The stupendous growth of e-commerce has made it possible for etailers to do business beyond borders. Research suggests that 35% of worldwide customers shop on cross-border websites. This percentage varies dramatically based on the country and for some countries, it is as high as 90%.
However, expanding to international markets has its own challenges which include overcoming barriers posed by multi-currency exchange rates, taxation systems, shipping conditions, diverse languages and cultures across the globe.
Offering Personalized Shopping Experience to Customers = Higher Conversions
Despite lower prices being the main pull for international clients, it is definitely not the only thing that attracts them. Along with pricing, the new-age customer is very sensitive towards the shopping experience they get.
Research suggests that 13% of online shoppers abandon their cart when prices are in a foreign currency. Hidden costs or the hassle of converting prices during shopping distracts customers and they tend to move to other sites that offer a simpler and transparent checkout.
Why You Should Offer Multi-Currency On Your E-commerce Site
When you are thing global e-commerce, you cannot limit yourself to a single currency. Although the US Dollar is the most widely accepted global currency for global transactions, customers feel more comfortable if they are allowed to pay in their native currency.
Offering multi-currency e-commerce solutions to your customers not only boosts conversions but also has many other benefits. Let's look into some of these:
Widens Customer Base
Well, you have the best site design and the most attractive products on your site. But is it enough to get global conversions? Definitely not!
To get the wheels moving and to really expand globally you need to facilitate your customers. Allowing them to pay in the currency of their choice lays the foundation for successful global business expansion.
By offering multi-currency on your website you not only enter foreign markets easily but you also get better conversions as customers get a seamless shopping experience without any shocks or surprises vis-a-vis pricing on the checkout page. This ease of shopping helps you in capturing one foreign market after other thus widening your customer base.
Boosts Customer Loyalty
Good services and transparent pricing go a long way in retaining customers. When selling cross-border, it becomes imperative to ensure that your customers do not get charged extra for currency conversions. When customers see additional charges in their invoice they are less likely to purchase from your site in future.
Offering a multi-currency e-commerce solution reduces customer dissatisfaction to a great degree and helps you get repeat orders from your loyal customers.
Reduces Cart Abandonment, Chargeback and Refunds
When you see prices in foreign currency, your first instinct is to convert it into your native currency to understand whether the product is worth the price or not. Trying to convert foreign currency into native currency on a different site is not only distracting but also halts the purchase midway. This oftentimes results in an abandoned cart and loss of potential sale.
Unclear prices in foreign currency often confuse online shoppers. This may result in refunds or chargebacks if the customer is not really happy with the product they receive. Handling refunds and chargebacks are not only annoying but you also need to spend considerable time and resources to manage them.
Also, a chargeback reflects badly on your business and may result in a penalty beyond a certain limit. Having a multi-currency e-commerce solution on your website helps you eliminate all such possibilities right from the start.
No Foreign Currency Transaction Fees
Would you buy a product from a cross-border site if you have to pay additionally just because you are living in a different country? Most likely you won’t.
However, if you offer a single currency on your website your customers might have to pay additionally for foreign currency transaction fees. This could be a major deterrent for them and they might not feel comfortable purchasing from your site.
Having multi-currency on your website encourages the customer to order from your website and also keeps pulling them back for more if you offer quality products and services along with competitive pricing. Also, if your payment processes are in their native currency they can be your local brand ambassador and bring more customers to your website by word of mouth.
Gives More Payment Options
Offering different foreign currencies on your e-commerce store opens up new payment channels for your clients who might otherwise not be comfortable using their credit card online. Many customers are still more comfortable using direct bank transfers.
Having multi-currency e-commerce solutions on your online selling site enables your customers to do real-time bank transfers through their bank account. This helps in getting better conversions as when the customer uses his preferred currency and payment channel he is more likely to remain loyal to your brand.
Edge Over Competitors
Accepting multiple currencies gives your business a differentiating edge over competitors who are still doing business in a single currency. Dealing in local currency facilitates your customers and has more practical advantages to them than just comparing prices.
By offering multi-currency on your site and giving customized invoice in their local currency you help your customers to easily keep a record of their expenses. Also, it assists them with file keeping wherein they can use the invoice to file for reimbursement, tax exemptions etc. if applicable.
Tips to boost conversions on your online store with multi-currency E-commerce Solutions
Undoubtedly having a variety of currency options on your website has its advantages. To help you get started with this feature, StoreHippo has incorporated it as a special offering for enterprise clients who are interested in taking their business to global markets.
Let’s have a look how you can use the multi-currency feature from StoreHippo to boost your conversions:
- Automate pricing on Your Site
StoreHippo allows you to automate currency rates and thus implement automated pricing throughout the site. This saves lots of manual time and effort and also minimizes error. You also get the benefits of any fluctuations in currency rate.
- Offer Unlimited Currencies
Become the champion of business beyond borders and offer unlimited currencies on your multi-currency website. This will help you convert every interested buyer and expand your business to new markets.
- Location-wise Currency Detector
Detect your customers’ native currency based on their IP address and show them the currency they are most likely to transact in. Automatically switching currency saves the customer’s time and effort in manually selecting the preferred currency and speeds up the checkout.
- Different Currencies for Different Stores
StoreHippo offers a comprehensive multi-currency e-commerce solution that helps you to offer different currencies on different stores in a multi-store setup. You can easily set different base currencies for each sub-store and get product prices, pricing rules, discount etc converted automatically to the base currency.
- Support in Themes
You also get full support for currency conversion in themes. All you have to do is, add desired currencies in the backend and it will automatically reflect in your frontend without using any app or plugin additionally.
- Control of Manual and Automatic Conversions
You can easily switch between manual and automatic conversions to define specific currencies for any particular product or category of products. Also, you can allow customers to manually select a currency of choice and thus bypass any automatic currency detection on site.
- Control Currency Format
With StoreHippo multi-currency e-commerce solutions you can use different rounding rules on different currencies to implement real-time conversions accurately.
- Payment Level Automatic Conversion
You can automatically convert any currency in the desired currency with automatic conversion support at the payment level. This helps when your payment processing channel does not support any given currency. For example, your payment gateway supports only USD and INR and your customer has to make payment in Euro. Using this feature you can easily convert the transaction in Euro at the platform level and accordingly bill the customer.
- Invoice Support
StoreHippo offers invoice support for multiple currencies. This helps you in providing the invoice in the customer’s chosen currency. Effectively this means that the same product can have multi-currency invoice based on the preference of the customer.
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing at a stupendous pace of 23% year on year and the global markets are opening up like never before. Offering multi-currency to your customers can take you a long way in exploring and gaining a strong foothold in foreign markets.
StoreHippo gives you the most comprehensive tools and multi-currency feature to help with your global expansion dreams. Give your brand an international presence and book a demo to understand the feature better.
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