Boosting Conversion with Localized Checkout for eCommerce

Imagine you’re in a foreign country, and visit a store where the employees speak your language. Not only that, but they price their products according to your currency, and let you pay in it too. It would instantly make you feel at home, right?

That’s exactly what your customers feel when you offer them a localized checkout experience. A localized checkout for ecommerce aims to convert visiting users into buyers by giving them what they need: personalization and convenience.

Your customers don’t have to navigate through the maze of foreign currency conversion, and unfamiliar payment options. That’s what encourages them to trust your business and subscribe. In this article, let’s look at how a localized checkout for ecommerce helps you onboard more subscribers.

Why the Need for Localized Checkouts is Growing?

Customers today increasingly require personalization. Any element of your checkout page that stands out as unfamiliar or foreign can put you at the risk of losing customers. Why? Because if the checkout experience doesn’t feel user-friendly, it won’t feel trustworthy.

Earning customers’ trust is important because otherwise they would have no reason to purchase from you. It is essential for ecommerce merchants to localize their payment page for every customer who browses their store—regardless of which country they belong to.

If merchants want their business to expand globally, thinking globally matters a lot. And that includes thinking from the perspective of the global customers: what can make them stay, and what can drive them away. By understanding their customers’ perspective better, merchants can set up checkout pages that offer highly localized payment experiences.

And offering localized checkouts is even more important for subscription-based ecommerce businesses. That’s because these businesses seek to build lifetime relationships with their customers. So their first impression upon their customer, i.e. their checkout page matters a lot.

How customers are handled at checkout gives them a preview of how they’d be treated on a recurring basis—since subscriptions require recurring billing. That’s why merchants need to localize their checkouts, to clearly convey how easy and seamless the future payments will be.

What Localized Checkout for eCommerce Entails?

Yes, a localized checkout does mean that it can be translated, but that’s not all there is to it. These are some important elements that truly localize an ecommerce checkout:

Language: Starting off with the most basic one. Not all customers can be expected to understand the merchant’s native language. Even if that language is globally popular, like English. There can always be exceptions. And that’s why the checkout language must be translatable. If not into every language in the world, then at-least into those of your target markets. The languages merchants choose to display tell a lot about which consumer markets they are aiming for.

Currency: This is another important factor, and one that stands out a lot for international customers. If the checkout only gives them the option to pay in the standard currency, that can be discouraging. That’s because standard currencies don’t always feel transparent. And customers have to deal with currency conversion themselves. Currency conversion is dynamic, and its rules change every day. Imagine a customer decides to purchase a product by manually converting its price to their local currency. This customer doesn’t purchase outright, but after a week. And to their surprise, the amount that is charged to them doesn’t match the one they calculated!

This can be because of the changing currency conversion rates. In any case, it’s unlikely for this customer to be fully satisfied with their purchase. Now imagine subscribers. They have to go through such surprises every billing cycle if their payment currency is not localized.

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Local Taxes: It is very important for businesses to be compliant with a region’s local tax laws. Otherwise they can face penalties, and lose reputation. To master this compliance, they need a billing system that calculates their taxes for them automatically. Such a system also applies accurate taxes such as VAT or GST to the invoices of their subscribers, keeping billing fully transparent.

Payment Methods: Offering PayPal as your primary payment option sounds cool, but that doesn’t work in every region. If customers’ preferred payment methods are not present at checkout, they might abandon it. Local payment methods, such as Alipay in China, don’t just feel familiar to users, they are trusted, and offer more convenience. Making customers’ payments convenient is especially important for subscription businesses, as they have to charge frequently.

Data Field Formats: Formats also matter a lot. The way a customer types out their address, name and other relevant information should be familiar. They should be able to type this information like they do on local payment pages. Suppose a merchant belongs to a region where the middle name is customary. But if this merchant adds the middle name field on the checkout page, enables it for all regions, and on top of that turns in into a required field…that would upset a lot of customers unfamiliar with the idea of a middle name.

How Localized Checkout Drives Conversion for Subscription Businesses

Generic payment pages are simply not cut out for onboarding international customers. They lack too much. Plus, giving customers a generic and standard-currency experience shows them that merchants don’t care about them enough.

The only way to avoid that is by making the checkout a level playing field for all the customers. Meaning, making your one checkout localized for all. And this checkout boosts conversions for you in return. Here’s how:

It reduces friction

The first thing a localized checkout does is break the ice. When customers land on the checkout page, they don’t feel like foreigners, they feel like they are in the right place. That’s because they can see the subscription product’s price in their local currency.

This saves them from doing the math for currency conversion themselves. It encourages more users to subscribe too, as their recurring charges are made predictable for them. No element of surprise due to fluctuating prices is included.

The prices are fixed in the other local currencies, just like they are in the standard. This offers every customer an equally convenient payment experience.

It improves trust

Familiar payment methods are great tools to build trust with customers. If customers are presented with payment options that are locally popular and trusted, they pay with peace of mind. Also, it’s more likely for local payment methods to actually be in the use of these customers.

There’s no point in offering only standard and internationally accepted payment choices when they aren’t in the use of your target customers. That’s why providing region-specific payment methods brings in more subscribers.

It is mobile-first for easier access

Localized checkouts have to be increasingly mobile-friendly. It is more convenient for customers to browse ecommerce stores through their mobile phones. So naturally its more convenient for them to pay on phone too.

Successful businesses employing localized checkouts ensure that they work the most seamlessly on mobile.

It advocates familiarity

Customers see the information fields formatted according to their country’s norms. For instance, for a Japanese customer, the address field would follow the country, then city, then subarea structure. Localizing data field formatting on the checkout page helps customers fill them faster.

It deeply localizes pricing

Pricing locally is not just a matter of converting the price of a product into its equivalent in various currencies. For successful businesses, it is more than that. They make distinct prices for every country, taking into account its economy, and multiple other factors. Thus, their pricing connects with local consumers better.

It sets customers up for recurring billing

How the billing is conducted at checkout leaves a long-lasting impression on customers. By providing them with a localized and friendly checkout experience, merchants effectively win their trust for the future billing cycles. Customers are clearly communicated that their future payments will be just as localized and hassle-free as the initial.

SubscriptionFlow Helps in Precise Checkout Localization and Billing

SubscriptionFlow is your solution for a localized ecommerce checkout to target various consumer markets. This is what SubscriptionFlow’s checkout allows merchants to do:

Integrate with multiple gateways

Merchants can enable only those payment methods for their customers that are supported by their integrated gateways. That’s why it’s so important to have a diverse payment gateway stack, that allows you to activate local payment options too.

With SubscriptionFlow merchants can connect with localized gateways that offer them country-specific payment methods. With these, they can tap into various markets such as South Africa and Europe.

Bill in local currencies

Merchants can auto-convert their prices based on the customer’s location. They can either bill according to the converted prices, or set up their own prices for multiple regions for better localization. Whichever option they choose to offer, SubscriptionFlow assists them with flawless billing.

Apply regional taxes automatically

SubscriptionFlow automates tax calculation based on the selected country. This helps merchants produce tax compliant invoices. The taxes are stated on the invoice transparently, and aren’t deducted like hidden fees.

Auto-select the customer’s currency

Each customer’s currency is auto-selected based on their country. What this means is that customers don’t have to manually scroll through a list of currencies to choose theirs. That requires effort and time, and customers may end up selecting the wrong currency too. So auto-selected currencies help localize the checkout even further.

Customize data fields to your liking

SubscriptionFlow’s checkout is fully customizable. From changing its format to structure to data fields—merchants can do it all with just a few clicks. They can modify information fields according to the customs of their consumers. And then enable different fields for customers belonging to different regions.

Create recurring invoices in the chosen currency

Localization doesn’t stop at checkout only. It follows the other billing cycles too to keep the customer’s payment experience consistent and impactful. For that, SubscriptionFlow allows invoicing in multiple currencies. It automatically generates invoices based on the customer’s saved currency in its database to maintain charge clarity.

Want to boost subscriber traffic to your ecommerce store? Try SubscriptionFlow today, and deliver localized payment experiences that convert.