First Steps To Website Internationalization - Order Forms

If you are using your website to attract international clients, be ready for the orders before they come. There is more than one pitfall in the process of taking the online sale.

Easy Path To Your Order Page

The first obvious thing is to take your international visitor to your order form. Is this path clearly indicated?

• Is your order page easy to recognize as an order page?
  
• Is your offer clearly stated?
  
• Is you guarantee or return policy also clearly stated?
  
• Will the international visitor know exactly what he will be getting?
  
• Is it easy to navigate from the order page back to the offer page?

Remember non-native English speakers may need a little bit more time to understand the process you have in place. Also, keep in mind the different forms of measurement, metric and imperial. The more clarity throughout the whole of your website the easier the sale will be.

Different Address Forms

If after you all of your communication efforts your international visitors are all set to buy from your website, complications can still arise. Once your international visitor is on your order form, the first major stumbling block is to have an order form easy to fill in with international addresses.

Postal addresses in different countries do not look the same. Some people seem to need ten lines of text, others only need two. The street number can be before or after the name of the street. In some countries houses are named and not numbered. The zip code can be placed in different places and made up in various ways. Many zip codes contain spaces and letters. Many countries do not have a "State" line in their address, only the city and country. Phone numbers are between 7 and 14 digits long, including the country code.

Sometimes the addresses used in some foreign postal services just don't appear to be addresses. Imagine how those visitors would feel if they were not used to filling in your address order form.

So if your computer order screen forces your international client to distort his address in a way he does not know how to, it might not be easy for him. Simply paying attention to how the address form is presented can make it easier for foreigners to fill in.

Offers Of Payment

If your international visitor is on your order page he probably has an international credit card in hand ready to make the purchase. You might think the rest of the transaction will be easy from this point on.

Different countries have different financial laws, regulations and processes. International payments are not always straight forward. There are a few things you can do to give your international clients options:

• Take as wide a variety of different credit cards as possible.
  
• Offer different payment platforms. Payment platforms that work well for you locally may be more difficult to use from other countries.
  
• Set up payment pages using different platforms in the event your clients are having difficulties and email them the links after once they cannot use your usual page.
  
• If you see that an international client has tried unsuccessfully to make online payment, email him a follow up to ask if there were any problems and offer to try putting the credit card through manually.
  
• The best advice is to test the process you have in place. Follow up on anything out of the ordinary. Learn how the order and payment system you have in place works with your international clients.

The extra effort you make with your international clients will go a very long way in establishing great client relationships. In some instances it will lead to great word of mouth advertising in countries where you have not physical presence.

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