Selling abroad with your eCommerce: shipping, currencies and customs

Your eCommerce already gets visits from outside Italy, but if only Italian customers order, it's because everything else in the journey speaks Italian, shows prices in euros and offers shipping designed for the home market. Selling abroad with your eCommerce is within reach of almost any store, provided you fix four concrete things before opening up foreign markets: shipping, costs, currencies and customs. Let's take them one at a time, without taking anything for granted.

Shipping: clear couriers and destinations

The first pillar is logistics, because a customer abroad only buys if they know when and at what cost the parcel arrives. You need couriers that cover the destinations you want to serve, delivery times stated for each area and tracking that works across borders. In Il Sole del Sud, the artisanal Sicilian preserves eCommerce we built, shipping is handled by SDA and Crono to Italy and Europe: deciding from the start which couriers to use for which areas spares the customer the nasty surprise of discovering at checkout that you don't ship where they live.

One detail that matters more than it seems: if you sell products with particular characteristics, they need to be flagged outside Italy too. Again in Il Sole del Sud the gluten-free products are marked, information that for certain customers is the very condition of the purchase, and it has to stay readable in every language of the site.

Shipping costs: transparent for each area

Shipping abroad costs more than shipping within Italy, and customers know it. The problem arises when the cost only appears at the end. The rule we give our clients is to show the terms by destination right on the product page and in the cart:

• Bands by geographic area: Italy, European Union, rest of the world, each with its own costs and times.
• Stated free-shipping thresholds: if they exist, they should be shown along with how much is left to reach them.
• No surprises at checkout: the cost the customer sees at the start must be what they pay at the end.

With shipping abroad it doesn't pay to lowball to win the order and then discover you're losing money: better an honest, clear cost that the customer accepts because they know what they're paying for.

Currencies and languages: speaking to the customer in their context

A price in euros for a customer who thinks in another currency adds a little friction to every product: they have to do the math themselves. Showing prices in the customer's currency, where it makes sense for the markets you serve, lowers that friction. The same goes for language: a site in the buyer's language converts more than one that forces them to translate descriptions and terms in their head. In Shoeesy, the footwear eCommerce we developed for a Maltese company, the project was born for a market different from Italy, and adapting the store to the customer's local context is part of the work, not a cosmetic add-on.

Non-EU customs: the part not to improvise

As long as you sell within the European Union, goods move without customs. As soon as you leave the EU borders, customs bureaucracy comes into play, and it's the part that generates the most disputes if handled badly. The points to clarify before opening those markets are precise: who pays duties and taxes on arrival, because a customer asked for an unexpected sum by the courier almost always refuses the parcel; which documents accompany the shipment; and what product information is needed to clear customs. The choice between making the customer pay everything on arrival or including duties and taxes in the displayed price changes the buying experience, and it should be decided deliberately, not discovered at the first return. Including the costs in the final price avoids the surprise on delivery but requires calculating them well so you don't erode the margin; charging them on arrival is simpler for you, but it has to be stated clearly on the product page and at checkout, so the customer knows what they're getting into. The practical advice we give: start with the EU markets, where logistics is simpler and goods move without customs, and tackle non-EU when you have the volumes and margins to handle its complexity.

Want to open your eCommerce to foreign markets?

Selling outside Italy doesn't require a new store, it requires getting shipping, costs, currencies, languages and customs right before opening the markets. We develop websites and eCommerce designed for selling abroad too, like Il Sole del Sud in Europe and Shoeesy for the Maltese market. Book a free call: we'll look at your store and tell you which markets you can open right away and what to prepare first.