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We live in a world that runs on global ecommerce. In fact, the global ecommerce industry is worth $7.7 trillion and continues to grow each year.

This impressive growth in the ecommerce industry is supported by consumers increasing interest in looking beyond their borders to shop online. Forrester estimates that cross-border ecommerce will reach $627 billion by 2022. This presents a huge opportunity for digital businesses around the world.

If you’re interested in capitalizing on the growing global ecommerce ecosystem, you need to start thinking about addressing the major factors that can affect your ability to grow globally. And this means more than just adding a “buy now” button to your website.

It all comes down to focusing on your audience. Who are they? Where are they located? What do they expect from their shopping experience?

Wondering where you should start to grow your business around the world? Take a look at the three questions you need to address when your business is ready to expand globally.

1. Do you offer an optimized checkout flow?

Your customers want to buy with as little friction as possible. Is your current ecommerce experience making it easy for anyone around the world to make a purchase? How many steps are involved? Are shoppers redirected to a third-party hosted checkout page or forced to fill out lengthy and complex order forms? You may be turning away potential customers with a subpar shopping experience. Try these helpful A/B tests to understand how to build the right checkout flow for your unique, global customers.

2. Do your customers get localized shopping experiences?

Does your business currently support multiple payment methods, currencies, and languages? Depending on your audience, you may want to rethink the shopping experience you are presenting to your global customers. Part of building a frictionless shopping experience means showcasing a localized shopping experience with prices in the appropriate language and currency. When your global customers are ready to check out, you can reduce friction by accepting the most popular payment methods for their region—credit card, bank transfer, and alternative payment methods like PayPal, Amazon, or Alipay. The right ecommerce solution will make it easy to build the localized shopping experiences that delight your global customers.

3. Do you have automated back office operations to remain compliant on global taxes and regulations?

Managing global taxes, regulations and chargebacks is a very resource intensive effort. Staying up-to-date on evolving regulations like the GDPR is a full-time job on its own. In order to provide a seamless ecommerce experience, your business needs to focus on the back office ecommerce functions that are necessary for increasing sales from around the world. This is why when businesses start scaling globally, they choose to outsource and automate their back office operations.

Once your business has worked through how to handle these three questions, you are ready to grow your business beyond borders. To learn more about the three factors you should consider before you expand globally, take a look at our whitepaper, How to Scale Your Ecommerce Business.