European shoppers looking to purchase products from other EU countries on the Web are likely to fail 60% of the times, according with the a study from the European Comission.
There are many reasons why this happens, but the main ones are:
- the language barrier. many e-commerce websites are only in the country language.
- many different payment systems. eg: in Portugal people prefer to buy using Multibanco, a system only in use here, and the same happens in the Netherlands with iDeal.
- expensive cross border shipping. State mail is still widely used, subsidizing deliveries inside the country.
- too many different laws along the EU. eg: value-added tax, recycling fees and copyright levies.
- lack of vision by some merchants, that are only interested in selling to more than a few neighbour countries.
Dimitri Kozma
2 years ago
Any solution or way to minimize this issues?
Filipe
2 years ago
On the long run this can be good for small european merchants as it’s difficult for big online retailers to operate in all european markets (difficulties in translating all products, too many payments systems, cultural problems…).
I don’t think there is an easy solution for this problem. The fault is not only of the EU, but also of the merchants and consumers (eg: if the portuguese consumers had the same level of english of the dutch, half of the problems would be solved for them).
In the study they point some solutions for the EU: Create a simple, single set of rights for EU consumers; Boost cross-border enforcement; Simplify cross-border rules for retailers.
Another great help would be enforcing a standard for online payments. For an online merchant having to accept Paypal, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, iDeal, Multibanco, checks … it’s a huge deal. Maybe something along the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) initiante would be a good idea.