Okay, well, I'm so happy to see you here.
We're continuing on with our sessions.
This is session two in track one.
Obviously, I hope you know where you're at.
But I get the privilege and the honor to introduce our next speaker to you.
But before we do that, I hope everybody is clear and confident about how they're going about the day.
You all know that volunteers have red shirts, right?
And if you need any help, go ask them.
Hopefully, they can direct you what you need.
There is lots of coffee and snacks.
And I hope you feel full and satiated all day long.
After this session, I think there is another break before we go into another session.
We don't break until lunch until then.
But I think we're good to start our next speaker.
So I was going to give a little different intro, talk about how I met Wendy.
It was Athens, WordCamp Europe 2023.
How many were there?
Yeah.
Oh, that's right.
You guys were there.
And I tweeted out, if anyone wants to meet me for breakfast, I'm at this location.
And Wendy showed up.
And that is how we met.
And I thought that was special.
So that was just a little short story to start the day.
And yeah.
So our next session is Wendy and it is how to not fail when expanding globally. So everybody give it up for Wendy.
So cool. Alright. In 2010, I got fired, lost my job and I decided not to go find another job but start a webshop selling this. Does anybody know what this is? Okay, that explains what happened to
my webshop. It failed, like enormously. So nobody knows what this is. Also pictures don't do it justice. It is called a cuddle stone. It is like a stress ball but made of natural materials.
I set up the webshop. I felt amazing. I mean, the pictures were amazing in my view. The webshop was amazing. I had a packing station at my house. I had wrapping paper. I had envelopes. I had boxes. I was ready to sell, ready to send. Nothing happened. Like literally nothing happened.
However, I did not succeed as a webshop owner. I failed miserably quite fast actually. But I did learn one thing and that was that I really liked building websites. Where am I pointing to? Ah, look. This is me. Fifteen years later, I build websites, a lot of them, with using WordPress as a singlepreneur for years.
And currently I am working at Clonable as a support and success person. And Clonable is a translation service. Hence my talk expanding globally. I also have a company. It is my passion project. It is called De Liefdesdoctor. Which in Dutch translates to The Love Doctor in English. And it is a company where we focus on teaching relationship skills. So we currently have big projects around friendship.
But also about how do you work well with colleagues and stuff like that. So that is what I do day to day. This is my Love Doctor outfit you see in the picture. Um... And, uh... Yeah. Let's get into it.
So, let's get into it. The first thing I want to say. The first thing I want to say is everybody drops the ball sometimes. This is the image that it says. I am very good at failing. Um... I also want to say...
So, everybody has the option to fail. There is no guarantee to not fail. So, my title has been a bit... kind of a twist. Um... In this talk, I don't want to focus on the failing part. But I want to focus on the... What can you do to actually... I'm going to move to the middle of the stage. Ha! What can you do to optimize for success when you are looking to expand globally?
I have some tips. I have some tricks. But before we dive in, let's start with some numbers. Um... I'm talking about webshops. This talk is specifically for webshop owners, but also for agencies who help webshop owners. Are there any people in the room that either have a webshop or help webshop owners succeed with a webshop? Cool. Good. Good. Pay attention.
The next three slides are helpful information for you. The rest is as well, but the next three slides are informative. All right. So... I checked on the website of the European Commission and it says that... 99% of all businesses in Europe, in the EU, are small businesses. And small businesses is businesses with a maximum of 49 employees. That means... 32 million businesses...
businesses in Europe, in the EU, are small businesses, and of those 32 million, 80 million
are singlepreneurs or self-employed. That is a lot of people, a lot of businesses, also
generating a lot of money. 21% of these small businesses sell online. So 21% of the 32 million
sell online. Out of those 21%, 7 to 11% sell across borders, so they sell to more than one country.
And those 7 to 11%, which is about 500 to 800,000 businesses, generate 275 billion euros per year
selling their stuff. Again, lots of money, lots of shopping. All right, so what does this mean for you?
Because these people are clearly already doing what they're doing and making money.
Out of the other group that is not selling online, 82% recognize there is an opportunity
to sell online outside of their own country. But 70% of them say they lack the confidence to get
started doing that. And that is where you, helpers of small businesses, step in. Because with AI,
people are saying, you can get everything done with AI. What is your role as an agency or a
marketing agency? It is to help people get clarity on what they are actually doing. So the 70% for the people in the room
gives us 3.5 million businesses that would be benefited with your services. 3.5. If we count the people in the room
and we divide 3.5 by the people in the room, this is a lot of work. This is a lot of business.
So this is the opportunity there is within the EU. This is not globally, this is within the EU.
So what can you do? I want to introduce Lindy. Lindy is one of our customers at Clonable and she started her business. She is a self-made young woman, as you can see. And she started her business when she was in college. Her brother had a laser engraving machine and she made a gift for a friend, engraving something personal in a wine box.
And that gift was received extremely well. They kept it. They enjoyed it. She saw a business opportunity. So she created a business. It's called Personal Surprise. And what it does is she engraves things with personal messages. So for example, wine glasses or tea glasses, cutting boards, all kinds of stuff you can engrave with personal messages.
So you have a personal gift, personal surprise for someone who is near and dear to you. She started out in the Netherlands with a Dutch website and it worked really well. And she decided to expand to more places. And this is her Dutch website. You can see the little flag in the top corner.
And she decided to expand to different areas within Europe. All right. So the next step, I'm going to take you to some tips and tricks Lindy did or might have been good to do.
First of all, a disclaimer. Like I said, failure is always an option for everybody. There is no guarantee for success.
It is a lot of work and it's also a little bit of luck and some magical stuff nobody knows. Failure is always an option. Please keep that in mind.
I'm not giving any guarantees, but I am going to give you some tips that are going to help you reduce the failure and hopefully increase the success.
All right. Ready? Still awake? Everybody? Cool.
Tip number one. Be prepared. A new market is a new business. It's not like all the work you did in your first country.
You set up your web store. You did all the marketing. You posted blogs. You created social media.
And all that stuff does not automatically translates to a different region or to a different language. It is a new market. So I have three tips regarding the brief...
The be prepared. First of all, figure out your data. Find out what your site is doing. Are people from different countries over the world?
Are people from different countries already visiting your site? Are there already competitors in other countries? Do you know who is selling a similar product like yours in the country you want to expand to?
So those are things you can investigate. It is important to know your numbers. Know your own numbers. Know the numbers from your own website. And also know what the market is doing.
This takes time. This is not something you do like within an hour. You can ask AI to help you. But also it takes some time to find the right numbers and find the numbers that are important to you. Because not all the numbers are going to matter to you.
Once you have the numbers, create a plan. It is... I'm not going to say that simple, but it actually is that simple. When you have the numbers and you know what's going on and you know where to expand to, or you have decided what country you're going to expand to, or which countries you're going to expand to, create a plan.
Understand what you need to do to get your business up and running in that region, in that language. Get the marketing right. Get the numbers right. Set a realistic goal. Set a timely goal. Of course, smart goals. Everybody knows I'm super bad at them. But it is helpful to write them down and make sure you understand what you are doing and that you have a plan on how to move this forward.
move this forward, because again, it is not going to happen magically. All right. Once you have the
plan, and you have the numbers, and you are ready to go, be aware that this is not a quick fix. This
is not something that is, you turn it on, and magically it works. It is a process. It starts,
it may start off as a project, a sci-thing, but in the end, it's going to be a process. So it needs
to be embedded in your workflow. You need to have the people, the time, the money, the investment
to do the thing right. So make sure you embed it in your day-to-day workflow. Are we clear so far?
Yeah? Cool. All right. Moving on. Internationalization. I practiced this word so many times to get it
right for you. Internationalization is not the same as translation. I know translation tools say,
turn on, turn it on, and it magically translates everything, and you are good to go in a new market.
How I wish it would be true, unfortunately, it is not.
I forgot one thing in my previous thing. Can I go back? Yeah, I can. I forgot to circle back to Lindy,
because Lindy did this, but she did this for several markets. So she did this for both German, French,
and Spanish, but the last step of the process was not embedded well enough. So she ran into some issues.
Setting up the languages for multiple regions. Moving on. Internationalization is not the same as translation.
This is something I see a lot of times go wrong. People think they turn on the translation tool,
whatever tool they use, and it is magically fixed. Unfortunately, it is not.
What needs to be translated? Is the website the only thing that needs to be translated? Or if you have a webshop,
you also have a login feature? Is there a account page that needs to be translated? Are there emails? Are there invoices? Are there system emails?
Are there are so many things that are outside of the standard front page of the website that also need to be translated? Write them down. Create a list so that you have good insight of all the things that need to be translated. Because it is super annoying. I don't know if you have this experience.
It is super annoying to work on a website. It is super annoying to work on a website, turn on the thing, and then realize when the first order comes in, you are super happy. And you realize their email is in a different language than the site they ordered the product on.
Also, it eliminates the trust people have in your website. A new language is also building up trust. The people in your original country, they know you. They know your product. That's how you became successful. The people in your new country, they don't know you. So if you are sending mixed messages and everything is not in order, it can confuse people and it will decrease the trust they have.
So make sure that you know everything that needs to be translated. So make sure that you know everything that needs to be translated. And this is, again, something as agencies where you can help your customers with. Create a list. Make a checkbox. All right. Also, details matter. Different countries, different languages, different have different, for example, currencies, payment methods. The way they describe sizes.
The way they use fields. I have an example of this. Personal example. It's my name. My last name. It is a Dutch last name. It is with the empty spaces and also with the apostrophe in front of the T. I was checking in in my Ryanair check-in thing earlier this week. And their form doesn't accept
the apostrophe. The apostrophe. Which for a flight service. A form is a serious problem because that means my name on my form and on my passport are not the same. It's a tiny little thing but it can make a big difference. So also address fields. A lot of people with webshops make address fields use a certain set.
way of how they are set up. But if you are sending to different countries. The set up of the address field could be different. For example, the English one and the Dutch one. Mr. Person and Mrs. Person are both living in a standard street in the UK and in the Netherlands. But as you can see, the order of the items and the way their items are written are completely different. All right. And then the most important thing.
human. We are all human. So you got the technicalities right, you got the details right, and then you turn on the translation, and it translates it okay, but there is always a human twist in language. It's not only language, it is also words and fun and tone of voice, and there are so many things that can go wrong when you only
look at translations. The things that is most likely to get lost in translation is humor, jokes. It is really weird if you have a joke in a language and it translates in a different language, completely weird. One of the biggest examples I could find on the internet was Ford, who said they had an amazing body for their cars, and in Dutch it translated to an amazing corpse.
For your car, which might not be exactly what you are looking for when you are buying a car. So if you are turning the translation on, be aware that human reviewing is added value. So be aware of that. Make sure that your customer or that you as the webshop owner finds a person who is native in the language you are translating to, to make sure that it matches
as well. All right. I am limited on time, so I am going to move on immediately to unsexy practicalities. There is also shit you just need to take care of. If you don't take care of, it is going to cost you a lot of money. It's not interesting, it's not fun, it is nothing exciting about it, nothing sexy, but if you don't do it right, it will cost you a lot of money. First things,
legal stuff, legal stuff, insurance, terms and conditions. There are rules for terms and conditions in every country, and even though we are in the EU, not every country has the same rules. So you need to do your thorough investigation on what the rules are in the country you are expanding to, to make sure that you are doing it correctly. Also insurance, especially if you are shipping physical products. Things need to be insured. And then you have tax.
taxes. Yes. Lovely topic. I am not going to go into that, but it is also something that you need to be aware of and that you need to take care of before it makes you fail your business.
All right. Another thing that you need to take care of. We are in the EU. GDPR is a thing. What do you do with the data? Where do you store it? How do you write about it? Is it in your terms and conditions?
And then finally, one thing that is also very important to take care of. Practicalities. How are you going to ship stuff? Especially if you have physical stuff, how are you going to ship it to the other place?
And also, if people want to send it back, how is that going to go? Are you going to go and open a warehouse in a different country? Are you going to make them send it to your original warehouse in your original country?
It is not magical, but it is something you need to think about and you need to take care of. And again, as an agency, this is something where you can help your customer work out what they need to do and what they need to take care of before going the next step.
I also want to say that I am going to wrap it up. Expanding globally is interesting, especially if you have a small webshop with a very niche product. The point that you are going to run out of customers in your original country is going to come faster than you think.
And it is going to come faster than you as an agency think. So there is a lot of room for growth. As we saw in the numbers in the beginning, there is a lot of room for growth internationally. The thing is, it does help to get it right. Start with the numbers. Make sure you investigate what you're doing. Make sure you set up a plan. You give yourself time.
As an agency also prepare your customers for potential globalization. Languages don't all have the same length of words. For example, English and Finnish. I have been looking at Finnish websites a lot recently. Finnish uses very long words with a lot of letters. If your button is super small and with a fixed width, a Finnish send option is not going to fit in.
You can help people. You can help people. You agencies in this room, you are not AI. You are the human touch. You can help other humans find a great way to expand their business beyond their biggest imagination.
but you do need to spend some time and take care of them.
And also, one thing that is important to keep in mind, be patient.
It is not going to magically happen like you turn it on and it is done.
So, to wrap up my wrap-up, be patient, help people expand,
use the numbers you can find, make a plan, and execute consistently.
It is a process, not a project.
And then, lovely people, the money will start flowing in.
All right, there is a lot of potential, there is a lot of money.
This is a win-win for both webshop owners and agencies.
So, I am really hoping that you and them and we, because also, as a webshop buyer,
I love finding new products that I cannot find anywhere in the world,
because someone set up an international web store.
There is a lot of potential, there is a lot of money to be earned.
And I created a checklist, because I know I forgot, like, a bunch of tips.
I also just skipped over them really fast without clear examples,
because 30 minutes is only 30 minutes.
So, I created a checklist with the important things I mentioned briefly.
You can download it for free.
It will take you directly to the PDF.
And if you have any questions, I will be around.
I will be at the community booth.
I think I might have, like, two minutes for questions, if anybody has one.
I'm looking at the people over there.
One minute.
If anybody has a question, feel free to ask it now,
or come and meet me at the community booth.
Okay, so the question is, am I going to start a new webshop myself?
Well, um...
An international one.
I'm tempted.
But if I do so, I will actually follow my own process,
and create a plan, and set up a good, well-running webshop in Dutch first,
and then expand internationally.
Because I am pretty sure, and I've seen it since I started working at Clonable,
I mean, internationalization.
It looks easy, but it never is as easy as it looks.
And you need to invest time, and money, and people, and all the stuff
to get it, to do it right.
And I want to do it, if I am going to do it, I want to do it right.
So, do you already have a product?
I might circle back to my first slide, and relaunch my old product.
Yeah, but no, I don't have a new product yet.
All right, I think this is it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.Thank you.