What is cross-border ecommerce?
Cross-border ecommerce is the online selling of goods or services to customers around the world.
It often involves using digital strategies to reach an international audience and allowing them to place purchases online, receive orders, make returns, and get customer support along the way.
What is an example of a cross-border business?
Cross-border businesses can take many forms. A few examples include:
- An office goods supplier based in the United States that exports products in bulk to retail locations in Europe and Asia.
- A clothing brand with a website that accepts purchases from customers in many different countries.
- An artist who has a presence on one or more social media websites who allows international buyers to purchase artwork online.
Whether you’re just starting a small business or have a loyal following and want to scale your reach, international expansion can be an effective way to supercharge your sales.
Benefits of global sales
Cross-border ecommerce can be an enticing sales model for many businesses because it offers the opportunity to:
- Grow your business by reaching customers around the globe
- Sell more units and increase sales volumes
- Tap into seasonal buying trends in various regions (including holidays and key shopping events around the world)
- Build your brand and gain recognition across countries
- Stay competitive by offering your products in markets where other sellers aren’t meeting demand
Potential challenges of selling internationally
Selling to customers in other geographies can come along with a unique set of considerations, especially when you’re shipping physical products. Common cross-border ecommerce challenges can include:
- Laws and regulations: Policies and standards related to products and sales methods can vary from country to country. It’s important to be aware of regulations and maintain compliance so you can continue to sell successfully.
- Language translation: To reach customers, you might need to use a strategy called localization. This involves creating multiple versions of your website, product listings, or marketing materials and translating the copy so it appeals to international customers.
- Currency conversion: In addition to setting up secure payment processors that support payments in various currencies, you might need to exchange foreign currencies so you can make deposits in your domestic bank accounts. This will likely involve fees.
- Shipping and logistics: Shipping and handling can be more complex and expensive on an international scale. You might need to work with customs brokers, third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and other types of experts who can help you navigate the technicalities and ensure the smooth flow of goods.
- Taxes and other expenses: Sales tax, import tax, and other types of taxes can depend on the value of the goods, the location of buyers, and other factors. Value-added tax (VAT) is one example of region-specific taxes. You might also need to factor in shipping surcharges, other types of fees, and import duties, which are taxes collected by customs authorities on imports and exports.
To help you succeed, a wide range of selling programs, ecommerce tools, and other forms of support are here to help you streamline operations and find solutions so you can grow your business. One option is Amazon’s Service Provider Network, which you can use to connect with experts who can help with taxes, customs, translation, shipping, and more.
Explore the Service Provider Network
We couldn’t have done international sales without Amazon. Building your own platform is basically out of the question, so we decided: Why not try it? It’s not a big investment and the returns are well worth it. We doubled our sales selling internationally.
5 tips to launch internationally
1. Research different markets
Where do you want to sell? Can you make a profit by expanding there? Research can help you answer questions like these.
Zero in on a particular country and look at indicators like gross domestic product (GDP) and trends in consumer spending. Combine these insights with your own audience research. Is there demand for the products you offer? How will you reach customers? Analysis can help you anticipate how your offerings might be received and whether your efforts will pay off.
Make informed decisions based on what your research reveals. That way, your findings can guide your ecommerce marketing and other parts of your cross-border selling strategy.
- The Americas (United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil)
- Europe
- The Asia-Pacific
- The Middle East and North Africa
2. Choose products
If you already know what products you want to sell, determine whether they’re relevant to customers in a particular location. The Marketplace Product Guidance tool in Seller Central lets you gauge global demand for products, see opportunities to offer new products not currently in your catalog, and review insights into how they might perform in different regions.
In some cases, you might need special testing, certifications, or other types of documentation for compliance. As a starting point, check out our guidelines for product restrictions and safety compliance. When you’re registered to sell in the Amazon store, you can also use the Manage Your Compliance dashboard in Seller Central to view, file, and organize required documentation to make sure products comply with government standards and Amazon policies.
Not sure what to sell? You can analyze Best Sellers lists in Amazon stores around the globe to understand which products might be popular. For example, try exploring the Amazon.co.jp Best Sellers list if you’re planning to sell in Japan.
Learn more and find product inspiration
3. Line up shipping and fulfillment
Can you feasibly transport orders to international customers and still make a profit after shipping, handling, and customs? Go over your fulfillment process from beginning to end and make optimizations to avoid unexpected issues and minimize costs.
Ecommerce fulfillment starts with storing and packaging orders. Shipping products to customers could involve land, air, and ocean transportation. You might also need palletization, depending on how much inventory you want to move. Finetune your fulfillment down to the last mile to ensure efficient deliveries and offer customers attractive shipping promises.
If you choose to sell in the Amazon store, you have two basic ways of sending products to customers:
- Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): With Fulfillment by Amazon, you send inventory into Amazon’s global fulfillment network and outsource the packing, shipping, customer service, and returns. FBA can help you save time, reduce operational costs, and scale your business.
Learn more about using FBA to fulfill international orders
- Fulfilled by Merchant: You can fulfill international orders on your own and use our suite of solutions including a network of shipping providers that offer discounted rates. With our Amazon Buy Shipping tool, you can get pre-negotiated rates that are more than 31% lower on average compared to retail ground rates for UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
You can also benefit from specialized Amazon shipping and fulfillment solutions for your business’s cross-border needs. Here are a few to have on your radar:
- FBA Export: Make products stored in Amazon’s US fulfillment centers available to customers in other countries. We can fulfill international orders you receive, handle import duty and customs clearance, and ship the products at no extra cost to you. If you export to fulfillment centers in Europe and use Pan-European FBA, we can automatically distribute products across Europe to meet customer demand at no additional cost.
- Remote Fulfillment with FBA: Remote Fulfillment with FBA lets you ship cross-border to Canada, Mexico, and Brazil without sending inventory to those countries. Any import duties, taxes, or fees will be paid by customers who purchase export-eligible products stored in US fulfillment centers. We’ll ship to them at no additional cost to you. When products are eligible for Prime, Amazon is responsible for managing export logistics, customer inquiries, refunds, and returns.
- Amazon Global Logistics (AGL): You can use Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) to ship ocean cargo from China to the Amazon fulfillment network in the US, UK, and EU.
Along with AGL, FBA is part of Supply Chain by Amazon—a fully automated set of supply chain services that can help you get products to customers around the world.
If you use FBA, we can provide customer service on your behalf in local languages. You can also use our Service Provider Network to find customer service providers who offer support in local languages.
4. Calculate your margins
To see if you can turn a profit by selling internationally, take into account your potential expenses. In addition to costs related to product creation or procurement, shipping and handling, and customer service, be sure to also factor in taxes and duties along with any other charges or fees related to doing business across borders.
One of those expenses could be fees associated with getting paid in your local currency. Look into options like the Amazon Currency Converter for Sellers for depositing funds from foreign purchases directly into your local bank. With this tool, you pay a single rate based on the total volume of your cross-currency net proceeds. The greater your sales volume, the lower your rate.
Try free sales estimators to calculate your margins, then use a pricing automation tool like Automate Pricing in the Amazon store to set and adjust price points.
5. Create and optimize product listings
Online listings make it possible for customers from all over the world to find the products you offer. You can list products in our US store by matching offers to existing product detail pages or creating new pages. Then you can use the Build International Listings tool in Seller Central to cross-list in Amazon stores for other countries.
With Build International Listings, you can update one listing so it automatically updates in the other Amazon stores you sell in based on settings you choose. The tool even updates price points according to fluctuations in currency exchange rates so you can synchronize prices across stores based on your US prices and pricing rules.
The Build International Listings tool can also automatically translate product listing content in many cases, or you can work with a translator. Craft your sales copy and use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, weaving in keywords to increase visibility and help customers discover listings in different languages.
Go global with ecommerce sales
If you’re ready to explore cross-border sales, Amazon can help with tools for managing your broadscale operations, as well as resources for the finer details like commercial invoices, packing lists, and certificates of origin.
More information to help you sell internationally is available through Seller University, where you can find step-by-step instructions for tasks like creating an Amazon selling account, listing and pricing products, and fulfilling customer orders. You can also learn how to manage sales, build your brand, advertise with Amazon, and more with this free educational resource.
Learn more and reach customers around the world with Amazon Global Selling.
