VAT – cleverbridge http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:52:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5 Seven Tips for Growing Your Global Subscriber Base http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/7-tips-for-growing-your-global-subscriber-base/ Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:24:48 +0000 http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/?p=22486 Wherever you find digital shopping, you will also find different regional requirements for succeeding in those markets. A flexible global customer experience means that your business technology gives the best customer experience to anyone who visits your site, no matter where they come from.

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You’re familiar with how to sell to U.S. consumers online. But is that experience going to help you expand revenue in Europe or Asia?

Wherever you find digital shopping, you will also find different regional requirements for succeeding in those markets. To accommodate those local customs across the global market, your customer experience needs to be flexible. Flexibility in this area does not mean your customer experience needs to touch its nose to its toes. A flexible global customer experience means that your business technology gives the best customer experience to anyone who visits your site, no matter where they come from.

Localization is one technique you should use for creating the good customer experiences. It is important for maximizing recurring revenue, because it provides more acquisitions up front and more renewals later on, thus reducing your churn rates and increasing your customer lifetime value.

To help you take your business to this next level of safe and secure customer experiences optimized for global customers, we put together this analysis of the seven most important aspects for creating the best customer experience to grow your global subscriber base:

  • Languages
  • Currencies
  • Prices
  • Payment methods
  • Page elements
  • Taxes
  • Risk management

Localize Languages

Avoid making assumptions about which language to display to your customers based solely on their geolocation. Instead, rely on the preferences customers select in the browser. Then use those preferences to deliver the right customer experience for sign-up pages, marketing emails, customer account sections and in-app messages.

Localize Currencies

If you want to raise conversion rates and maximize renewal rates, you must let subscribers pay in their local currency. Depending on your base currency, a fluctuating exchange rate may be a problem for CLV, or it may be an opportunity for unexpected cash. Research your competition and test different pricing methods to see which prices work best for specific regional markets.

Localize Prices

You can price your service in a local currency but still not offer a competitive price. When you set prices in local currencies, don’t use a floating exchange rate to convert the prices of your product, and make sure the prices display in clean, round numbers. You also have to consider the purchasing power of the average customer in your target market.

Localize Payment Methods

Localizing payment methods makes the user experience of paying for subscriptions as simple as possible for the customer. Many subscribers in different regions of the world prefer to use payment methods other than credit card. You must offer those payment methods to reduce friction in the customer experience and increase recurring revenue rates.

Localize Page Elements

Page elements are easy to overlook, but they are essential to providing exceptional customer experiences to your global subscribers. The way you display dates, prices, and form fields must all comply with local conventions, which vary widely.

Localize Taxes

If you are the merchant of record for your online transactions, you need a system in place to correctly calculate, collect and remit taxes to the proper tax authorities. Displaying taxes the right way raises conversion rates and maximizes renewals. And complying with regional tax law mitigates the risk to your business. But the number of taxing jurisdictions across the world makes achieving compliance with all global tax requirements on your own a difficult challenge.

Localize Risk Management

More and more, companies are starting to realize just how important it is to both comply with regional privacy standards and secure crucial business data from hackers and breaches. The more you know about your obligations in the areas of data privacy and information security, the safer your customers will feel and the safer your business will be.

Keystone

Localization is crucial for creating better customer experiences and earning more recurring revenue. When you implement great customer experiences, you make it easier for people around the world to subscribe to your service, and that means more recurring revenue for you.

Download the full ebook to learn all about localizing your subscription business for international markets.

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Summer Rerun: Technori Sits Down With cleverbridge’s Craig Vodnik [Podcast] http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/when-do-you-worry-about-global-compliance/ Wed, 30 Aug 2017 17:00:33 +0000 http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/?p=21709 Taking your business global is filled with complexity. The challenges complying with tax and privacy laws multiply with each new market you enter. Recently, cleverbrige Co-Founder Craig Vodnik sat down with Technori's Scott Kitun to discuss when and how companies should address their global tax and privacy compliance.

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Although we originally ran this blog post in July 2016, the challenges and complexities of taking your digital business global are still very much relevant. Read the excerpt and then listen to the podcast.

Taking your business global is filled with complexity. With each new market you enter, you multiply the challenges of complying with tax and privacy laws, or even just being able to process customer data. cleverbridge Co-Founder Craig Vodnik sat down with Technori’s Scott Kitun to discuss when and how companies should address their global tax and privacy compliance.

Listen to the podcast

Podcast Excerpt: The Alarm Bells of Global Compliance

Craig talks about when a company needs to think about compliance. He identifies two alarm bells that will alert your business to this need. First, are you selling online in the United States? If so, then you need to worry about state sales tax wherever you have a tax nexus. Second, are you attracting customers from global markets? If so, then you need to worry about data privacy and data sovereignty.

As Craig puts it:

When a company starts seeing that they’re getting interest from other countries, that’s when the second alarm bell should be going off. The first one is actually taxation in the U.S. Sales tax — where is your nexus? Where do you have a physical presence? And it’s no longer just physical presence, it could be you’re using an affiliate that creates a tax nexus in another state that you’re unaware of … 

… So that’s the first thing: If you’ve got affiliates, you need to be worried about tax nexus around the U.S.

As you start going global, when you see interest from other countries – whether it’s Canada, whether it’s the UK, Australia – that’s going to start to create additional  problems that you should be aware of. Particularly around taxes — that’s the first thing, as we just discussed — but the second thing is global privacy policies and data sovereignty issues.

Countries around the world are starting to pass laws that say, I want my citizens to be protected. I want their data to stay within the confines of my country or my region. The EU would be a good example of that. And that’s why Brexit is such an important thing.

Edward Snowden kind of elevated data privacy and data sovereignty to be much bigger issues in peoples’ minds. Data sovereignty means keeping the customer data within the walls of that country. Data privacy asks what are the rules by which you can operate with that customer data when they’ve signed up for your service? It starts to get very complex.

And then throw on top the same issue you have in the U.S., which is taxation. How are the VAT rules in the EU changing? They just changed, by the way, six months ago. What’s happening in South Korea? They passed a law that says if you’re selling an online service or digital product into South Korea — even if you have no presence — you have to charge 10 percent VAT and remit it to the South Korean government. We don’t have a nexus in South Korea, yet we still comply with that law. Japan? 8 percent as of last October 1.

Keystone

Their conversation was wide ranging. Listen to the whole thing to find out what softball and double byte characters have to do with global subscription billing.

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The Complexity of Regional Tax Compliance for Your Digital Goods and Services http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/the-complexity-of-regional-tax-compliance-for-your-digital-goods-and-services/ Wed, 12 Oct 2016 20:00:24 +0000 http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/?p=22222 Figuring out whether the product or service you sell is taxable is one thing. Determining rates is another, and your obligations change according to the location of both your business and your buyers. To complicate things even more, the rules change frequently and repercussions for violating the rules can be swift and severe.

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Last week, Craig discussed that subscription billing, an already complex topic, gets even more complex when you start pursuing cross-border sales. This week, we’ll dive a little deeper into that complexity by exploring regional tax compliance for your digital goods and services.

Disclaimer: This blog post does not contain legal advice. The rights, obligations and liabilities of a business vary according to geography, industry, method of delivery, type of product, and all sorts of other variables that preclude us from using this blog post to tell anyone how they must act from a legal perspective.

Selling software online was more or less a tax free activity when ecommerce began in the mid-90s. The technology was new, there was no legislation specific to selling software online, and consumers flocked to the internet to purchase perpetual licenses for their favorite software programs which were delivered to them electronically.

It didn’t take too long before governments around the world realized they were missing out on revenue. Laws were gradually written or reinterpreted so that governments could obligate business to collect taxes for digital products or services from out of state and out of country customers.

If you are the merchant of record for your online sales, managing tax calculation, collection and remittance is a difficult and resource intensive activity.

Neglecting these tax issues can be extremely detrimental to your bottom line and vigilance is required.

How Much Tax Must Your Business Collect?

Figuring out whether the product or service you sell is taxable is one thing. Determining rates is another, and your obligations change according to the location of both your business and your buyers. To complicate things even more, the rules change frequently and repercussions for violating the rules can be swift and severe.

Taxes in the U.S.

The Marketplace Fairness Act has been languishing in Congress for years. That means that there is no federal law in the U.S. requiring online businesses in one state to collect taxes from consumers in another state. In the meantime, local governments are reinterpreting existing laws and instituting new ones to drive more revenue for their jurisdictions.

Traditionally, if a business lacked a physical presence (offices, warehouses, employees, etc.) in a state, it did not have to collect and remit a sales tax to that state. Over the last five years, many states established so-called Amazon tax laws that created tax nexuses for businesses in situations where they could traditionally argue that they had no physical presence in the state. For example, many states passed laws creating tax nexuses if a business had affiliates in that state.

Similarly, so-called cloud taxes were established in the state of Tennessee and the city of Chicago in 2015. These governments can now collect revenue from business that do not have traditional physical presences in those jurisdictions.

Taxes in the EU

Unlike the U.S., the EU has been collecting value added tax (VAT) on digital products for years. But much like the U.S., the laws have changed over time. Originally, customers paid tax based on the origin of the product, not its destination. This was turned on its head in 2015. Now EU customers pay VAT rates based on the residence of the customer, not the origin of the digital service.

Additionally, when it comes to the shopping experience for EU consumers, you have to indicate the entire full price customers will pay at checkout. You can’t display a price and then later add the tax amount to it. Also, you have to indicate which portion goes toward taxes. That isn’t a consumer preference. That is the law.

There are more countries in Europe than the EU member states to be considered: In Switzerland and Norway, electronic services have been subject to VAT since January 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011 respectively.

Taxes in the Asia-Pacific Market

Mature ecommerce markets in APAC are also starting to collect taxes on online sales. Japan assesses an 8 percent consumption tax on online sales while South Korea’s VAT rate is 10 percent. Last August, Australia’s Commonwealth Government announced that they are pursuing legislation to apply a goods and services tax on cross-border sales of digital products and services. They hope this new law will be adopted sometime in 2017.

There are more countries coming up in the near future with new VAT laws re digital services: New Zealand (starts October 1, 2016), Taiwan and Russia (starts January 1, 2017).

More and more, just like the EU member states, departments of revenues across the US, and governments in the Asia Pacific markets are looking to drive revenue by obligating online businesses to calculate, collect and remit taxes for online sales to local customers.

Regulations for taxing internet purchases of digital goods are relatively new and being reworked constantly, so what was true five years ago isn’t necessarily true today. And what is true today won’t necessarily remain so five years from now.

Keystone

All of this is just a small taste of what it means to comply with global online tax.  Expanding your subscription business globally has great appeal, but it’s clearly more complicated than it appears on the surface. Assess your risk and make sure you are prepared.

For further insight in what it takes to expand your subscription business beyond its current borders, download our complimentary ebook, 3 Compliance Risks for Global Subscriptions

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The Hidden Costs of Subscription Billing http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/hidden-costs-subscription-billing/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 20:23:39 +0000 http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/?p=21621 It's easy to overlook important costs when comparing in-house and outsourced subscription billing solutions. In order to determine your true costs, you need a full cost breakdown and clear visibility into everything that global subscription billing entails.

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It’s easy to overlook important costs when comparing in-house and outsourced subscription billing solutions. In order to determine your true costs, you need a full cost breakdown and clear visibility into everything that global subscription billing entails.

So that’s what we did. We found that all of the everyday tasks and expenses involved with managing a solution in-house can prevent growth into new markets and can stunt ongoing optimization efforts.

Let’s Break It Down

Evaluating the costs associated with managing an in-house subscription billing solution is a major task, and involves looking at every aspect of your business. In this post, we look at three key areas: localization and front-end design, tax collection and remittance, and global data and legal compliance. These are only some of the areas a subscription business will need to manage, either on their own or with partners. But even without accounting for back-end development, accounting, IT administration and security, subscription management, fraud prevention and customer support, the costs of developing a home-grown solution quickly begin to spiral out of control.

Localization and Front-End Design

Important Considerations

Localization

Optimizing your subscription pages and purchase process for new and existing regions involves significant localization resources. This includes translating text, accommodating double-byte characters, and displaying relevant form fields in the right sequence. Displaying localized pricing, payment methods and currencies will inspire customer confidence and increase conversions.

Continuous Testing and Quality Assessment (QA)

Testing the design and layout of your online sales process is key to optimizing conversions. You also need to keep up with evolving design trends, customer demands, frameworks and features and test these regularly. QA is an integral part of launching redesigned or reconfigured subscription pages or purchase processes. If you’re testing internally, you’ll need a good six to nine months of user data before you can draw any real conclusions.

Responsive Design

Customers expect a seamless experience regardless of whether they’re using their PC, tablet or phone, so you need to invest in resources for delivering responsive design across devices.

Key Takeaway

The time and resources needed to effectively manage a presence in multiple regions on your own are significant. A subscription billing provider can rapidly deliver a customized, responsive customer experience — including design (fonts, colors, etc.), build-out and quality assessment. The QA period will be considerably shorter because your provider has market research (derived from working with multiple clients) on which configurations will attract and retain subscribers in each region.

Learn more about localizing for a global subscriber base with our illustrated ebook 7 Tips for Growing Your Global Subscriber Base

Tax Collection and Remittance

Important Considerations

Value-Added Tax (VAT)

The EU first started charging VAT on digital transactions that occur within the EU in 2003. Since then, VAT structure and standards have been continually evolving, and companies often have a hard time staying compliant. For example, prior to 2015, VAT assessment was based on where your business was located; now VAT rate is contingent on destination (that is, where your customer is located). If you have customers in the EU, it’s critical that you understand and comply with VAT regulations by collecting and remitting tax to the proper authorities. By not complying, intentionally or otherwise, you risk major fines. Your global revenue will take a hit, too, since prices without VAT factored in are not properly optimized for profit.

Tax Laws Based on Subscription Type

There are different tax implications depending on the type of subscription being sold (physical, digital, on premise software, etc.). Logic for calculating this kind of tax needs to be built into your subscription billing platform.

Regional Tax Laws

Tax laws vary from region to region and are subject to change. For instance, a new set of regulations in South Korea states that electronic services sold to South Korean customers are subject to a VAT of 10 percent. Laws like this go into effect immediately, and it’s mandatory that your business complies.

Sales Tax

In the United States, tax must be collected on all taxable sales, and tax rates vary from state-to-state. Collecting sales tax can be an enormous chore for online businesses because any customer in any state can conceivably purchase anything online. Sure, you can apply for individual seller’s permits in each state, calculate state tax on a per-customer basis and keep track of tax you collect — but that will take up significant internal resources.

Key Takeaway

Staying up-to-date on changes to global sales tax and VAT regulations is a task in and of itself. Actually calculating and remitting tax correctly is another. But you can rely on your subscription billing provider for both. Also, they’ll automatically factor your customer’s location and your company’s tax nexus into every transaction, and maximize recurring revenue in each region through optimized pricing.

Global Compliance

Important Considerations

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

Strict PCI DSS compliance is required for any business accepting credit card payments. Recurring auditing fees hinge on a variety of factors — company size, number of transactions processed annually, existing infrastructure, credit card data scope, etc. — and initial implementation is quite costly. Fines for non-compliance, however, can be catastrophic for your business: up to $90 fine per cardholder data compromised, suspension of credit card acceptance, loss of brand reputation, the cost of a PCI Qualified Forensic Investigator ($130-200 per hour for a one to two year project) and much, much more. Additionally, PCI DSS compliant infrastructure, processes and scope are updated at least every two years, so you can’t rest on your laurels.

Privacy Laws for International Sales & Data Transfer

Applicable privacy laws are another serious consideration. Because laws, regulations, standards and best practices around this are continually changing, they require constant monitoring. Your business needs to respond immediately to any sudden changes that impact business practices, like Canada’s recent Anti-SPAM legislation (for which violators face penalties up to $10,000,000).

Global Trade Compliance Regulations

These are constantly being updated, so you need to stay abreast of any countries in which an embargo or other specific trade rules apply. Without screening and escalation processes in place for identifying embargoed countries and individuals or organizations on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) watch list, you run the risk of non-compliance with U.S. export regulations. That can lead to 10 to 30 years of imprisonment and fines between $50,000 and $10,000,000.

European Privacy Laws

Even United States-based companies have to think about European privacy laws when engaging with European customers: European law requires an adequate level of data protection when collecting, processing or storing customer data from European citizens. The German Federal Data Protection Act (FDPA) fines your business up to 300.000€ per violation. Not complying with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when it goes into effect in 2018 may audit a fine up to €20,000,000 (or up to 4 percent of the annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greater).

Data Breach Notification Laws

In the United States, these laws vary by state. Some states simply provide a maximum civil penalty per breach; other states calculate the penalty based on the number of customers affected. Under Michigan’s statute, a business that knowingly fails to provide the required notice to a customer is fined up to $250 per failure (with a maximum fine of $750,000).

Channel Partner Compliance

If you do business with channel partners (affiliates, resellers, etc.), you must actively screen them to make sure they’re also maintaining compliance with global standards.

Updating Security Infrastructure

Active maintenance of network security infrastructure is also required — for example, outdated versions of a firewall operating system may no longer be compliant.

Key Takeaway

In the unlikely event of a security breach, litigators can claim negligence if it is determined that your business violated compliance standards. A subscription billing provider will protect the personal information of your customers and react immediately to any sudden changes in legislation. Additionally, they will keep you in line with global trade compliance regulations, ensuring that you don’t conduct business in embargoed countries.

Keystone

We all get by with a little help from our friends. On top of offloading internal operations and reducing processing costs, utilizing a subscription billing provider actually creates revenue opportunities for your business. You might not have the internal resources required to expand into new markets, comply with global data privacy regulations and prevent fraud while continually nurturing long-term customer relationships — but an experienced provider can help with all of that and more.

To learn more about the hidden costs of global subscription billing, check out our interactive microsite.

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June 2016 Subscription Digest — Brexit, CX and Global Compliance http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/june-2016-subscription-digest/ Wed, 29 Jun 2016 21:26:18 +0000 http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/?p=21504 Summer is here and subscription news is broiling. June was a busy month here at the blog, where we covered strategies for legal compliance in the subscription world, data security in the cloud, key subscription metrics, unlocking the value of CRM data, knowledge management in the cloud, and finding opportunities in the turmoil of the Brexit […]

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Summer is here and subscription news is broiling. June was a busy month here at the blog, where we covered strategies for legal compliance in the subscription world, data security in the cloud, key subscription metrics, unlocking the value of CRM data, knowledge management in the cloud, and finding opportunities in the turmoil of the Brexit vote.

Below, find out about the hot June stories you may have missed. We tackle the implications of the Brexit vote for data compliance and taxation. We take a look at customer experience in terms of subscription billing, balancing CX with monetization, and how to maximize your CX ROI. Finally, we look at global compliance through the lens of data protection.

Brexit Roundup

The vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union this month is big news. What the news means, no one really knows yet. But that hasn’t stopped a bevy of writers from chiming in.

83% of UK IT leaders said that their data centers are based in Europe — diginomica

Brexit and Data Compliance — Where to Now? | diginomica

While not much is clear in the wake of the Brexit vote, what is clear is that the next two years will be fraught with U.K./EU trade negotiations. Diginomica asks, where to now?

“At best, Brexit leaves the U.K.’s position on data sovereignty and governance uncertain, and at worst a legislative mess that may take years, even decades, to resolve. The latter is a real possibility: the Leave campaign admits to having no post-Brexit plan.”

A key statistic is that 83 percent of IT leaders in the U.K. said that their data centers are based in Europe. This fact alone is significant. Either those data centers move to the U.K., a data privacy standard is adopted between the U.K. and the EU, or U.K. companies dedicate continental resources to their EU customers while doubling up operations back at home for their U.K. customers. In any case, it means additional expenses that divert resources from innovation.

10 Facts Tax Professionals Need to Know about UK Brexit Vote to Leave the EU | AccountingToday.com

Accounting Today takes a close look at the Brexit’s implications for tax compliance from many angles. Especially relevant are their observations about digital goods:

Since 2015, US companies use the single reporting portal, MOSS. This accepts single, simplified quarterly VAT returns to cover sales and VAT due for all 28 states. A U.K. exit from the EU VAT regime will mean digital service income to U.K. consumers will have to be reported separately to the U.K. tax authorities. This will require a new, separate VAT registration in the U.K. by US providers, and quarterly U.K. VAT returns.

Note: Digital services subject to VAT include a wider net of transactions than the US definition of digital goods. As well as e-books, EU and U.K. VAT is due on service income from consumers for products such as: online membership sites; subscriptions to news websites; hosting services; streaming video, music or games; online education; hosting services; broadcast TV and radio; and telephonic voice and data.

Customer Experience

Subscription Billing and the Era of Customer Experience | cleverbridge

We launched a new video series this month. In case you missed it, cleverbridge co-founder Craig Vodnik gets us thinking about subscription billing that puts customers at the center.

The Balance Between Monetization and User Engagement | Business 2 Community

In the subscription world, monetizing content or customer relationships is the name of the game, but doing it poorly can mean ruining customer experience. As Business 2 Community’s Roee Ganot says, “Adding a bunch of pop-ups and other ads isn’t really conducive to the user experience since they become so annoyed with the ads that they just leave.”

Even if you don’t serve traditional ads, excessive marketing pushes through email or in-app messaging can also spoil customer experience. Ganot outlines some simple steps to take that will provide customers the choices and seamless experiences they demand.

How Marketers Can Improve ROI on Customer Experience | AdAge

AdAge introduces an interesting concept to measure the return on investing in outstanding customer experience. “The secret to maximizing CX ROI is to focus on customer experience value (CXV) — creating the most experience value for those customers that will create the most business value for the company (now and in the future).”

They define four ways to approach measuring CXV, which focus heavily on strong segmentation. They recommend not only segmenting the customers with greater CLV, but also segmenting the moments that matter most to subscribers. Emphasizing the most valuable touchpoints for the most valuable subscribers is the key to maximizing CXV.

Global Compliance

Why Companies Need Pseudonymisation and Data Masking for GDPR Compliance | Information Age

Not every business is responding to new European data privacy regulations by gearing up for total regulatory paralysis. A movement among data managers towards pseudonymisation is turning regulation into innovation. Information Age says, “Pseudonymisation is an umbrella term for approaches like data masking that aim to protect confidential information that directly or indirectly reveals an individual’s identity … The GDPR punishes businesses that fail to protect personal data in keeping with its requirements, and encourages the use of pseudonymisation technologies, as a part of its security requirements. The fine for non-compliance can be harsh, as much as 4% of global turnover, enough to jeopardise ongoing European operations for any business selling in the EU.”

It’s a complex world. Get your complimentary guide to Navigating the Subscription Solutions Landscape today.

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Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/six-guides-e-commerce-essentials/ Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:27:04 +0000 http://blog.cleverbridge.com/?p=15472 You need to improve your ecommerce performance. But where to start? There are so many ways to create more conversions, raise average order values and decrease costs related to your ecommerce store. Just in time for the holiday season of November and December, when you know store visits are going to increase with gift seeking consumers, […]

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You need to improve your ecommerce performance. But where to start? There are so many ways to create more conversions, raise average order values and decrease costs related to your ecommerce store.

Just in time for the holiday season of November and December, when you know store visits are going to increase with gift seeking consumers, we’re offering you a few good guides on ecommerce essentials. These short guides will assist you in improving both your mundane and exciting ecommerce needs.

For those of you with freemium and free trials products we have a guide on generating revenue from free users, and another that teaches you how to effectively convert users in-app.

One of these guides comes along with 13 pro tips on reducing cart abandonment and there is one with advice about increasing your carts’ average order value.

In harmony with the market for this time of year, we have a guide for holiday season ecommerce. And, as VAT laws update next year, we’ve got a guide for that too.

We know you’re really busy, that’s why we wrote these short guides for ecommerce essentials. Check them out to learn practical tips for livening up your ecommerce performance.

Download your guides now!

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Localizing Ecommerce [White Paper] http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/localizing-e-commerce-white-paper/ Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:57:21 +0000 http://blog.cleverbridge.com/?p=12043 If you partner with a third party e-commerce solution, its imperative that they have capabilities to help you manage your target markets to help increase revenues from those locations.

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Get our complimentary cleverbridge white paper to see if you have the capabilities you need to maximize online sales in foreign markets.

Effective localization creates customer comfort and convenience at every stage of the buying process.

The Internet facilitates international trade like nothing in the history of humanity. As a software vendor, you’re offering a valuable product to customers around the world. But you know that you can’t just enter a market and expect over night success. You need to understand the local culture in which you are trading and adapt your selling techniques accordingly. The process of adapting your offering to a new market is called localization.

With all that being said, there are many areas of your ecommerce business that require localization. For example, the text of your actual product might need to be translated. Your paid search advertisements also need localization. And, of course, your checkout process and shopping cart need to be localized.

“Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.” –  via Internationalization and localization – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

It’s important to understand that localization is far more than mere text translation. It requires localized elements and placements aside from text translations – something that provides a familiar experience to the online shopper. Designing the ultimate localized shopping experience depends on:

  • Knowing who your visitors are
  • Knowing which visitors are converting
  • Offering local currencies
  • Setting the right price
  • Allowing preferred payment methods
  • Localizing form fields
  • Complying with tax laws

Thanks to a revolutionary growth in pervasive Internet technology, the borders of our global village have collapsed. Though this growth and pervasiveness has created a new paradigm of international trade, it has not created a homogenous set of shoppers.

Each community still retains their particular preferences for marketing and buying that fuel local trade. You’ll need to discover the best methods of tapping into regional markets, and we hope this overview of localizing for global ecommerce will be your guide for optimizing your current offering.

If you partner with a third party ecommerce solution, its imperative that they have capabilities to help you manage your target markets to help increase revenues from those locations.

Did You Know?

The cleverbridge ecommerce platform provides extensive localization capabilities with 30 languages, 29 currencies and 27 payment methods enabling clients to maximize their global sales. 

Get our complimentary cleverbridge white paper to see if you have the capabilities you need to maximize online sales in foreign markets.

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Selling Globally? Tax Tips You Need Now http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/global-e-commerce-tax-tips/ http://www.clvrbrdg.com/corporate/global-e-commerce-tax-tips/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:18:16 +0000 http://blog.cleverbridge.com/?p=325 In the U.S., sales tax is added onto the marketed price. Customers who go to a brick-and-mortar store are used to seeing a price of $99 knowing they will pay more than that for the product. In the European Union, however, Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the perceived value of a product and is marketed as a component of the final price.

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The advent of ecommerce brought global selling to the masses. Buyers across the globe can now easily find your products thanks to online selling. Although ecommerce removed many barriers to global selling, new challenges have appeared. One of the most important topics to consider is how to price your products to make sure you are presenting each country’s taxes in a way that is customary to the local buyer.

Tax prices are presented in a variety of different ways depending on which country buyers are from. And you must present the taxes in the way buyers are used to seeing them, so as not to raise suspicion and risk abandonment.

Customers want to make sure they are buying from a legitimate source. Presenting taxes incorrectly raises a red flag in their minds. Think about it, would you purchase a product from a site that displayed your local tax in a way you have never seen before?

In the U.S., sales tax is added onto the marketed price. Customers who go to a brick-and-mortar store are used to seeing a price of $99 knowing they will pay more than that for the product. In Illinois, the sales tax is 9.75 percent, which means that the tax on a $99 product is $9.65. So, on a website, the product would be advertised for a price of $99. However, once the U.S. customer enters the shopping cart, the tax is displayed and added to the price. This is how U.S. customers are used to seeing prices, so this is how they expect it will be displayed in the cart.

In the U.S., sales tax is set at the state, county and city levels, so the rate varies widely across the country and within individual states. For example, the sales tax in the state of Indiana, which shares a border with Illinois, is between 8 percent and 9 percent.

 

Sales Tax Calculation in Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Sales Tax Calculation in Cart (TemplateZone.com)

In the European Union, however, Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the perceived value of a product and is marketed as a component of the final price. Customers who see an advertised price of €99 will pay exactly 99€ at the register. Often times, an additional note on the marketed price indicates how much of that marketed price is actually the VAT.

For example, a €99 product for sale in Germany appears with a disclaimer that €19 of that amount is due to the 19 percent VAT in Germany. EU VAT varies by country. For example, the UK VAT is set at 17.5 percent, Germany at 19 percent and Denmark at 25 percent. There are a few exceptions to these flat, country wide rates for restaurants and food, but these are accurate for most products.

VAT Calculation in Ecommerce Shopping Cart
VAT Calculation in Cart (Acronis.com)

Keystone

As you can see, it’s important to be aware of not only what the tax rate is for a country when selling globally, but also how to present it to customers. Make sure your ecommerce store supports these small details; they make a huge difference in abandonment rates.

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