The 2024 Holiday Season is right around the corner with Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) being 2 of the biggest events of the entire year – for retailers and shoppers. As we move further into 2024, there's a continued and clear shift in people's preferences towards online shopping, driven by convenience and accessibility. This trend isn't just a passing phase; it's becoming a norm and is slated to grow even more. According to forecasts, U.S. retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach $1.67 trillion by 2028, marking a substantial 40% increase from the $1.1 trillion recorded in 2023, as estimated by eMarketer.
BFCM is a huge opportunity to boost sales and 2 events you shouldn’t miss out on! Shopify merchants achieved an impressive $9.3 billion in sales during the Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) event in 2023, marking a significant 24% increase compared to the $7.5 billion generated during Shopify's BFCM weekend in 2022. This indicates that millions of people worldwide are eagerly anticipating the upcoming festive season to capitalize on sales across top eCommerce brands.
Is your team and Shopify Store ready to make the most out of these blowout events? We assume you’ve already focused on key areas to ensure your BFCM events go smoothly like; marketing activities, site speed as an increased influx of customers could be much higher than normal, shipping and returns plan, a contingency plan for trouble, etc.
Those are all important areas to have a grip on ahead of the Holiday Season, but have you considered tapping into international markets? Why limit your business and sales revenue to local markets, when Black Friday is a worldwide event?
Reach, engage, and captivate foreign audiences with LangShop Language Translation app
Black Friday as an opportunity to start cross border sales
Originating in the 60s in America, the Black Friday event slowly flooded the whole world. Currently an estimated 50-60% of the world “celebrate” Black Friday in some form or another. So, Black Friday is a great opportunity to break down the borders between you and international markets, earn trust and drive conversion from your foreign customers, no matter where they’re shopping from.
There are over 190 countries in the world. Namely, there are 195 countries if to take recent research. At the same time, there are 6,500 languages spoken in the world today! Therefore, people living in the same country may speak different languages and dialects. So, to reach as large an audience as possible, you need to create multi-language content. And multilingual content is a must in our today’s world because people prefer to shop in their own language.
According to the “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C” survey (over 8,700 consumers in 29 countries were interviewed):
- 65% of customers prefer to see content in their native language (even if it’s of poor quality).
- 76% prefer to buy products with information in their languages.
- 40% will not buy from websites that are in other languages.
What this means is that if you want to expand your online business to other countries, then you have to create custom buying experiences with familiar languages. And what’s even better – custom currencies and domains.
LangShop: all-in-one multilingual and multi-currency solution
The above mentioned may seem challenging, but LangShop has an all-in-one solution- multilingual translator and currency converter app. With LangShop you can convert up to 241 languages and dialects. And with the help of ChatGPT integration, translations become more natural and contextually accurate, enhancing your store's appeal to a global audience. In terms of currencies, LangShop allows you the opportunity to implement up to 80 world currencies out of 180 existing. Impressive, right?
Quick example of how you can cover several international markets with LangShop
At first, of course, you should select the target languages and currencies and then translate the content using one of the 4 available methods: manually, using machine translation, pro translation drivers, or agency translation (your first steps guide is here). Then you can connect additional languages to a primary domain myshop.com/fr, myshop.com/es, or connect languages to regional domains or subdomains (third-party domains). For example, you can connect English and French locales to myshop.com and sell products for the North American market. Meanwhile, myshop.es (or es.myshop.com) will display translated content for Spanish-speaking countries. Thus, you are in the game, you are crossing eCommerce borders!
Other benefits of localizing your content and currencies
Localizing your store with LangShop is not only about reaching new audiences by switching your store multilingual and multi-currency. Translating your website is one of the highest leverage activities you can do to:
- Reduce Bounce and Improving Conversion Rates
- Establish a Competitive Advantage
- Get SEO Internationally Optimized
- Introduce Customer-centric Approach
These are the vital indicators influencing the success of your business which you should take care of not only during seasonal sales but always!
Create a multilanguage website in just a few steps with LangShop!
Conclusion
There is still time to prepare ahead of the 2 biggest online shopping events of 2024, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, don’t miss out on the opportunity of crossing eCommerce borders with LangShop, earn the trust and recognition of foreign customers, and sky-rocket your sales.
