This post is by David Barry, co-founder of AMZ Europe.
Selling on Amazon’s European marketplaces is tough for US sellers. There’s VAT to deal with, different currencies, different languages and the small matter of getting your stock into Europe. But if you successfully overcome these challenges, expanding to Amazon Europe can be the best option for US sellers looking to grow their business internationally.
Why? Because it is Amazon’s biggest international market. Last year, Germany and the UK accounted for more than half of Amazon’s international sales. This could increase over the coming years, as online sales in Europe are primed for significant growth.
The EU also offers favorable market conditions to sellers, with more potential customers and fewer sellers than the US. This means that businesses who sell on Amazon Europe have a great opportunity to gain a large market share.
Let’s examine the key issues for sellers who want to expand to Europe.
View Top International Ecommerce ProvidersKey issues for US sellers selling on Amazon Europe
1. Where to sell?
Many sellers start out by selling only on Amazon UK. By doing so, you’ll be missing out on almost 70% of the European market and significantly limiting your potential sales.
Germany is a bigger marketplace than the UK, so selling there should be a no-brainer. While the three other marketplaces (France, Italy and Spain) are smaller, they are growing fast and are home to 174 million more potential customers for your products.
The competition in these countries is also lower, both in terms of the number of sellers and the quality of listings you’ll be up against. This can make these marketplaces highly profitable for sellers.
As such, sellers should list their products and sell on all five Amazon Europe marketplaces to maximize their potential sales in Europe. I have a close friend who took this advice and now his most profitable marketplaces are Amazon France and Italy.
Selling on non-English speaking marketplaces
According to Web Retailer, almost half (229) of the top 500 Amazon Sellers in Europe sell in only one of the five EU Marketplaces! The language barrier clearly exists and deters many sellers from expanding outside their home marketplace.
Despite this, for English speaking sellers, selling in the non-English speaking EU marketplaces is not complicated. Your UK seller account can be used for all five marketplaces, and all orders can be fulfilled from inventory stored in the UK, using Amazon’s European Fulfillment Network (discussed in greater detail in section five below).
Translating your listings to the local language is the only step initially, and there is no extra cost to list on these marketplaces. However, many sellers don’t do a good job at translating, and adapting their product listings to non-English speaking marketplaces, which we’ll discuss next.
2. Listing your products
It is important to note that in each market you will be competing against local sellers and businesses. In order to compete effectively, it is critical that your listings are optimized for the customers in each country. For non-English listings, many sellers just hire a freelancer online to translate their listings.
Your listings should not just be translated, but also localized.However, your listings should not just be translated, but also localized. Localization is a blend of copywriting and translation, which produces sales copy that is tailored and adapted to the local market. The goal is conversion, not just translation.
Keyword research
It’s also crucial that comprehensive keyword research is performed in each language. This will help you identify the best keywords in each target language – those which customers use to find a product like yours. You should then include these keywords in your listing and backend search terms.
Failure to do keyword research in the local language is one of the biggest reasons why sellers struggle on Amazon’s non-English speaking marketplaces. It should be done before your sales copy is localized, as the top keywords identified should be naturally integrated into your listing during localization.
If English is your first language and you’re selling on non-English speaking marketplaces, you should hire native speakers, with ecommerce experience, to do your keyword research. A native’s comprehensive vocabulary will be indispensable for finding the best keywords for your products.
You may be tempted to just translate your English keywords, but this is not advisable.Furthermore, a native speaker will ensure that only keywords relevant to your product are included. Non-relevant keywords will result in traffic from customers who are not searching specifically for a product like yours, and will likely hurt your conversion rate.
You may be tempted to just translate your English keywords, but this is not advisable, as some languages have a much richer vocabulary than English. Without doing the research part, you will miss some keywords. If these are high volume and relevant keywords, this can significantly reduce your traffic and sales. Direct translation of a keyword from English into another language also often produces a phrase that has a totally different meaning than intended.
If you need help with your EU listings, look for a service which offers detailed keyword research and localization, as well as translation.
