The size of the overall eCommerce market is staggering at around 750 billion Euros per annum worldwide. If small businesses can tap into this market, the opportunities can be limitless but to be successful, SMEs need to ensure that their entire shopping experience from online search to checkout is reassuring and trouble free. This will turn browsers into buyers.
Payment is an especially important consideration here, potential sales can be lost if there is any element of uncertainty. SMEs therefore need to ensure that they are providing everything their potential purchasers expect - whether that is the option to pay by their preferred method of payment or currency. Fortunately, there are services available that can help, such as payment processing systems that accept multiple payment types and can be tailor based on local preferences without an in-depth knowledge of what those payment types are.
The main barriers to cross border eCommerce are security and convenience. In general consumers will use sites of companies they trust or are familiar with. For SMEs it is unlikely they will have the brand recognition of a multi-national and this is where using payment processing options which are instantly recognisable, such as PayPal or WorldPay, will put to rest any concerns of the visiting consumer and make them more likely to spend.
For many companies, the fear of fraud can also be a deterrent to cross-border selling but by being sensible and using the right tools, the risks can be minimised. For example, although it is not always possible to manually authenticate billing and or shipping addresses in different countries, a credible payment processor will offer fraud and management tools that allow these checks to be automated to verify the legitimacy of the customer with no local knowledge required. SMEs should also ensure that they use standard security protocols such as 3D Secure, which reduces the risk of the card being used fraudulently by asking the consumer for a password at point of payment.
Fraud and risk management is about filtering out the opportunistic crime first, and then fine-tuning until you get the right balance to allow the good transactions and reduce the bad transactions. Get it right, though, and the end results can be well worth the work. In a survey of SMEs attending the E-Commerce Expo at Earl's Court, those companies currently trading internationally said they found such trading challenging but worth the work, and in many cases the overseas trade made up between 30-40% of their income.
Gabriel Hopkins, Head of eCommerce Products, WorldPay
