If you’ve been hearing the term crossborder e-commerce everywhere lately and searching for answers to questions like what is e-export and how crossborder e-commerce is done, then this article is just for you. Keep reading!

In our article, we explain the following basic topics in a language understandable to everyone who is new to crossborder e-commerce:

• What is crossborder e-commerce? How is it done? 
• How can beginners quickly and easily start crossborder e-commerce?
• What are the crossborder e-commerce sites?
• What are the things to avoid for success in crossborder e-commerce?

BONUS

1. How are shipping procedures carried out?
2. Crossborder e-commerce packages
3. Useful Softwares
4. Crossborder e-commerce training

The topic headings are intriguing enough, so let’s start with the guide that will help you easily begin crossborder e-commerce.

What is crossborder e-commerce?

Let’s answer in simple terms: We all know e-commerce. It means selling products from your store online. Well, crossborder e-commerce is about selling your products online to customers in other countries. So, crossborder e-commerce is the online version of traditional export. Which parts are done online? Of course, finding customers, showcasing the product to customers, and taking orders all happen online.

So, why is crossborder e-commerce more advantageous than traditional export?

Because in crossborder e-commerce, there’s a much greater potential to reach millions of customers from other countries. Also, since a customer from the other side of the world can’t just walk into your store, showcasing your products on a website is much smarter.

Now that we’ve learned crossborder e-commerce is about marketing and selling your products to customers in other countries online, let’s move on to the next heading.

How is crossborder e-commerce Done?

There are two methods for this. In other words, you can do crossborder e-commerce in two different ways. The important thing is to decide which of these methods is more suitable and logical for you. We’ll discuss both methods in detail shortly.

But remember, many businesses struggle for months and may incur losses because they started to crossborder e-commerce with the wrong method. It’s important to carefully decide which methods are suitable for you and proceed cautiously.

The first method:

Selling on e-export websites!

Compared to the second method you are about to read, the crossborder e-commerce method, which is much more cost-effective, faster, and easier for beginners, is undoubtedly selling on large websites where many merchants like yourself gather. This method has been proven to be faster, easier, and more cost-effective. Similarities can already be seen in classic e-commerce.

They attract millions of visitors from all over the world every day. Here are the world-renowned e-export platforms where you can start e-exporting quickly and easily:

• ebay.com
• amazon.com
• etsy.com
• allegro.pl

eBay and Amazon are the two most recognized e-commerce giants worldwide, attracting billions of visitors from all over the world every day. Etsy is the third largest e-commerce giant, known for its unique products, especially handmade (non-mass production and non-factory-made), antique, and collectible items, attracting billions of visitors from every corner of the world. Allegro, with its current user base of 17 million, is the largest player in the $10 billion USD Polish e-commerce market. Being the fourth largest e-commerce site in Europe, it ranks in the top 10 globally.

To selling on leading e-commerce platforms, all you need to do is open a seller account on these e-commerce platforms. Then you can start selling or crossborder e-commerce by uploading your products.

Why should you choose this method to start e-exporting quickly and easily?

Starting to sell by opening accounts on these sites is much more cost-effective and easier compared to the difficulties you will encounter, especially with the second method such as account opening procedures, etc.

What you need to do to attract customers to your page is much easier and almost cost-free, especially compared to the second method. Each of these sites has its own customer base. Even if you do nothing, there are billions of customers constantly visiting these sites.

These sites carry out SEO, paid advertising, etc. digital marketing activities themselves, and you have no worries about attracting customers to the site. Millions of customers flock to your virtual store every day.

Platforms have built trust with their users. That is, customers trust these sites very much. Especially thanks to the payment methods known to be secure inside for decades, rules that protect buyers and sellers, and scoring systems, customers do not hesitate to shop on these sites. The shopping rate of visitors is very high.

Have you ever wondered how to open a store account on sites like Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, and Allegro? Let’s answer that right away.

Read these articles that explain step by step, in a simple way, how to open a seller account on Amazon Europe, Ebay, Etsy, and Allegro sites:

How to open a store on Amazon Europe?

How to open a store on Etsy?

How to open a store on Ebay?

How to Sell on Allegro?

By the way, if you work with Propars, a Propars account specialist will perform the seller account opening process for you for free on these sites. If you upload your products to these sites via Propars, Propars automatically translates all product features into the language of that site, translates all questions and messages from customers, as well as the answers you will write, automatically.

For many basic conveniences such as automatic product listing, closing, stock management, automatic invoicing, you can visit Propars. 

Second method:

Conducting e-export by opening your own website (Private e-export site)

Owning your own website undoubtedly brings you an enduring advantage: Prestige.

A website gives you the chance to reflect your corporate identity. You can freely showcase your logo, slogans, vision, and style on your website. For all these reasons, owning a website is every company’s right.

Let’s return to the topic of crossborder e-commerce.

If you have started researching crossborder e-commerce, you must have come across software companies selling websites compatible with crossborder e-commerce.

So, how will the process work if you start crossborder e-commerce this way? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this method? Let’s explain with an example.

For instance, let’s assume you have a shop selling home decoration products called Pretty Home Accessories.

If you choose to proceed with this method, let’s say you purchase an crossborder e-commerce compatible website for a certain fee.

You will have a website like www.prettyhomeaccessories.com. The site will be entirely in English, and your products will be uploaded to the site. Now, you’ll be ready to sell to millions of customers from all around the English-speaking world. So far, so simple. And some crossborder e-commerce enthusiasts do spend some money to open such a website. However, unfortunately, the vast majority of those who resort to this method fail.

Why, you ask? Let’s list the reasons.

If you already have your website and conduct e-commerce through your website, these points will already be familiar to you. Expecting a regular customer base to visit your website brings many difficulties and expenses.

I-How will you attract customers?

For a customer to visit your website, they must have either heard the name of your website from somewhere and directly typed it in to access your site, or they must have come across your website while researching on a search engine like Google and clicked on it.

You’ve opened your website, now how do you plan to attract customers to your website?

This is where things start to get complicated.

II-Are you ready for the SEO battle?

You’ve opened your website. Pages in English and dozens of products are ready to take orders from your customers.

At this point, as a fresh website owner, you’ll encounter problems like being listed on Google, appearing on the first page, or ranking high in the search results. Out of hundreds or even thousands of sites selling home decoration products like yours, only about ten can make it to the first page of Google. Just ten! Moreover, while trying to sell worldwide, the number of competitor sites you need to stand out from can be staggering.

In this case, after opening your website, you’ll need to engage in intensive SEO work. Real SEO work is a standalone task that yields results in the long term and comes with significant expenses.

Before deciding to proceed with this method, make sure you thoroughly understand what SEO is. To choose the best from the many small and large companies or individuals claiming to provide SEO services, you’ll need to put in a lot of effort, and most importantly, you’ll need a significant budget to allocate to this task.

We advise you to stay away from those who claim that you can achieve short-term results, those who offer prices much lower than the market price, or those who claim that SEO is not difficult. Before going on this path, make sure you know that doing SEO, especially in a foreign language, is a difficult task and a process that starts to yield results in at least a year for a newly opened website. The budget you need to allocate and when you’ll start to see results will, of course, depend on your sector, your existing competitors, how much budget and time you’ll allocate to SEO work, and the products you sell.

We can give you a concrete example of this from Propars Blog itself.

For instance, this article you are reading now; despite being a very old site with a very successful SEO work and receiving hundreds of thousands of visits, it took about three months for it to appear on the first page of Google for a keyword like “crossborder e-commerce”. You can take this live example as a benchmark for yourself. Moreover, getting a newly opened website to the first page for valuable keywords is a long-term process that may take one or two years.

Moreover, if when your keywords are searched on Google, well-known shopping sites like Amazon, eBay, Walmart appear, receiving millions of visits daily; competing with these sites in SEO and getting onto the first page is almost impossible.

If you’re lucky and the product/service you sell isn’t the type sold on those well-known sites; in other words, if there are no competitors like Amazon and Walmart among your competitors, then your chances in the SEO battle are a bit higher. With the right budget and proper work, you may have a chance to get onto the first page, but remember, this is a long-term process in any case.

Let’s list a few points to consider regarding SEO optimization

 1. Be careful when selecting the person or company to carry out your SEO work.

When choosing an agency, company, or expert to conduct SEO work, always ask for references. Even if they appear to be very knowledgeable about the subject, never work with someone who cannot provide you with proper references. Moreover, do not immediately accept any references they provide; they might be showing you an example that is very easy to get on the first page.

Instead, insistently ask them if they have a reference that “ranks on the first page for a high search volume keyword.” This means:

They should provide you with a keyword, and when you search for that keyword on Google, a site they have previously worked on should be on the first page, preferably within the top five, but with the condition that the keyword has a high search volume. The search volume’s magnitude can be easily seen on the page where the results are displayed, right at the top, just below the search box.

You should not accept examples with search volumes of less than ten million as references, and you should inquire whether the company has a website that ranks on the first page for a keyword with higher search volume.

 2. Check where the SEO agency’s own website ranks on Google.

If the person or agency you are in contact with is truly good at SEO, they should have applied this to their own website first. You can easily see if they rank on the first page for high-volume searches like “SEO agency” or “SEO company”; the second page may also be acceptable because you are checking with a highly competitive term, but we do not recommend considering beyond the second page.

 3. On-site SEO work is not completed over a long period.

If you have agreed to pay your SEO company on a monthly basis, you should ensure that they are not needlessly delaying you. On-site SEO work includes simple tasks such as SEO-friendly text for each page, filling in meta tags, URL and image optimization, keyword analysis and implementation, adding tags, etc.

This does not exceed a few hours of work for an average page. Be cautious of companies that request excessive time for all work based on the number of pages on your site and ensure they are not spending too much time on simple tasks.

All of this should not appear too pessimistic to you, of course. By allocating the right budgets, being aware of the method chosen, and conducting the right activities, companies can successfully attract customers to their websites, including SEO, by passing many stages successfully. The important thing is to handle your website properly.

III-Will you be able to allocate the necessary budget for paid advertising?

You know that SEO efforts yield results in the long term. During this period, you may want to attract customers to your website quickly by investing some time and budget into paid digital advertising. We are talking about ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or Google Ads, which you often encounter.

When you try advertising, you’ll find that you’re spending money for every customer who clicks on your ad (because such ads usually charge per click), but not everyone who clicks on your ad makes a purchase from your site. To achieve satisfactory sales figures, you also need to allocate a certain amount of advertising spend.

When done correctly, ads can yield very good results, but being realistic about this and knowing upfront that you won’t achieve great results with very small ad budgets would be a more realistic approach.

In addition, it’s essential to seek help from an expert, experienced digital marketing professional to prevent unnecessary spending, targeting the wrong audience, wasting time, and losing money.

Digital marketing, including SEO and paid advertising, is one of the most important topics you need assistance with if you have a website, and it has many subtopics within itself.

It’s also timely to address another misconception here. 

You may think that you can achieve great sales figures by marketing based on organic posts (without spending money or ads) on platforms like Instagram, Quora, Reddit, Linkedin and others, but the statistics in this regard aren’t encouraging either.

Such social media platforms generally cannot provide satisfactory results without paid advertising—except for rare cases—and they require continuous time and effort, and if you stop dedicating time and effort, they will bring you back to where you started. They are nothing more than a short-term weak solution.

Apart from these three main issues, you should also remember that when you open a website for crossborder e-commerce, you’ll need to translate the product specifications and description sections into English—or the languages of the countries you’re selling to—one by one. Also, consider that when a few customers come, they will ask questions in their own languages, and you’ll need to respond to them in their languages, either in writing or verbally.

These are just a few of the tasks you need to tackle when you want to start cross border e-commerce by opening a website.

After attracting customers to your website, ensuring they stay there for a long time, convincing them to make a purchase, and establishing a trustworthy image are also part of the process. Gaining the trust of customers, especially those overseas, is more difficult. They are more selective because they are more familiar with online shopping and technology. Therefore, many customers visit the site but leave without making a purchase.

We’d like to remind you again that attracting customers to a website and convincing them to make a purchase won’t be an easy and comfortable process when you have thousands of competitors.

On the other hand, companies with teams, budgets, and time to deal with this workload and are aware that this is a long-term investment can make this investment without hesitation.

In this part of the article, we’ve tried to objectively address points that are not often mentioned elsewhere, covered up, or portrayed in a rosy light, but which you will encounter after setting out and which will cost you a lot of time and money if you take wrong or inadequate steps.

Unfortunately, the internet world is full of websites that have been opened with plenty of money spent but cannot be found or bring in customers. Therefore, understanding the motto “Sell to the whole world!” correctly and knowing that opening a website is just the tip of the iceberg is crucial.