Marek Placheta is Customer Success Team Leader at Webinterpret. Marek focuses on optimisation of the accounts and increasing their cross border sales results. Today he shares Webinterprets findings on which product categories and countries the most active cross border traders are.
Are you missing out on Cross Border Trade?
In the battle for online sales things are really heating up. As the obstacles to international selling become smaller and smaller German eBayers are leading the way in the race for global dominance. However the British are awakening to the new opportunities for international growth and responding in kind.
You may have heard about the benefits of selling internationally using the WebInterpret tool and how some sellers are seeing their revenue increase by more than 50% on previous levels. But today we will look a little closer at who these sellers are and what they are selling.
WebInterpret carried out an analysis into the online retailers selling with Webinterpret on eBay and selected the 20 sellers who achieved the highest GMV figures last month. What you may be surprised to learn is that the vast majority of the sellers on this list places are located in Germany. Our analysis shows that 65% of the top 20 sellers that appeared on our list last month were German retailers with the British and American sellers each accounting for only 15%.
What’s more, when we ranked these 20 sellers by who had increased their GMV by the greatest percentage through using WebInterpret we found that all three of the top performers were located in Germany.
We also looked at the product categories in which these top sellers where selling and found that the top three were selling items in categories of
First place: Electronics
Second Place: Health and Beauty
Third Place: Clothes, Shoes & Accessories
Other very profitable categories included tools, furniture, watches, sportswear and sporting goods, and mobile phone accessories.
What’s also interesting is the actual impact that WebInterpret had on the revenue generated by each eBay seller. The retailer who experienced the greatest impact sold products into the Electronic category and saw their revenue increase by 53.07%. In other words, WebInterpret increased his GMV by over a half. The seller in second place enjoyed an increase of 43.30% in the Bathroom Accessory category and the third placed seller sold into the Clothes shoes and & Accessories category and saw and increase of 39.47% with WebInterpret.
But the British should be encouraged. When it comes to the highest overall GMV achieved a UK seller sits firmly at the top of the table with an impressive figure of £1,291,027 selling auto parts. In second place was a German seller with sales of £305,221 selling garden tool, and third place belongs to a American seller with £145,608.24 worth of sales in the watches category.
Undoubtedly, when it comes to the best use of WebInterpret, first place has to go to the Germans. However, the British are responding to the invasion of German eBay sellers into their domestic marketplace by launching a counter attack of their own which all makes for an open and exciting International market offering great rewards to both sellers and buyers alike.
Top 20 Webinterpret customers by GMV % Increase
| Domestic GMV | Active GMV | GMV % | Location | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £58,681.09 | £24,860.06 | 53.07% | Germany | Electronics |
| £140,961.25 | £48,731.98 | 43.30% | Germany | Bathroom accecories |
| £86,803.11 | £27,355.59 | 39.47% | Germany | Apparel |
| £79,578.29 | £30,506.87 | 38.34% | UK | Tools |
| £92,603.71 | £27,555.14 | 37.27% | Germany | Furniture and house accessories |
| £63,987.41 | £38,459.29 | 36.09% | USA | Watches |
| £98,557.16 | £29,637.74 | 30.07% | UK | Various accessories such as sport accessories, clothing, office materials |
| £83,813.60 | £37,788.65 | 27.07% | USA | Replacement Lenses |
| £133,034.56 | £40,075.75 | 24.05% | Germany | Apparel and Sports accesories |
| £114,626.86 | £32,015.56 | 22.30% | Germany | Air Suspension Compressor |
| £194,075.79 | £40,206.95 | 16.54% | Germany | Furniture. Home accesories |
| £237,258.86 | £45,686.76 | 15.37% | Germany | Sports goods, Home accesories |
| £305,221.18 | £52,273.06 | 13.67% | Germany | Gardening |
| £307,812.83 | £51,018.39 | 13.23% | Germany | Shoes |
| £145,608.24 | £31,774.66 | 13.10% | USA | Watches, Lighters |
| £186,792.39 | £29,410.01 | 12.57% | Germany | Sportswear |
| £298,411.75 | £46,611.84 | 12.47% | Germany | Drilling tools |
| £282,259.84 | £31,570.67 | 8.93% | Germany | Mobile phones accessories |
| £1,291,027.26 | £44,557.91 | 3.45% | UK | Electronics, Car parts |
12 Responses
In an ideal world Webinterpret would be oerfect and at the start when i used them via Ebay it worked well and yes i did have a huge amount of sales. Gradually i noticed my listings were not being translated properly. Sizing was wrong, custom made items which i had on my UK site as 15 working days to make Webinterpret did my listings as same day dispatch.
I emailed them several times to get my listings all done correctly, spending ages on the phone to Magda (she has since moved on). Then ALL my listings were made 15 working days.
Again i spent ages on the phone but by then i had defects as customers who bought custom items were asking where their item was!
One day i emailed customer service 8 times to get the sizing correct but their translation was no good.
For this company to work they MUST make sure their employers are more than able to translate many different sizes and much more.
To make it even worse, i had only just paid £1000.00 for 6 months more work with them, ended up having my selling limit restricted by Ebay because of this company so after the 2nd month i had to finish with them and close my account. I was not able to sell anything on Ebay from June to 20th July.
Webinterpret had £1000.00 from me for 2 months work. They have a clause ” no money refunded if you close your account”. I have never EVER received an apology.
It would appear that Belgium, rather than Germany, are the best sellers going off the flag you have displayed! Dear me!
Something that disappoints me is that every scheduled phone call from ebay or every ebay seminar about international selling I took part in was to sell me webinterpret services.
I had real questions about expanding internationally but the only advice I was ever offered was to sign up to webinterpret. Last phone call I had from ebay (or as I suspect from a webinterpret sales rep), I asked about using M2E Pro, the lady on the phone said “yes, i have heard of this company before”. Clueless.
Real solutions from ebay within selling manager pro to sell internationally would be great. Starting with being able to duplicate English listings from co.uk to other English-speaking ebay sites. I always feel like Amazon support me and want my business to grow. I wish ebay had the same attitude.
(BE VERY CAREFUL)
We used Webinterpret earlier this year (Feb 2014) for expanding into German marketplace, they caused huge issues for our company. Ridiculously poor translation and cross infection of our MAIN titles caused us to send wrong items to Germany, the cost of courier uplift and return became huge and suspension via Amazon followed.
We did however realise the German marketplace was very lucrative for us, we relaunched with a Leipzig company called Interculteral-Elements – this company use human translation rather than google translation and now we are selling with success in Germany thanks to great translation from a professional GERMAN company.
we tried webinterpret, cant believe how awful it was.
seriously, they had my eBay account restricted – TWICE.
nothing works, the translations are awful, they cant manage simple price instructions (as simple as:
“convert the £s to €s, free shipping, no extra charges”.
they failed this repeatedly. took MONTHS to follow this most basic of instructions).
their solution for not being able to handle subtitiles properly – just delete all subtitles from my UK listings.
serioulsy, give them a wide berth.
At least I wasn’t the only one disappointed with the Webinterpret service.
Translation problems were constant in the trial, said they could limit all international sales to Paypal, but then apparently couldn’t, and support don’t answer all the questions they are sent. Reporting wasn’t user friendly – you need to know the product, not the ebay item ID, there needs to be a method to find only and all translated items on an ebay country so problems can be identified quickly in titles.
Then you start looking at what it will cost in extra fees to use Webinterpret as an ongoing solution.
My view was that bad translation doesn’t portray the right quality I want my customers to experience with my company. Initially fees significantly dent the extra profitability to be enjoyed, and the hassle factor didn’t make it a viable proposition.
Decided I would only do this again where I can control precisely what is listed and where.
My name is Christopher and I am a Webinterpret Customer Advocate.
Webinterpret would like to sincerely apologise for the serious errors you have experienced during your co-oporation with us.
Thank you for voicing them.
We have noticed and are addressing the concerns to improve every seller’s experience. We are on the right path to bringing new customers to our door and having customers stay with us and become successful in ecommerce overseas.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite you back into our programme to show you how we have improved.
The quality of our translations are near perfect thanks to our better trained translators.
We have expanded our Quality Assessment team and we respond quicker to fixing translation errors.
Size conversions are a problem of the past as we have dedicated an entire section to this on the seller user interface.
Each seller using size conversion charts has full control over them from their dashboard.
Once edited, the listings will capture the changes and buyers are ensured of getting the correct sizes for their region.
Selling limits is something that we are closely working on with eBay. Only eBay has the power to grant seller allowance.
We know that sellers on our programme need much more than normal. We hope to have a solution for you soon.
Our software employs shipping mappings created by eBay and we are constantly ensuring that we stick to them for the security of each seller and buyer.
Our solution is compatible with many third party tools like m2epro. We have tech savvy Customer Advocates who are knowledgeable
about them and who can help you configure them for the duration of your time with us.
We also have a solid third party tool testing procedure for any that requires testing.
Currently, we are not supporting subtitles on listings. Sellers need to be aware that they will bring
higher insertion fees to the translated items as they do for the original listings.
Also, not all listing forms offer the ability to add a subtitle.
Subtitle text isn’t searchable when buyers do a standard title search for items. However, the subtitle is searchable if a buyer includes the description in an advanced search, which not many care to do.
Our Customer Advocate teams are growing. They have regular training on developing soft and hard skills and they do care about you.
This month alone the teams have recorded nearly 90% satisfaction rate from our customers.
We invite you to contact us at [email protected] or via LiveChat from our webiste so we can review and assist you to optimize your account.
PS: Nina, the picture boxes with the Belgium flags made me chuckle too – lol!
In response to eBay promoting WebInterpret, eBay first offered to put us on a program to expand our international sales with Webinterpret, and then yet another free, eBay-sponsored “IAP” service. After checking online for reviews of Webinterpret, we decided not to try it. We did try the IAP program but had little success, so in the end we’ve decided to stick with the company who we’ve worked with for the last years, InterCultural Elements. The guys over at ICE have expanded us to multiple countries and marketplaces, and in the end , being able to trust the quality of the work they do is more important than getting a questionable service for free.