Google explains how to approach international etail

International markets are a big opportunity for growth in the next few years, and there are plenty of companies keen to capitalise on retailers’ planned expansion. Google is one – although many of the tools it offers are free – with the company looking to offer retailers access to its huge swathes of data.

Its head of retail Martijn Bertisen spoke at an eCommera event last night and outlined the type of research that helps when considering new markets. By way of motivation, he pointed out that while the UK’s 54 million users represent 3% of the worldwide online population now, in a few years it will be less than 1% as the number of users in emerging markets mushrooms.

It’s not all about future growth either – even now, 9% of search traffic for multichannel retailers comes from domains outside the UK. The figure jumps to 22% for pure play etailers.

The best way to approach international online trading, he said, is to first get an idea of what markets might respond well to your product or brand. The insights for search tool can give an indication of which countries are interested by looking at query volumes for different terms.

Once that gives you an idea of where to look, Bertisen used the ad words tool to compare how many monthly searches there are for a product – he used the example of bicycles – in foreign markets compared to the UK. So there are 4.1m searches a month for bicycles in the UK, and 1.2m in Australia, suggesting Australia might be a good one to try.

Global market finder can then help you find which brands of bike people search for, and which areas of the country like certain products. Brands and products popular in other countries are always different to UK tastes, and finding out what they are and pushing them on the website is the best way to chase success overseas.