We've got a US-based supplement that is garnering a lot of interest in non-US countries. It feels like one of those situations where demand + competition is really friendly in these countries, we just gotta figure out how to make logistics work smoothly.
Places like the caribbean islands and Africa have demonstrated the MOST interest in our product. However, shipping & payment really sours the deal for these buyers. Getting add to carts is extremely cheap, but cart abandonment is huge.
Our product is $30 per bottle. And here's some example shipping rates from orders people put through on our site:
Nigeria - $13 shipping, arrived in 3 weeks. No shipment tracking...we weren't very confident in this even arriving. But it did!
Jamaica - $30 shipping (yikes!), arrived in 1 week. Customers shipped to 3rd party shipper.
For Jamaica, looks like people ship the product to Florida to a Caribbean shipping specialist company that then takes it to Jamaica from there. Its pricey though!
These are just 2 examples. There's other countries of course.
My main question though - are we even doing this right? Cart abandonment is fairly high in these countries (especially Tier 3). Are there any best practices or anything to check out in order to minimize shipping costs and/or make payments more friendly for Tier 3 countries?
How much does it weight? Not many countries could beat China when it comes to logistics.
Let me know the weight and I'll see if we could get you a better deal.
Another option would be to ship the goods to and store the goods at a fulfillment warehouse in the target geo.
But of course, before taking that kind of trouble, you'd want to make sure there's enough demand to justify the effort.
As for maximizing ATC > Checkout:
-The general and obvious advice: Make the checkout process as simple as possible.
-Capture shipping and billing information to finalize the sale before presenting any upsells/downsells.
-Send automatic emails to recover some of the people that have abandoned their cart - e.g. offer a discount, a bonus gift, additional sales pitch.
-Offer free shipping and handling - make it a selling point that the prices shown are the FINAL prices. Some potential customers will add something to cart, then see that the final price is higher than what they originally saw on the product page, and decide not to go through with the purchase.
-Put a count down timer on the checkout page with a time-sensitive discount, e.g. "Order in the next 4:59 minutes to get an ADDITIONAL 5% off!" (Test different discounts to see the resulting effects on conversion rates, to determine the optimal discount point.)
-Find out what the most common method of payment is in each target geo and provide it. For example, most geos have very low credit card penetration. Implement COD by seeking out local couriers that can receive money from the customer for you.
There must be a million and a half other ways - these are just off the top of my head. Hope that helps!
Amy