Gordon Woolf's Blog

How to work internationally

I've been approached by a client in another country. What can I do now to prevent unnecessary complications later?

The Internet is truly international and gives the opportunity for many individuals and small businesses to work for clients around the world. So my answer to the above question was that you should do very few things differently to what you should be doing anyway.

One difference is that you should make sure that you agree what currency the payment will be in, when it will be paid and how it will be paid. And also make sure the work involved for that payment is stated very clearly.

Neither side will be happy if you find that making the payment costs as much as the payment itself. If the client is in one of the many countries where payments can be made by PayPal that would be good, and if you must accept payments by bank transfer make sure your bank knows all about the details you will need from them and what they will charge for processing while suggesting your client makes the same enquiries at their end. I've heard of transfers costing from $5 to a hundred dollars and more for quite small amounts of money (a few hundred dollars).

If you have a good feeling after a few initial email exchanges then it is likely all will go well. I have only had one client refuse to pay and that was a US company well known for its charitable work. On the other hand many many years ago when a firm in a country which ends in ...stan owed me a small sum they eventually got a US client of theirs to hand me a small brown envelope of dollars when I was on a business trip to the USA after the original client's government had made overseas payments almost impossible.

Most clients want the association to go well but it is still a good idea to do some internet searches on business and individual names and locations.

Then, as I have already said, do what you would do for any other new client. Ask for an advance and make sure that if a job will take a substantial amount of time that you get progress payments. And do not accept excuses for delayed payments. If the money stops, you stop your work.

 

Do you lose people from your shopping cart?

A recent PayPal email newsletter states: "Did you know that about 50% of online shopping carts are abandoned at checkout? (Source: Shop.org/Forrester, 2007) This means a large proportion of customers shopping in your online store never finish their purchases." PayPal is intent on selling their express checkout system, but can I suggest that an equally important reason why so many orders fail at this stage. This is that the seller has missed or given unclear information on their main site as to what freight and packing charges may be. Too often I have had to go into a site's shopping cart to check just what the total payment will be. Then I cancel out even though I may intend to go back and order later. The worst kind of shopping cart is the kind that insists on personal details before it will offer the answer to the really important question: How much is this going to ccost me? I have asked about this at several computer forums and have had confirmed that this is a major reason for dropping out of the shopping cart.