complexities of expanding into your target market. While it's relatively easy for most European brands to sell to other EU countries given the union, U.S.-based brands expanding to Canada have to consider customs, duty, and taxes.

Consult legal and financial experts.

If you want to step into China's vast ecommerce market, you can't ensure operations if you don't know internet and consumer regulations. Consult legal and financial departments to understand the impact of requirements like these. Depending on your operational model, you may need local legal entities to represent your interests.

Understand local regulations.

It's important to understand local or regional regulations, such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Ensure that your commerce provider guarantees compliance and security with the right tools and is transparent about any issues.

Monitor currency rates.

Certain countries have volatile currencies. If you are pricing in local currency but want to capitalise in your home market, monitor exchange rates carefully and evaluate risks and potential insurance options.

Track political and economic developments.

Changes in government and policy can impact commerce activities. Follow ongoing developments closely — with trusted sources — to identify any potential risks. These changes can occur due to sudden environmental, health, or societal shifts, so keep up to date on news from a regional source.

Consider tariffs and trade policies.

Closely monitor recent tariff policy changes, such as differentiated, country-specific duty hikes implemented by the U.S., because they can sharply raise import costs for certain geographies, distort the economics of cross-border sourcing, and undermine previously cost-efficient supply chains.

Assess local infrastructure.

Local infrastructure adds further complexity. For example, China is centrally governed, so it has a much better carrier infrastructure compared to India, but it has yet to develop unified street names and postcodes. In South Korea, fraud is practically nonexistent, but it is a bigger issue in Mexico and Russia.

Cultural differences and technology preferences may cause customer expectations to vary from country to country. Because of this, brands should deliver a consistent shopping experience across touchpoints and geographies. Here's how.

Consolidate on a unified platform.

From a unified commerce platform, brands synchronise sites and product data across categories with a common code base. Administrators can run promotions across all local sites or turn on a specific campaign for Diwali in India, for example, without disrupting the site experiences in Germany, Italy, and the U.S.

Implement tools to manage multi-site, multi-geography commerce.

Leverage reports and dashboards that enable business users to view metrics and manage multiple sites using custom data ranges, behavioural data, sales results, profitability of promotions, common device type, and more. With these insights, marketers, merchandisers, and ecommerce teams can tailor the brand experience or geo-specific needs for smarter business decisions.

Scale personalised customer experiences with AI.

Generative AI embedded into a single commerce platform gives brands the power to make geo-specific correlations based on browsing and shopping behaviour in the following ways:

• Automated localised content at scale: Generative AI trained on your product data can instantly create region-specific copy, product descriptions, and promotional text tailored to local languages, cultural norms, and seasonal events.
• AI-driven product catalogue localisation: Tools can adapt product titles, attributes, and SEO metadata for each market, ensuring consistent branding while meeting local search behaviour and regulatory requirements.
• Dynamic personalisation by region: AI models can serve personalised recommendations, offers, and experiences tuned to preferences, shopping patterns, and demand signals specific to each geography.
• Faster merchandising and site updates globally: Generative AI accelerates tasks like translating content, creating variant images or banners, and drafting category page narratives—reducing the operational burden of running many storefronts across multiple regions.
• Product recommendations: AI can surface products based on regional differences like climate. For example, if a customer is based in Miami, AI may recommend a pair of shorts to go with a new blouse. If the customer is in Oslo, they may see a recommendation for a jumper or coat instead.

Bring commerce to preferred channels.

No matter which new market you enter, the way people shop is changing on a global scale. New channels, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other generative AI-powered search engines are already widely adopted around the world. It remains critical to maintain a presence on preferred social channels like TikTok and Instagram.

Keep in mind that how and where customers spend most of their time varies by country. WhatsApp, for example, is prevalent in Europe and Latin America. In APAC, it's WeChat. Understand where your target customers are — and how preferences are changing with the proliferation of generative AI. Consider a commerce solution that allows flexibility by market to build a custom experience for each local geography.

Streamline the post-purchase experience.

Once an order has been placed, provide a great customer experience, no matter where they are in the world, with fast shipping, transparent order status, and successful order delivery. Integrated order management that is compliant with regional tax codes gives customers complete visibility into their orders. It also helps agents provide faster service, returns, and order handling with a single customer view.

Align your store network.

Businesses often struggle to understand and serve customers consistently across physical and digital channels. No matter where you sell, customers want a cohesive experience with your brand, online and in-person. Experiences that truly align your store network, like "buy online, return in-store" (BORIS) and "buy online, pick up in-store" (BOPIS) will help set you apart and increase customer loyalty. A modern point-of-sale system can integrate with your digital sales channels to make providing these types of experiences much easier.

In addition, a modern POS can help you turn individual stores into miniature warehouses and activate in-store and fulfilment centre inventory across digital channels. If you offer online-to-offline services in your home market, such as "browse by store" or "click and collect," consider offering these services in other countries as well.

Expanding globally is more than turning the lights on in a new country or translating your website. It's building a custom experience unique to each market with respect to language nuances, address formats, preferences, geography, and peak shopping days.

Account for language nuances.

Poor translation is the number one hindrance to conversion on foreign websites. Even U.S. brands expanding to the U.K. have to consider small differences. For example, a 'sweater' in the U.S. is a 'jumper' in the U.K.

Be mindful of address formats.

Every country differs in terms of address format. Reflect these differences in the checkout process. It's right-to-left in some Arabic countries, while different European countries look like this:

Support country-specific UX best practices.

Usability plays a big role in experiences that resonate with local customers. Determine how much to invest in country-specific UX best practices. It may be wise to create completely separate product photography featuring local models or close-up shots of stitching and labels to confirm authenticity.

Test the differences to compare the homepage of each country's top search engine, such as Google in the U.S. and Naver in South Korea. The different cultural and design approaches are easily recognisable.

Create localised content at scale with AI: Generative AI can instantly create region-specific copy, product descriptions, and promotional text tailored to local languages, cultural norms, and seasonal events. AI-driven product catalogue localisation can adapt product titles, attributes, and SEO metadata for each market.

Research social commerce trends.

In the ever-changing space of social media, it's crucial to identify which platforms are the most prevalent as you enter different regions. While Instagram is the leading platform in the U.S., Doyin and WeChat are prominent in China. Trends within each platform also vary by locality. Live shopping is huge in China for millennials and Gen Z consumers, but is just catching on in the U.S.

Localise campaigns.

Some countries start end-of-season sales earlier than others. Climate in different hemispheres triggers the need for different clothing. If a brand expands to the Southern Hemisphere, it must swap its sales of seasonal clothing.

Account for peak holidays.

Local campaign calendars should account for key holidays and high- traffic shopping days, which may come at different times than your home country. For example, Cyber Week is most prevalent in the U.S., but Singles Day and Chinese New Year are China's biggest shopping days. Brands with a presence across geographies need the flexibility to accommodate peak shopping days at various points throughout the year.

Know your limits.

There is danger in over-localisation to the point where aspired brand image is turned upside down. For example, to express its California vibes, Hollister maintains photography with U.S. models for Asian markets and generally doesn't adapt marketing to local patterns or preferences. Consider localising services and language portions key to checkout and conversion, but keep your experience close to core brand values.

What is your approach for campaigns and promotions? Is it one-size-fits-all or country-specific?

What is your product catalogue and inventory mix? Is there one central warehouse selling the same products across all targeted countries or are there exclusive products per country?

What is your price strategy? Will the item price be the same across all regions?

Will you have individual teams in the respective countries? What is their size and level of web management skills?

Payment and tax are two of the most complex factors due to the diversity of payment types, preferences, and tax rules by country. Staying up to date on changing legislation and consumer preferences can be difficult for even the savviest brands. For example, consumers in the Netherlands value consumer protections while those in the U.S. and Japan prioritise speed and convenience. How do you address these differences?

Offer the right payment types for your audience.

Analyse your target market to understand and offer the best payment mix, even when payment types differ sharply from credit-card or digital-wallet norms of the U.S. This can include local debit schemes, bank-transfer systems, buy-now-pay-later options, and region-specific cash-based methods (such as Mexico's OXXO vouchers, where shoppers generate a barcode online and pay for their purchase in cash at a convenience store). Offering these locally preferred payment types ensures customers can pay in the ways they already trust.

Choose a platform that supports leading tax and payment providers.

A unified commerce platform should support payments, tax, and currency plug-ins from leading providers, which makes it easy to launch relevant payment types in target markets. This allows customers to pay in their local currency using their preferred payment method. (Beware of providers who offer few choices or only have a native offering, which typically results in high transaction fees.)

Capture foreign payments and consider local banking.

Brands may incur high currency exchange fees if they pay local partners and employees in local currency but settle revenue at home. Pay close attention — especially during the investment phase. Given payment complexity, it may make sense for your brand to establish a local bank account abroad. Complete the entire application process as early as possible. Neglecting to do so could delay site launch.

Localise and simplify the checkout process.

By highlighting critical shopping actions and reducing the number of clicks, brands ease the workload for customers and make it faster to reach checkout. Improving the checkout experience universally improves conversion — and having a localised experience can make all the difference.

One way to do this is to autopopulate checkout fields wherever possible. Additionally, with express payment options like Apple Pay, customers check out with one touch for a fast and frictionless checkout experience.

It's most effective to target a small number of strategic, high-potential growth countries and fill in remaining markets with verified, third-party fulfilment partners like Pitney Bowes. Precertified partners with cross-border presence can offer payments, fulfilment, duties, customs, and tax compliance that plug into your own checkout experience. They're a low-risk option to test many markets simultaneously.

Assess your partners' global footprint.

Before contracting with new partners, consider third-party logistics providers with reliable subsidiaries. For example, a payment gateway in Europe may also support payments in Latin America. Run a full assessment of existing vendors and enquire about their capabilities or partnerships outside of your home market. In certain cases, existing partners can recommend and introduce you to other regional partners.

Find the right system integrators.

System integrators play an important role in building ecommerce sites for emerging markets. Make sure that your partner brings the appropriate expertise or subcontractor experts in to deliver a project that meets your requirements.

Consider independent software vendors.

Another way to reach customers is to integrate with local technologies that customers are already using. Integrations power region-specific experiences, such as the ability to connect with customers on WeChat in Asia-Pacific regions.

Ensure integrations meet local requirements.

Can your CMS handle European umlauts and double-byte languages like Japanese? Are you unsure of which mobile wallet partner is right for your market? Ensure that third-party systems and services meet local requirements; otherwise they will need to be replaced with a local solution.

The Salesforce AppExchange and Partner Marketplace have a full range of pre-certified fulfilment partners and fast integrations.

While every country has its nuances, creating unique, localised experiences doesn't have to be a complicated endeavour. Agentforce Commerce can help your brand achieve transformational growth by launching and maintaining multiple sites across geographies with flexibility, trust, and intelligence. Manage multiple brands or country sites all from one place with common code, products, content, and catalogues. Out-of-the-box localisation capabilities including multicountry, multilanguage, and multicurrency bring speed and customisation to geographic expansion with minimised risk, cost, and complexity