Written by Ruth Henry

Six of the ten most populace countries in the world are in Asia. The two largest (China and India) account for nearly a third of the global population between them.

With such a large population, it’s no surprise that the Asia Pacific region accounts for more than half of all retail sales. However, there is a significant gap between the total retail volume and the share of online sales in Asia, with eCommerce sales accounting for only 32% of global online retail.

As a retailer looks to expand online into Asia, there are significant barriers to address. These include:

• Internet access within Asian countries
• Localisation and translation of marketing and merchandising for a global market
• Taking payment in cash-based economies
• Fulfilment and logistics of delivery
• Customer service and support
• Coming online

With a rapidly growing population, many Asian countries are suffering from infrastructure issues that prevent universal access to fixed-line telephony. In many countries, mobile access to the Internet is the only method for coming online.

This fact means that for a large proportion of Asian customers, their only opportunity to conveniently buy from you online is via mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops computers with wireless broadband connections.

“As a retailer looks to expand online into Asia, there are significant barriers to address to ensure growth in this expanding new market.”

This focus on mobile access in Asia means a mobile-first strategy for retailers targeting Asian customers is required. By designing your store using Responsive Design techniques, you ensure shoppers can access your products and buy easily whether they are on a mobile device, tablet or laptop computer.

Translation and Localisation
The saying for trying to do too much with not enough resources (“boiling the ocean”) is incredibly relevant to the problem of localising an eCommerce store for multiple countries.

The problem is that trying to manage the translation of a large, frequently changing product catalogue adds enormous overheads and resource requirements.

As an alternative, some retailers have taken to translating and localising key elements of the interface, including shipping address, payment details, calls to action (such as the ‘Sign In’ buttons, ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Checkout’ features), without actually translating every single product detail.

This ensures that customers can easily transact and buy following the prompts in their own language, even if product details aren’t fully translated.

The Problem of Cash
A significant barrier to shopping online in Asia has been the extremely low penetration of credit cards and the lack of online payment options, particularly in mainland China, where the ability to provide online payments and merchant services is tightly regulated.

With many Asian retailers offering cash-on-delivery, bank transfers or in-store pick up as alternatives to credit card payments, international retailers are at a significant disadvantage unless they are able to provide similar options.

As a solution, there are a growing number of payment providers offering online payment solutions to international retailers, such as China’s UnionPay and AliPay (Part of Alibaba).

Delivering the goods Along with the difficulty of taking payments, actually delivering the goods to customers can be difficult in Asia. With poor infrastructure and large distances, delivery can be expensive and take a long time.

International retailers need to consider alternative options for delivery, such as delivering to central pick-up locations or stores for collection.

Customer Support
Finally, trading with international customers can be difficult. The issues of timezones and language compound customer support issues.

Consider investing in comprehensive customer support systems such as FAQs and Q&A solutions that can be translated to minimise the need to provide telephone support or look for local support providers who can act as agents for you in Asian markets.

Be sure to continually improve your local language support content by identifying frequently asked questions or support issues, and proactively use email and other digital channels to address concerns before they arise.

Not only will you reduce the amount of in-bound enquiries you have to deal with from overseas customers, you’ll improve the satisfaction and perception of service from your existing customers also.

The opportunity will be worth the effort
Asia represents such an enormous opportunity for retailers, with more than half of the global “middle class” predicted to reside in the APAC region by 2020. To capture such a fast-growing and affluent market, retailers need to be actively developing their Asian marketing and merchandising strategies now.

If you’re interested in talking about eCommerce in Asia, please contact us.