European Ecommerce

What's the best way to tackle European Ecommerce

[sampyxis]

Hi all,
We run three US based ecommerce stores. We are planning on opening up 4 more before the summer. Our next plan is to open at least 2 European based stores before the 2003 Christmas season.

Last Christmas we shipped to Europeans from the US and had some success with it. We are in the planning stages of moving into Europe.

Does anyone have any advice for this? Does it make sense to open up European based sites instead of shipping directly from the US? What country is it best to set up in? I used to work in Switzerland and have contacts there and in Germany, but we are flexible on which countries.

Does anyone know where we can get statistics on shopping patterns for Europeans?

Any other ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Sam

[avmgeo]

Hi. You might want to start at:

[europa.eu.int...]

[Rumbas]

Hi sampyxis, welcome to the board.

You might wanna swing by the European Forum [webmasterworld.com] and see if there's anything you can use, also remember the Site Search here. It's a gem for digging out nuggets from all the posts floating around here.;)

[heini]

Hi Sam, welcome to the forums.

I have to agree, that's a huge question. Obviously a lot of factors are involved, many directly related to the specifics of your business.
Other more general factors involve taxes and legal questions.

>Does it make sense to open up European based sites instead of shipping directly from the US?

Yes, definitely.
The most important aspect is offering sites in local languages.
If you additionally could offer customer support in local language, per mail or even phone, and offer local shipping, meaning fast and cheap shipping, than you should see a huge advantage compared to operating from the US.

As to the location one good general guideline is to go where your custoners are. That would certainly bring Germany to the top of the list, as it is the largest market in Europe. Similarly the UK and France would be suitable.

You are probably aware of it already, but it's very important to realize Europe is, despite the Euro, not a homogenous market. There are boundaries and sharp differences between the countries, languages and regions.

Just a few thoughts, it really is a huge question.

[sampyxis]

Wow - great answers.

Thanks!

I know it's a huge question, and one we need to tackle soon.

Regardless of where we locate we will translate the sites into the local languages and try to get customer support in the those languages as well, though we would like to ease into this and see which country is going to work best with our product mix, then go full force in that direction.

Right now, I think we have narrowed it down to Germany and the UK - we may also go into France, but not sure of the online shopping habbits there (does anyone have any experience or advice there?)

Again, thanks.
Sam

[heini]

Ecommerce in most European countries lags behind the US significantly.
There are some exceptions to this. Most advanced ecommerce market in Europe is the UK. Also well developed are the scandinavian countries, as well as Netherlands.
The huge countries of European mainland, Germany, France, Italy and Spain lag behind in different degrees, and for different reasons.
Technical infrastructure, shopping and payment habits and overall economic level are the main factors involved.
If for example you want to sell to Germans you should offer traditional payment methods along with ccc payment.
In Spain or the UK broadband is rare, something to consider when setting up sites for those countries.

So it is a thing of really collecting info and analysing each country seperately.
On the upside countries like Germany, or France, Italy all have ecommerce markets which are growing fast, yet still offer lots of opportunities. Many segments are nowhere as competitive as in the US.

[livio]

Hi,

We operate 10 ecommerce sites from within Europe, (Belgium) with great success! We ship worldwide. 70% of the sales goes to the US. 10% to the UK and the other sales to other countries in the world.

We only operate our shops in English language and 1 of the the shops is also available in Spanish. Our main currency is USD and we display also in Euro, but transactions take place in USD only!

We are working on much more languages and currencies as this is very important for most European countries.

Livio