How to Optimize Your Checkout for International Markets

For those who are hearing about VWO for the first time, VWO helps you identify leaks in your conversion funnel and provides tools to fix those leaks and keep your revenue growing. So with that said, it’s my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker for tonight, Vlad, who is the conversion rate optimization ninja at 2Checkout. Vlad has been doing CRO for many of his clients from all corners of the online landscape for the last 5-plus years. One of the things that he likes to brag about is that for a good chunk of those 5 years, there was no moment when he wasn’t running at least one CRO test.

Vlad Bisceanu:

Hey, Vipul. Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me. It’s a great thing here. And, before we begin, I want to reemphasize your message I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during this challenging period.

I wish you all the help and I assure you it will get better soon.

Vipul:

Perfect. A pleasure to have you. Before I let Vlad introduce himself and start with his part of the presentation, I request everyone. To ask any questions that you might have during the course of this presentation use the go to webinar questions panel on your right. With that, let’s begin.

Vlad:

Thank you. So, to get right into it then, today, I’ll share our experience with hard localization. At 2Checkout, we’re constantly running A/B tests with thousands of customers who have traffic from all around the world. Because of this, we have the opportunity to gather a lot of experience with regional preferences and optimization. I strongly believe that knowledge is here to be shared.

I’m here to share this with you so you can apply the learnings to your business and increase your revenue without having to go through the hassle of running all these tests yourselves. However, as with any CRO webinar, I strongly advise that you also repeat these tests on your site. Okay, so to get into localization methods, we first need to establish what localization is and how it is done. We know that localization is important because we know everyone is different, right?

If we accept that different cultures have different culinary preferences, for example, we must also agree that different cultures have different shopping habits. And the short description of localization is this: Your global conversion rate revenue is not really a single number. It is, in fact, made up of the conversion rate of each country you’re selling in. By optimizing each country, you will maximize and turn your global conversion rate.

So now that we know what localization is, let’s get into how we go about it. The first thing I want to emphasize here is that localization is a process. The first step in that process is to understand where your visitors are coming from. To do that, you need to be able to analyze your traffic and determine what your top markets are.

This refers to the countries where you get most of your traffic from. Ideally, you want to focus on the countries you get the most traffic from but also have a lower conversion rate than your average. Since those will be the biggest increase opportunities for you. In this chart here, I’ve emphasized two countries, out of an example of six of them. The bars here represent the amount of traffic you’re receiving in those countries, and the line represents the conversion rate. 

You can see we highlighted the two candidates with the highest traffic and the lowest conversion rate. Because again, that’s where you will be able to draw out the most revenue. The second step of localizing your carts, after you have gathered the data and have a plan, is making sure you have the functionality available. You basically need to control what users see based on the country they come from.

And there are a few ways to go about this. We will keep going through them a bit later, but regardless of the technical solution you choose, think of it like the reversal of a funnel. Users come from one direction, but they are sent off into multiple different ones based on their geographic location. Then, the last step of this process, once you know what the improvement opportunities are and you can get segments, is to find out what you can actually do in order to improve your performance in those countries.

We do this generally by A/B testing different things in different countries, and this is what we’ll mostly focus on today, as I’m going to share some of our A/B test learnings and examples. Again, as mentioned, it is important for you to also do this on your traffic. What I’ll be sharing are best practices, and a lot of them you will be able to apply by yourself. However, you still need to validate them for your audiences. Before we go into the actual content, I want to play devil’s advocate for a second and go through the main argument against cart localization that we usually see, which is the fact that it is a big research investment. Since you’re not optimizing for all traffic, but focusing on each market, the returns of optimizations are diminished.

While that is true, it is easy to forget that in a usual online global experience, around 70% of the traffic comes from four main markets. So you really don’t have to focus on all the countries, but rather on those big ones. In the pie chart above, you can see a normal traffic breakdown we usually see with our customers. Notice how the USA has around 30% of the traffic, Canada has 17%, the UK has 12%, and France has 11%. Added up, those four markets sum up to 70% of the total traffic received. This means that by increasing the conversion rate in those countries by 10%, you also see a global revenue increase of 7%, which is actually a really pretty number.

Moving on, just to give you a real-world example, I use this quite often. The easiest way to visualize and understand what localization is and why we need it is to answer the following question: How likely would you be to buy a coffee from your favorite coffee shop on the corner if they asked for a different currency one day? So let’s say tomorrow you go to get your coffee and instead of your local currency they ask for, I don’t know, pesos or something different. I think you wouldn’t get that coffee because that’s an inconvenience you don’t want, and the online user is the same. We know purchases are made on trust, and as human beings, we tend to trust what we know, which is even more important on the checkout page where you want all the trust in the world. Now that we agree on why we want to localize the cart, let’s briefly discuss how to actually do it.

So now that we know what localization is, let’s get into how we go about it. The first thing I want to emphasize here is that localization is a process. The first step in that process is to understand where your visitors are coming from. To do that, you need to analyze your traffic and determine what your top markets are.

This refers to the countries where you get most of your traffic from. Ideally, you want to focus on the countries you get the most traffic from but also have a lower conversion rate than your average, since those will be the biggest increase opportunities for you. In this chart here, I’ve emphasized two countries out of an example of six. The bars represent the amount of traffic you’re receiving in those countries, and the line represents the conversion rate.

You can see we highlighted the two candidates with the highest traffic and the lowest conversion rate because, again, that’s where you will be able to draw out the most revenue. The second step of localizing your carts, after you have gathered the data and have a plan, is making sure you have the functionality available. You basically need to control what users see based on the country they come from.

And it can be done in two main ways. For the sake of keeping it simple, I will call them manual localization and automatic localization. However, keep in mind that both of them are somewhat automatic since they both rely on detecting the user’s location at some point or another. You don’t really want to ask the user which country they are from before entering their website. We call it manual localization because it basically means having different landing pages or even different websites altogether for each country. In this scenario, you would most likely route traffic from different ad campaigns or something like that to each target.

However, I think you can see how this can get really hard to manage and cumbersome at a certain point. This is exactly where automatic localization comes in. We call it automatic localization because it is the capability of recognizing a user’s location by IP on a web page and dynamically changing their experience on the spot. This doesn’t involve the need for having different landing pages or websites. We’re talking about the same page, just minor tweaks. A good example of this is when a website detects a browser language and changes its display language automatically.

In the example on screen, we’re looking at a basic checkout page in the USA. Please take note of the local support number highlighted, the currency, and the payment method sections. Now let’s switch the location of our virtual user. We can do this for testing purposes by using a VPN since we’re detecting the location via IP. Now we’re in the Netherlands.

Again, take a look at the phone number, which now has a Netherlands prefix. Also, the currency is now euros instead of USD. The payment methods have also changed to include the local ones specific to the country. This is what we mean by automatic geolocation. We didn’t switch the page, but we made certain adjustments to it.

We’re seeing the same changes when switching to Brazil. Additionally, here, we’re also seeing an extra field in the form that allows the user to pay with credit card installments. That’s a bit of a spoiler—we’ll talk more about that later in the presentation. To wrap up the two types of localization, we think automatic localization is easier to scale since there’s less maintenance involved.

It’s more reliable since it’s less prone to human error. And, the best part about it is that a lot of online e-commerce platforms already have it out of the box. To check out, for example, offers to your location, 

Vipul:

I’m going to interrupt you, but I have a question about your previous slide. You made a great point about localizing the support number, the currency, and so on. But don’t you think it would be problematic for businesses to translate prices? For example, $10 might be a reasonable amount for a certain product in the US, but it might not be reasonable for the same product in India or Dubai. Won’t that be an issue?

Vlad:

That’s a great point you’re making, and we could likely run a whole webinar on that topic alone. Pricing in different countries is something we’ve tested before, and it can result in revenue increases of 5% to 15%. However, it does involve a lot of optimizing and resources. I won’t be touching on it in this webinar because I wanted to focus on the quicker wins. But yes, it’s a great idea if you have the necessary resources. Different markets have different pricing preferences, and we know that markets differ globally. Did I answer your question?

Vipul:

Yeah. Understood.

Vlad:

Awesome. Let’s proceed then. Yeah. So I was telling you about how automatic geo-detection is the way to go, especially because a lot of e-commerce platforms have it by default. To check out offers, geolocation automatically switches the language, currency, and other stuff like that. And a quick pro tip here:

If you want more control over your pages without having to code yourself, you can use VWO to segment and change whatever you like in whichever country. That is one kind of out-of-the-box way of using it, but I find it really, really useful. Okay, so moving on to the actual content now. Now that we got the basic stuff out of the way, let’s talk about actual methods for you to localize and increase your revenue streams.

On the next slides, we will go through some of the best local optimizations we found and the ones that you can easily apply to your cart. And here’s the plan. First, I’ll give you some insights into using local payment methods. Then we’ll go to optimizing the cart flow and how that can bring you extra revenue. Finally, I’ll rapid-fire a bundle of smaller cart localization methods for you.

You may already know about some of these localization methods in theory, but I will try to give you some insights that you maybe don’t know and also put some numbers on everything I say so that you can prioritize implementing them in your business. The first one we’re starting with is local payment methods. This is actually a topic that we have to check out close to our hearts, so we’re confident when we say it’s a really big improvement opportunity for you. Partly because globally, local payment methods account for about 10% of the total purchases made online.

That might not sound like much, but in certain countries, local payment methods actually have more than 50% of the market share. This means that every other person that visits your online shop wants to pay with something local rather than a credit card or PayPal. It’s easy to believe that everyone has a credit card or PayPal account handy. But the truth is that many customers will not purchase if their local preferred payment method or brand isn’t available. A reason behind this is the operation of benefit programs.

A quick explanation on that: a lot of local payment method providers have benefit programs in place, which give extra points or even cash back to buyers when they use their local payment methods. By allowing users to pay with local payment methods, you are basically giving them extra benefits to purchase your product, but without having to support any cost on your side. Another factor that plays to the advantage of local payment methods is authorization rates. From our data, we’ve noticed that local payment methods generally have around 15% higher authorization rates.

This, of course, translates to even more revenue. That’s why we think this is a big opportunity. By adding a few local payment methods to your checkout page, you will benefit from 5% to 10% increases in revenue, especially if you’re selling in some of the key markets we’ll be talking about now. Now I want to go over some of the biggest local payment methods we know exist because local payment methods are not born equal.

Some have higher market shares than others, so some will bring you bigger revenue increases than others. Ideally, of course, you would want to have all payment methods available on your checkout page. I am aware that’s not so easy to implement, so we’ve tried to compress our learnings and give you a map of the most important local payment methods that you really want to have if some of your countries are on this list.

Again, these are not all the important payment methods, but they are the ones with the biggest revenue shares. Some highlights here are Brazil, for example, which has 56% of the total payments being made via local payment methods, both bank and credit card installments. The ones I mentioned earlier are really important. The Netherlands has 53% of its transactions being paid with local payment methods.

And then China is the poster child because it has 74% of orders being placed with either Alipay or WeChat Pay. So you can see how you could potentially double or even triple your revenue in those countries only by adding those payment methods to your checkout page. The last thing I want to mention regarding local payment methods is that you need to make sure they are easy to find and accessible to the users in the cart. This is as important as actually having them. Because even if you have all the local payment methods in the world, if you hide them under a dropdown, for example, no one will use them, and you won’t see any revenue impact.

We have run several A/B tests on this matter, and the most important thing we found is that local payment methods need to be displayed in the first section of the cart. They need to be clearly visible and have recognizable logos. Let me give you the best example I can think of regarding local payment methods. Here are two sections of checkout pages. How many payment methods do you think are available in each section?

Yeah, you’re right. That was a trick question because, on both pages, five local payment methods are available. However, the example on the right shows a bad usage of local payment methods because you can see them in the dropdown. You have no way of knowing that local payment methods are supported on this page. The example on the left, however, has visible logos and is positioned right above the summary page, making it really easy for the user to know those are available before they make a decision.

One extra thing you can do to optimize payment method usage, and this is kind of going the extra mile, is dynamically displaying and arranging them based on the user’s location. You can see how in the second example, I’m prioritizing the icons of the local payment methods based on their usage in that country. You can do so yourself.

Just to give you a better understanding of what I mean, there’s really no point in showing Alipay, which is a really popular payment method in China, to a user coming from Brazil. So you want to make sure that you display the accurate and correct ones for each country. Okay, that was it for payment methods. Now I’m moving on to cart optimization and how you can use it.

Let me first explain what I mean when I say cart flow. I’m specifically referring to the length of the purchase funnel. There are three main steps in any purchase funnel: the summary section, the first one where you want to remind the user what they’re purchasing; the checkout section where the user actually enters their details, like credit card and billing info; and the review section where the user confirms their entered information and places the order. These three sections can be rearranged and modified into multiple combinations. If all three are on separate pages, we call it a three-step flow.

However, we can combine the summary and checkout sections to create a two-step flow, and then we can even remove the review section entirely and create a simple one-step flow. Moving forward, we’ll only talk about the differences between a two-step flow versus a one-step flow, since those are the ones we found to convert best in our cases.

We’re basically asking the following question: which country prefers having a review page, and which country doesn’t? This is to simplify the explanation I just did. Traditionally, extending the length of the purchase funnel is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about increasing your conversion rate. As marketers, we’re often taught that less is better, and we always try to remove steps from our funnel. However, adding a review page in some of your top markets and making sure each country is taken through its preferred cart flow can be beneficial.

We can give you global improvements of about 20%. Cart flow is one of my favorite ways of quickly boosting revenue. I think of it as the lowest and easiest-hanging fruit because by doing this, you can see huge revenue increases. It is one of the fastest ways you can optimize because most e-commerce platforms offer multiple types of cart flows out of the box. So you can simply switch between them and A/B test them with something like a URL parameter. You don’t have to invest any resources into this.

It’s a really easy revenue boost, and we have done quite a lot of testing on cart flow. It turns out that there are big visual preferences when it comes to the length of the flow. For example, U.S. shoppers prefer a one-page flow as you can see here in the first example, where the summary and the checkout pages are combined, and there is no review page. However, some European shoppers like to have that review page present in a two-step flow. 

They like to be able to review their order before placing the transaction. On the next slide, I’ll show you our findings from the A/B tests we’ve run regarding this. We did our best to gather everything into a single table that can tell you if it is beneficial to have the review page or not. Here is how it looks. A few things to note: Germany shows a strong preference, with 77% preferring a flow without the review page. I think this is because their culture is based on efficiency, and the extra step might be considered redundant.

By the way, this is the reason why Germany’s preferred payment method is PayPal as opposed to credit cards. It has the highest market share in Germany. As a bonus mention, if you sell in Germany, besides not having a review page, I would also recommend using PayPal Express, which is PayPal’s faster checkout solution that doesn’t involve the user writing their details in the cart but rather simply logging in to PayPal. Other mentions: the U.S. and Australia also consistently choose a simpler flow or one-step flow, even if not by the same margin as Germany. However, as you can see here, a lot of countries, specifically some in the EU, show a clear preference for having a review page. 

So having a two-step flow in the UK, Italy, Canada, France, Japan, and Spain shows a 5-20% increase in conversion rates. I think you can see from this data how simply switching and playing with the flow can greatly increase your conversion rate if you try and match everything to your traffic preferences.

Now, because we don’t really have time, I could go through 10 or 20 other optimization methods. But I will quickly go to some other methods of localizing your cart. These are not necessarily lesser methods, as they can still bring you really big revenue increases. You should think of them as a bundle of meaningful ones that, when put together, will bring your business significant revenue increases.

The first one is translating and localizing content. This is a no-brainer. Not everyone speaks English, and not everyone thinks the same. That’s why it’s always recommended to work with a native speaker when translating your cart rather than using web translation or another similar solution, which might be hit or miss. 

Then you can also localize your pricing. This is something that people mentioned. Billing in the local currency is known to increase authorization rates. That’s because a lot of banks have trouble with international currencies. Displaying the cart in the user’s currency is another way to maximize your conversion rate. This relates to the example of the copy that I was talking about.

Next, you should make sure to display taxes in the locally preferred method. In the U.S., everyone is accustomed to seeing taxes separate from the total price, usually below the total price. But in the EU, you should include them in the price. We are accustomed to seeing the total price including the taxes. Additionally, we call taxes VAT, so you might want to play with that and make sure to use the specified term in each region.

I’ve combined dates, times, colors, and formatting into one category, but what I’m basically saying is that you should take into account the cultural preferences of a certain country when optimizing for it. It’s good to work with someone from that country and ask them for feedback. You don’t have to start programming or translating all your content. It’s easy enough to have a freelancer help you with some guidelines here.

Obviously, having local support numbers builds trust and gives your shop credibility. When was the last time you dialed an international number when trying to buy something online? If the answer to that question is not yesterday, then you should have a localized support number on your checkout page.

Lastly, make sure you look at your current loading time on a per-country basis. I see this mistake often: someone looks at their loading time and gives one number, like the global loading time. However, that’s not really accurate, since that number is an average of countries you might not even be selling in. So make sure to look at loading times for each of your top markets. While this optimization is not as easy to implement as some others, you should definitely try to optimize your load time in the top markets you have. This is a really big optimization you can do, and it also helps with conversion rate even though it’s a bit harder to track.

I also want to give you a heads-up on the countries where making those changes will bring you the biggest conversion rate increases. While I suggest you try to localize in all the countries you’re selling in, that can be quite a big resource investment.

I am aware of that. So you can use this cheat sheet for the countries that are most sensitive to having the cart translated. If any of your top markets are on this list, you should definitely prioritize them. In the right column, you can see the actual conversion rate increase you can get by translating the checkout page into that country’s language.

For example, translating your cart for Russia will give you conversion increases of up to 42% just by translating, while in Brazil, Germany, and France, we’re looking at around 22% extra revenue. So all in all, to put a number on it, by translating your cart and applying all those other small changes in the mini bundle, you will see a global increase of up to 25%. Add that to the extra revenue I was talking about with cart flow and local payment methods, and you are looking at a business-changing increase. However, if some of them are too resource-intensive for your business plan, you can definitely focus on a few of them and still get some nice revenue increases.

Okay, that was everything I wanted to go through today. I know I talked a lot and pretty fast, so I’ll give you a few key takeaways from the most important things we discussed. First, the first step in localizing your cart is knowing who your visitors are. Once you pinpoint your top markets, you can find out what they like.

Then by applying all the learnings we discussed in your top markets, you can see global revenue increases between 15-30%. One of the bigger optimizations you can do is add local payment methods. However, make sure you make them easily visible in the cart. Customizing the cart flow and then adding or removing a review page on a per-country basis is the fastest way to boost your cart’s conversion rate. Remember the low-hanging fruit.

Lastly, as with any CRO webinar, best practices are good, but we always recommend A/B testing for your own top markets. Now that we got that out of the way, I have a small bonus for you: some quick A/B test ideas that you can run starting tomorrow to help you kickstart your localization program. 

The first one is testing cart flow on a per-country level. As mentioned, this is one of the easiest ways of maximizing revenue, especially if your API provider has more cart options out of the box. You should run this test in your top 5 markets at least and then optimize each of the winning variations. Second, you should add local payment methods like Alipay and iDeal in your top markets.

This by itself will get you a noticeable increase, but then you can also A/B test their placement in the checkout page afterward to maximize your earnings. You should test icon size or placement, before the summary section or after the summary section, and things like that. Lastly, and this is a bit of a wild card, I propose trying to test different preselected payment methods in certain markets. We did this in Germany, for example, by selecting PayPal instead of a credit card, and we saw a 15% improvement in the conversion rate.

By preselected payment methods, I mean the one you see when you open the checkout page without clicking anything else. It is usually the credit card 90% of the time. However, you should definitely try switching that out for anything else.

Okay, that was it for me and for my presentation. I think we still have 10 or 15 minutes for questions. So, let me know what you thought was most interesting and what you would like me to explain more in-depth.

Vipul:

Hey, Vlad. That was a really interesting presentation. I was listening closely, and you made some great points there. All of them make sense because the checkout page is the last mile of conversion, and you wouldn’t want to mess up that critical point.

You have to maintain and even build the trust that the customer has shown up to that point when they reach the checkout page. You can’t really afford to make them rethink their decision. That’s really important for any business that has an online transaction feature available on their website.

Vlad:

Yeah, that’s true. We usually joke and say that our job on the checkout page is to make sure we don’t get in the shopper’s way. But the truth is, we have a lot of opportunities, especially because of the high conversion rate of the page, to test a lot of things. You will see that pretty much everything, every small thing you test on the checkout page can bring you big revenue increases. Which is really interesting.

Vipul:

Absolutely. The numbers you’ve mentioned in the last couple of slides speak very loudly about how customizations and optimizations like these can actually increase the numbers and take your growth graph up and to the right. So I would definitely encourage everyone, whether they have a small or big e-commerce business, to go ahead and test out what type of localization changes actually move the needle in a positive direction. We will be sharing the slides and the recording of this webinar within the next 24 hours. So, do watch it again and go through the slides. It is really insightful for you guys.

Great. So I have a lot of questions. It definitely shows how much people are interested in this particular topic. I’ll try to pick the most useful ones, one by one. 

Yeah, let’s go with the first one. The first one is by Monif Afzal. He is referring to one of your earlier slides about content localization, in which you mentioned the automatic and manual ways of doing it. He is curious to know which is the most preferred method. Will it be automatic or manual? And in which cases would you apply them?

Vlad:

Yep. That’s a good question. First, let me reemphasize that “automatic” and “manual” are pretty much nicknames, not necessarily the accurate way of referring to them. But from my point of view, the automatic method of changing dynamic things on the page is better because, firstly, it doesn’t require you to have multiple domains or landing pages. It’s way easier to manage. And secondly, you can use platforms like VWO to handle that even faster.

I see the manual method as more of a solution when you split up your business in different countries. That makes sense if you have different entities for each country, for example. But if not, I think the automatic method allows you to grow way faster, and you should definitely focus on that.

Vipul:

Great answer there, Vlad. Definitely would recommend doing that. Okay, so the second question is from Alex. Alex is asking, okay, this is an interesting one:

Are you suggesting this currency conversion on the entire website or just the checkout page?

Vlad:

Definitely on the entire website, and that is an incredibly good question. It’s really important to have consistency when talking about localization. This includes translations, for example. It’s really misleading if you have a translated site, but then the checkout page is in a different language. That might turn your customer away. But it’s even more important when talking about prices.

Try to show exactly the same format on your whole website, if that’s possible, because the user will perceive the price, and understand it, and if they don’t see anything different, they will be way more likely to purchase.

Vipul:

Sure. Quickly moving to the third question. Mohammed is asking, okay, so he’s concerned about the drop-off when a customer moves from your website to a payment aggregator website. He wants to know if there is any insight on this drop-off because he keeps losing his clients whenever they are redirected to a payment aggregator website. Do you have any insights?

Vlad:

Yeah, that’s a common one. One we fought with a lot at the checkout. So, from our learnings, it happens because of one of two—actually three—reasons. The first one is that the customer wasn’t expecting to see a checkout page at that point. Basically, if you click a page and you see some credit card fields that you weren’t expecting to see, you will automatically exit that page.

To combat that, you can maybe do a more explicit job of letting the users know they will be redirected to a checkout page. The second reason we see quite often is load time, actually, which is why I mentioned it. It might be that users want to purchase and they click the “buy now” button. They are taken to the checkout page, but because it loads a bit slower, they don’t have the patience to wait for it. So you might want to look into that.

The third reason behind this is the lack of consistency. This is not really limited to price. It can even be because of your design. If you have a design language on your website, and then the checkout page looks different, that might definitely make the user think that they’re not in the same process anymore. If you can look into those three, I’m sure that you can find a solution for this. Just as a bonus here, you could definitely opt for an on-website solution.

I know there are methods of displaying the checkout page without redirects. For example, we have a popup card; it’s called the inline card. That way, you kind of eliminate some of the concerns I just mentioned.

Vipul:

Great. I hope you got your answer there, Mohammed. The next question is from, and I’m sorry if I’m pronouncing your name incorrectly, Soren. She has an interesting question.

She’s asking about the trends in customer behavior, such as card flow preference. How does it change over time, and how important is A/B testing for companies regarding customer behavior analysis?

Vlad:

That’s a really good question. As you saw, we have definitely observed that the most dynamic element is the card flow, which is why I emphasize that you should test this for your traffic. It really depends on a lot of factors, with the country being one of them. We’ve also seen preferences when comparing B2B and B2C products or even when comparing different price ranges on products. This is one of the more dynamic factors, and you should definitely test this on your traffic. It’s fortunate that it’s generally easy to set up.

Vipul:

Thanks a lot. I see a couple of people are really impressed with that one slide of yours where you mentioned which payment method works for which particular region. A couple of people want to know how they can figure out which payment method works in which country. Do you have a list or maybe a source that you can point them to to know which payment method is preferred by which country?

Vlad:

Yeah. The short answer is that we gathered this information from live transactions at our checkout, so it’s the most reliable way of knowing what payment method is focused on. However, I’m sure you can find similar articles by searching on Google. Another authentic way of finding this out is by talking with someone from that country, as they will most likely know the most used payment methods. At our checkout, we always try to focus on the most used payment methods. You might find a lot of information on this event by searching our blog.

Vipul:

Sure, guys. Follow what Vlad just mentioned. It’s really getting a bit hard to figure out which question to pick. There are indeed a lot of questions. Let me pick this one. It’s an interesting one. So this one person is asking, I sell mostly in the US. So what are some optimizations I can do for the US audience?

Vlad:

Yep. That’s a good one because I imagine a lot of people listening to this webinar are mostly in the US. So, from the top of my head, the most important thing in the US is, firstly, not having a review page. From our tests, at least, removing the review page, if you have one, has shown to be quite a factor. Then, I suggest optimizing your summary section by showing prices without taxes and showing the taxes separately. Obviously, make sure you have the currency set as USD. I have never in my life met an American who purchased something in a different currency than US dollars.

So you want to do that. What else? Make sure you have PayPal Express available. Again, the US, like Germany, is pretty much efficiency-focused. They do like that fast checkout.

And I would say those are a few good optimizations. Obviously, it can definitely go on, and it does depend on your traffic. Those are just a few headliners.

Vipul:

Right. Thanks a lot. The next question is from someone, and I’m sure a lot of people will have a similar question as well. So when you talk about localizing the currency and all, would you need a different company bank account in that respective country as per their local payment method?

Vlad:

Yeah, that’s a good one. So, localizing the currency is usually broken down into two things. The first one is localizing the display currency, and that you can do by yourself, even though it’s a bit cumbersome to do the conversion. It can be done on your website. However, the second part of this is localizing the billing currency.

So what do you charge, which, unfortunately, you do need an entity in each country you want to localize to? However, sorry for the plan here, but there are platforms that offer this by default. So you don’t have to create businesses in each few pieces of the country you’re selling into. Checkout, for example, offers this by default. So we charge the customer in any currency you can think of, and then we send you the dollars, basically, or whatever you prefer. That’s the easiest way of doing this, but you can definitely do it yourself by starting a legal business in each country and all that stuff.

Vipul:

Sure. Thanks a lot. Hope you got the answer there, Kartik. Great. So, in the interest of time, I’ll just take one more question.

Sorry, guys. I’m skipping a few questions from a few of you. But don’t worry. I’ll be sending all your questions to Vlad and his team, along with your email addresses, so that Vlad can answer them directly to you, right? So no need to worry about your questions being missed. Great. So the second-last question that I have for you, Vlad, is: What pages of my website should I translate first?

Vlad:

Yeah, that’s a good one when talking about resource investment. As I mentioned, a lot of us might not have the resources necessary to do all the sites. I would say, again, consistency is key here. But I would say, try and focus on your regular or most-used purchase funnel.

So it starts from your landing page, your product page, or whatever steps you have. Just make sure you cover all the steps that the user usually goes through when purchasing your product. It’s important to localize all of them, or at least the ones usually used because if not, you will create friction and confusion for the source.

Vipul:

Right. And one highlight I have from all the answers and all the presentations that you gave is that it is very necessary to first research, right? So don’t just go ahead and start localizing just for the sake of it. It’s important to figure out whether the audience really needs the kind of optimizations that you just learned about.

So, I think Vlad would also agree. You have to first see whether, you know, putting, let’s say, PayPal as your preferred payment method would definitely work or not. Test it out by running it for a sample audience that you have. See how much of the reception, how much of the engagement is that particular payment method getting. And only then move forward in terms of making it available for the entire customer base from that particular region. Correct me if I’m wrong, Vlad.

Vlad:

Definitely agree. That’s a really important one. Thanks for highlighting that. Yeah, researching is always good.

Even the information I presented today, those are best practices, and they did apply in our testing. However, you should definitely kind of take them with a grain of salt and test them yourself. So, yeah, the research stage is really important.

Vipul:

Great. So, with that, Vlad, thank you so much for all the answers. And thank you so much for the effort that you’ve put into creating such an insightful presentation. I’m sure the audience must have loved it and definitely grabbed insights that they will use in their respective businesses. So, thank you so much for that.

Vlad:

Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was really fun. So I’m looking forward to the next one.

Vipul:

Sure. Most definitely, we’ll do the next one soon. Great. So, yeah, guys, thank you so much for attending this webinar today.

Really loved having you all. It is time to close this webinar. And once this webinar is closed, you will be presented with a survey. Please fill in this survey so that we have a pulse of how we did, and it would definitely help us work towards creating better content that you would like to hear in the future. Yeah. With that, thank you so much for coming and attending this webinar. Stay safe and stay inside your homes.

Have a great day, everyone.

Vlad:

Bye, guys. Stay safe.