The Trail Leads Abroad: Internetstores AG Founds Another Online Shop with Bikester.com
From the outside, moving from the German market to English online consumers could be mistaken as easy. While quietly confident Köhler's remarks raised the certain issues facing companies wishing to break into the English market,''We understand the German market and can estimate changes and stay competitive thanks to our local knowledge of the industry, the English landscape is highly competitive and we forecast certain ongoing challenges to gain a foothold in the UK market''. Translation of the content including marketing texts into English from fahrrad.de has been crucial.“Everyone worked 100%, our team of developers consulting with Netformic GmbH have thrown a huge amount of recourse into the project. The multi-shop system is completed to a satisfactory point, more developed will proceed as time progresses", said Köhler.
With implementation, a number of tasks where involved to make the platform feel as familiar to UK customers as possible. Currency exchange into British Pounds, popular purchasing systems and trusted logistics partners where all important for a positive purchasing experience. The exact terminology, measuring units and language were particularly crucial for cycling fans to feel comfortable using the site. Investigation found that subtle terminology and language differences existed between the UK and other English speaking countries. This meant that native English professionals were necessary for the site's success.
While the logo design and name of the site are new, the colours and navigation were adapted to the English market. The logo and corporate colours of fahrrad.de are all familiar trademarks of the successful online store. While competition will remain strong bikester.com plans to reach its new customers through a large range of quality bicycles and accessories. Developing the bikester.com platform gave opportunity for extra language and currency options. This international technology makes it possible to launch futures shops into other countries and allow customers to customise the website to their needs.
In addition customer service has been crucial in offering the best possible fore and after sales assistance to customers. “Surprisingly enough, we have already seen a growing amount of English customer inquiries from people living in and around Germany regarding purchases with fahrrad.de ” said Ulrich Spies, project manager at internetstores. “Early on we had to train our customer consultants in English terminology. The team was professionally trained by consultants specializing in customer care for the English bicycle retail market, to date English customers have been pleasantly surprised by the knowledge of our customer consultants”.
“Early sales have been growing well, but the site is still in its infancy. Due to the market dominance of certain players in the UK customers have been hesitant at trying something new”, but Spies added, “high end mountain bikes have been selling steady and preliminary customer feedback has been good in the areas of purchasing and fast shipping. The future is bright for bikester.com and we look forward to a successful venture in the English market”.
