It’s been four years since eBay opened up a new country site in Europe, but they’re just about to add six new territories aiming to specifically attract new buyers.
Currently in Beta, eBay International Markets will fully launch on February 3rd 2010 at eBay.eu to Russia, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Denmark and Sweden providing full language translation and customer support.That’s a population of over 182 million Europeans that will be able to access eBay in their own language for the first time.
The good news for sellers in the three biggest eBay marketplaces is that the buyers will be directed to listings from eBay UK, Germany and eBay.com increasing sales for businesses that offer international shipping.
Key benefits for buyers in eBay International Markets
- Fully translated eBay site – the only things not translated will be sellers item titles and descriptions. Registration, Search, Checkout and of course My eBay will be in the local language
- The ability to search all 16 existing eBay country sites, but only see search results where the seller will ship to their location
- Localised currency and time zone
- Customer support in their own language (based out of Berlin)
- Localised marketing
- Weekly deals at deep discounts (mainly products sourced from Asia Pacific sellers)
The focus in these six new countries will be on buying, with the aim to drive sales to UK, German and US sellers. From the full launch in January new buyers in these countries will be able to register on their own country site in their own language.
This should be exciting news for sellers who ship internationally, generally buyers in the new eBay International Markets are early adopters of the Internet. They’re multi-lingual and comfortable with cross border trade, international shipping, customs & taxes such as VAT and payments (which will be PayPal only). Also a key statistic is that a new buyer in these territories generally is more active than a new eBay user in established countries like the UK.
These buyers are looking for luxury goods, products that either can’t be sourced or are significantly more expensive in their own countries and of course authentic goods. If you want to attract these new buyers things you need to know are:- only fixed price items will be included; You’ll need to ship world wide and specify postage costs; be PayPal verified; and of course to offer PayPal as a payment option.
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