Cross-Border E-commerce: Amir Helzer of OnTheGoSystems On Best Practices For Cross-Border E-commerce

An Interview With Rachel Kline

Trying to get others to link back to your content is not easy. This is just one of the benefits of having strong partnerships. Partners could differ based on what type of business you have, but in general they comprise of the likes of news outlets, publications, brand ambassadors, affiliates etc. who are there to work with you on mutually beneficial marketing activities.

As the global marketplace continues to expand, cross-border ecommerce has become an essential avenue for businesses seeking growth and new opportunities. However, navigating the complexities of international markets and cross-border transactions requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of best practices. In this interview series, we aim to connect with ecommerce experts, international business strategists, global logistics specialists, payment processing professionals, and anyone with valuable insights into “Ecommerce Experts on Cross-Border Ecommerce Best Practices”. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Amir Helzer.

Amir Helzer, CEO of OnTheGoSystems, transitioned from electronics engineering to software in 2007 when he began building his side project, which later became OnTheGoSystems (the fully remote company behind WPML, a widely known translations plugin for WordPress). Amir has also been a windsurfing enthusiast since the age of 13 and, after five years in Argentina, took up tango dancing as a passion he carries with him everywhere.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Before diving in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was fortunate to stay in the US for a year with my family when I was 12. This bumped up my English skills and exposed me to computers. The school library had a computer that I could use for $1 per hour. The problem was, my $1 bill was too wrinkled for the reader to process, so the librarian let me use the computer for free as long as nobody else showed up with a crisp bill for it. Of course, I held on to that bill. I ended up sitting in front of that machine quite a lot. At that time, the only thing that you could do on a computer was to write code and run it. I started in Basic (not the fancy VB, but the basic Basic) and then quickly moved on to Assembly language. With 64K memory and an 8 bits machine, you can’t do much without writing Assembly.

What led you to this specific career path?

I always liked to have ‘pet projects’, but I only tried to turn these projects into a business when I was around 30 years old and working as an electronics engineer. I worked on my own projects during evenings and weekends. With 3 young kids at home, it wasn’t easy. Actually, I got into WordPress by chance, because I needed a website for a project that I was building at the time. I realized back then that building a multilingual website with WordPress was not a simple task, and so the WPML project was born. 4 years later WPML turned from a side project into a commercial business. And here we are today, with over 250,000 clients building more than 1.5 million commercial websites with the help of our plugin.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

Given the major leaps we’ve seen in AI technologies over the past year, it is our goal to provide our clients with automatic translation solutions that are ‘better than human’. It’s no secret that current AI translations have their flaws. While we might be able to say that they perform well 95% of the time, we’d like to provide our clients with something that is closer to the 100% mark. Accounting for this 5% is a great challenge, but if we can achieve it we know we’ll see an even greater shift towards adoption of AI translations in web and software development.

This work will have a major impact on our WPML project as well as our new PTC project, which is something that we are very excited about. We have become known for our WordPress translation solutions through WPML, and with the knowledge and expertise that we have gained over the years, we are using this to create a new SaaS product called Private Translation Cloud (PTC) which aims to give developers a cost-effective, efficient and streamlined way to handle their software and/or application translations.

In these two projects the goals remain fundamentally similar. For developers, we want to provide solutions that save time and money especially on work that has typically been considered cumbersome or an afterthought. For businesses, we want to enable them to give their own clients and audiences a better user experience through multilingualism that in turn results in better conversions that impact bottom-line. And finally, for end-users, we want to play our part in democratizing web and software by allowing non-English speakers to engage with digital content in their preferred language.

You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?

Sure! Care about clients, the team and the business’s long-term prospects.

I attended WordCamp Berlin a few years ago and met many clients there in person. We kept hearing from them how anxious they were about updating the software on their sites, not just WPML, but for WordPress themes and plugins in general. They were fearful of having broken websites, but right then I had no solution for their problem. From a team perspective, we always focussed carefully on quality assurance and client reassurance before releasing new versions, but they still remained anxious. From an HR perspective, we also didn’t want to stress our own team who were already doing their best to deploy new versions safely. Making them nervous simply wasn’t going to help the situation.

A few days later I came up with an idea to release our updates gradually and not to all clients at once. This meant that if by some chance we caused a problem, it would only affect a small batch of sites and we’d have the resources to quickly debug and rectify it. So now, by the time 100% of clients get a new version of WPML, it’s already been tried on enough sites to know that issues should not arise. Of course, it would be great if we could produce new versions with zero chance of problems, but we can’t. Given the fact that clients use our plugins on different versions of everything, in many combinations and setups, we cannot realistically cover all possible scenarios. But this adapted workflow gave us the best chance of succeeding almost every time.

This system that we developed back then allows us to deliver innovation faster, while clients don’t need to worry about installing our updates. It came from wanting to understand what stresses clients, what’s realistic for us to build and what we’ll be using for a long time.

Excellent, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about ecommerce. What was the original vision for your ecommerce business? What pain point(s) were you trying to solve for your customers?

When WordPress started to become more useful for businesses (and not just bloggers), there was an emerging need for multilingual sites. At that time, there was no viable solution for this. We had our own site that we wanted to make multilingual, so, as I mentioned earlier in the interview, we custom built a solution that eventually evolved into the commercial plugin we have today. It turned out that the need we had was not exclusive to us, so it only made sense to see if we could continue developing our plugin to suit the ever-changing needs of WordPress users. A big turning point was when WooCommerce enabled WordPress users to start selling their products online, and as cross-border ecommerce became more common, we were able to play our part by giving users the opportunity to promote their businesses to new territories through multilingual content. Beyond the ‘translation’ part, we also included support for things like multi-currency that would make it more effective for businesses to sell the products in global markets. So, even though WPML started out primarily as a content solution, it was necessary for the product to pivot in such a way that it would support WordPress users who wanted to sell their products to global audiences.

It is also worth noting that our own site runs with WordPress, WPML and WooCommerce, so in turn, we also managed to expand our own reach and take advantage of sales in foreign markets with the very same tools that we promote. Nice to see how it came full circle!

When expanding your ecommerce business internationally, how do you determine the right balance between localizing your offering (tailoring products, prices, and promotions to each market) versus maintaining a consistent global brand presence?

This is really dependent on the company. If we look at big players, like McDonalds and Coca-Cola for example, they have found a way to maintain their core identity whilst still appealing to almost all countries on the face of the planet. A McDonalds in Thailand will be totally recognizable to someone who doesn’t speak Thai, even though their menus and products will be adjusted for local markets. Menus will be in Thai and pricing will have to suit the local demographic. But, don’t expect a McDonalds burger in the US to cost the same as one in Thailand! The same can apply to online businesses depending on their scale. Large ecommerce retailers will likely want to follow a similar approach, but for a smaller business this might not be viable. So you’ll really need to research your target market and do your best to find the balance that is also within your means. Regardless, translation and localisation simply cannot be ignored if you want to make the most of cross-border ecommerce, it’s just up to you to determine the extent to which you’d like to focus on it.

How do you approach understanding and adhering to the regulatory frameworks and trade tariffs of different countries, and what tools or resources do you recommend?

Unfortunately we can’t speak much to this topic since, we have always been selling and distributing digital products that are not impacted by such regulations. We are however subject to data protection acts and follow them closely to ensure that we comply.

How do you determine which payment methods to support in a new market, given that payment preferences can vary from country to country?

When considering payment methods we want to try and ensure we cater to as many (existing and prospective) clients as possible, meaning that we need to ensure our chosen methods are widely accepted across the globe. We’d prefer not to isolate clients who cannot access our payment method of choice. We typically do not like to offer more than two payment options. For us, some of the general factors we consider regarding payment options are as follows:

• Security: Our number one priority when it comes to payment options is to team up with reputable, trustworthy payment processors that take privacy and security as seriously as we do. Handling user info is a big responsibility, and we will therefore only work with vendors that have a proven track record of security and stability. We do not see or manage any payment data, this is all handled directly by the payment processor, so it’s crucial that they have the right frameworks in place.
• User experience: Our payment processor needs to make it easy for clients to make payments and update their information, such as their payment method. They should also provide good support to us and our clients if needed. This ensures that our clients’ subscriptions and services are not interrupted due to unstable payment processing or confusing payment-related processes.
• Costs: Finally, it is important to look for cost-effective solutions that allow us to keep our own pricing competitive, and not place extra cost burden on the business or clients. That said, even though cost is important, it is the last item on this list. We will not compromise on the first two items in order to reduce cost.

Ok super. Here is the central question of our interview. What are your five best practices for cross-border ecommerce? Please explain each in detail.

1 . Research and gaining knowledge from local experts

This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often research is still overlooked or done far too superficially. When you think you’ve completed your research, do some more. When it comes to foreign markets, no one knows it better than the locals. Speak to local agencies, step foot on foreign soil, conduct surveys and do whatever you can to understand as many of the nuances as possible before you decide to go ahead and do any major strategic planning.

2 . Localisation and translation

In order to do this step, you need sufficient context from your research. We all know the potential benefits of doing this right, but it’s often easier said than done. Luckily, when it comes to the translation part there are many great tools out there to help you and your team get your content translated. But there’s more to it than that. You’ll need to decide which foreign markets actually make the most sense for you to tap into from a logistical and strategic perspective. You’ll also need to ensure that your translations are culturally appropriate, so it’s essential that you understand how potential foreign customers engage within the niche that you’re interested in. Failing to do this correctly could yield results that are underwhelming — but on the other hand, doing it correctly can result in major business growth.

3 . Multilingual SEO and Google Structured Data

Once you have your content translated and localized like a pro, you’ll want to make sure you are appearing for relevant searches on Google. This is especially important for ecommerce as Google is still one of the primary sources for consumer purchase decision making. Now is the time to refine your translations to ensure that they are in line with what people are searching for in foreign markets. There are many SEO tools that can help you understand what people are searching for within your niche. With data from these tools you can tweak your content to target the secondary languages keywords you’d like to rank for. Let’s take a simple English example to illustrate the point: You want to sell confectionaries in the UK and the USA. British people would likely be searching for ‘biscuits’ while Americans would likely be searching for ‘cookies’. With this in mind, you would want to adjust the content for each respective language to ensure that your content will appear correctly based on the territory. The same logic can be applied to any secondary languages you want to translate to. Furthermore, you’d want to add Google Structured Data to your product pages to ensure that they appear with rich content in search results. What’s the best part of this? It’s totally free! You’re optimizing for what is known as ‘organic’ results, which is different from paid ads or PPC/CPC.

4 . Content Marketing

This ties in with the SEO part and can be thought of in two ways: One, you’ll want to create useful content (in multiple languages) on your own site that is correctly optimized for what people are searching for. Avoid spammy content and focus on teaching your audience something really interesting and relevant as this type of content has a higher likelihood of also resulting in actual purchase conversions. Two, part of optimizing for Google entails generating ‘authority’ for your website. In order to do this, you’ll want other high-authority sites to link back to your content. In the cross-border context, you’d want high-authority foreign language sites linking back to the content on your site in the same language. This will indicate to Google your site is trustworthy enough to be shown higher up in SERPs.

5 . Partnerships

Trying to get others to link back to your content is not easy. This is just one of the benefits of having strong partnerships. Partners could differ based on what type of business you have, but in general they comprise of the likes of news outlets, publications, brand ambassadors, affiliates etc. who are there to work with you on mutually beneficial marketing activities. Naturally, you’d want to develop relationships with these types of partners in various foreign territories that you have a vested interest in. Doing this correctly requires some careful strategic planning to ensure that your relationship with the partner remains symbiotic and successful in the long term.

What are the best practices for managing international shipping, handling returns, and dealing with customs? How do you decide whether to use local fulfillment centers versus shipping internationally from a central location?

Luckily for us, we are selling a digital product, so for our own business we don’t have to deal with such red tape. But, we can imagine that there is a lot to consider with respect to that. However, we do our best to enable our own clients to handle international tax and exchange rate intricacies through our WooCommerce Multilingual addon as we understand that this could have a big impact on their businesses. For example, we’d encourage clients who are selling internationally and in multiple currencies to make use of automated exchange rate algorithms so that they don’t lose out when fluctuations occur. There are many great APIs to facilitate this. We’d also recommend adding a ‘Lifting Charge’ which is an additional percentage that you can set to adjust the final, effective exchange rate. This is useful for international transactions that may add additional charges.

We would make similar suggestions with regards to shipping. Depending on where you are located and where you are shipping to, your expenses could vary greatly. So it would be best for you to set up flexible shipping rates to ensure that you are covering yourself. Generally, it’s best to give your clients some optionality for this, but without compromising your own profit margins. For example, you can set specific rates per currency for ‘Flat Rate’ shipping, ‘Free Shipping’ and handling fees for ‘Local Pickup’.

How can ecommerce businesses effectively provide customer support in multiple languages and time zones? What are some pitfalls to avoid when setting up international customer service operations?

For this, you should look at structuring your company to cater to diverse linguistic and cultural needs while not losing sight of fundamental customer service principles. Irrespective of demographics differences, customers tend to seek transparency during the buying process, prompt assistance, and clear documentation.

It is therefore key to assemble a competent team that mirrors the cultural and linguistic diversity of your customer base. Different cultures have varying support expectations, making it essential to provide support in customers’ preferred languages and time zones. To complement this, it’s equally important to have sales content, documentation and interfaces that are optimized and localized with the same principles in mind.

To ensure your e-commerce site is operational around the clock, you’ll want to maintain robust servers and enlist a tech team distributed across time zones to address issues promptly. It’s all very well having great content and an efficient support team, but if your infrastructure is lacking it will compromise your other efforts.

In summary: Hire the right people, implement well-structured multilingual support, create carefully localized content, ensure 24/7 website uptime, and remain sensitive and attuned to cultural differences.

How do you decide which products to introduce in a new market? Are there certain product categories that universally perform well, or is it highly market-dependent?

As a software company that provides multilingual solutions, our target markets have always been inherently global. Since we are also not bound by any distribution restrictions, it has always been a strategy of ours to have our software appeal to as many demographics as possible. Our main product, WPML, is bound to the WordPress niche so that is a factor that we just have to work with. With our new SaaS product, PTC, we expect our target market to remain global, however our main challenge now will be to infiltrate the technical developer niche.

For us, we like to work on things that we know we can do well. This is especially important considering we are working in the digital space. Competition is fierce and there are many companies that can do other things better than us, and likewise there are many things that we can do better than others. It is our job to pinpoint what we can do better than others and see if we can fill a need based on this. We are not in the position to make too many failed experiments, and we suspect that most other companies of our scale are in a similar position too. So, when it comes to new products that we intend to launch to markets that are new for us, we have to be sure that our expertise and resources are sufficient enough to be able to take such a leap.

Looking ahead, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities in cross-border ecommerce, and how do you plan to address them in the coming years?

In terms of challenges, one of the biggest we face, and it’s not a new one, is uncertain economic and market conditions, particularly in the US and EU. Both these territories have been seeing unprecedented economic challenges in recent times and this directly affects our clients and our own business. Of course we are not alone in these challenges, but we need to be as innovative as possible to ensure we don’t bear the brunt of heavy economic downturns. As a result, one of our major goals at the moment is to establish a better presence in emerging markets outside of the US and EU.

Another challenge is the seismic technological shifts we are seeing at the moment. We have spent most of our years operating exclusively in the WordPress niche, but the nature of websites as we know it could radically change in a very short space of time. We of course want to be a part of WordPress’s continued existence but also need to have a keen awareness of the other directions that things could go in. This is part of why we’re also dipping our toes into the world of SaaS that is less platform-specific.

Simultaneously, these ‘technological shifts’ also present major opportunities for us. AI advancements have allowed us to greatly improve WPML both from a product perspective and internally at the company. We can be more efficient with our time and improve our product in ways that were not possible just a year or two ago. Naturally, we are taking as much advantage of this as possible. And finally, we are also aware that unpredictable global phenomena can also change the demand for our products. For example, during Covid we saw an increase in demand for WPML given that more companies needed multilingual sites to continue their businesses. But likewise, there could be any other range of global phenomena that doesn’t work out favorably for us.

You are a person of significant influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I tend to lean towards those who believe that people are generally smart, make good decisions and know how to handle themselves. I don’t believe that anyone is in a better position to make decisions than ourselves — we have our own agency as individuals. In the past I’ve made many mistakes, felt their consequences and learned from them. When we break this link between decisions, consequences and learning, things don’t work as well as they can.

I love learning economics, psychology and history, especially when they intersect and I think it would benefit humanity if more of us explored this. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it teaches important lessons. There are many famous quotes about learning from history, so I don’t want to add more cliches.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

The best places would be to follow our updates and news on wpml.org and onthegosystems.com. These are our most active sites and we do our best to keep clients and audiences informed of interesting things! You can also find me on LinkedIn but I’m not so active there at the moment.

I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!