Not that the dollar is going anywhere, but I have now closed my US dollar shop. My Australian dollar shop is now my primary online outlet.
You can find my handmade jewellery shop at: www.shop.simonewalsh.com.
If you have bookmarks to the old web address for my Australian dollar shop they will automatically redirect to the new address.
This is a change I’ve been thinking about for some time – and was in part decided upon after I undertook a currency survey a few months ago.
Running two largely identical shops meant a doubling up of work and fees, which wasn’t ideal. Also the nature of my business has changed and I’m making fewer sales to US customers and a lot more to customers in Australia and Europe. This meant that the US dollar shop was less relevant to the majority of my customers.
So now I’ve streamlined to just one shop, which should make my life easier and buying less confusing for local customers in particular!
I’m planning to make some changes to the shop functionality and layout in the near future. As part of that I plan to add some functionality which will give an idea of prices in various other currencies. Checkout will still be in Australian dollars at this stage, but if you aren’t in Australia you will at least have a good idea of what your order will cost you in your local currency.
That’s interesting to hear! I’ve just finished my shop, which will be open in a couple of weeks, & opted for USD showing an AUD conversion. My thoughts were that USD is still seen as more universal than AUD (for Europe & the UK) & Aus customers can contact me if they prefer to pay in AUD or want to pay by bank transfer. But I haven’t tested this decision out yet, since I haven’t been selling online for a while. I do see the Aus market has picked up a lot in the last couple of years. The strength of the AUD doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, at least for now. But when you list in USD & AUD is less, that might be an incentive to Aus buyers? I’ve always thought in terms of USD because that’s where most of my customers & clients are (& where I buy a lot of supplies). Time will tell I guess. I appreciate your POV on this!
by Karena on 8 January 2012 at 2:29 pm |
The USD is more universal, so customers around the world are probably a bit more comfortable with it. However, I think customers outside of the US are generally okay with any stable currency and don’t see it as a big deal to buy in something different.
But I think customers in the US are so used to being able to buy almost anything in their local currency that many are a lot less comfortable with something different. So I’ve tried to cater to them over the years – and it definitely made sense when most of my business was to customers in the US. These days it makes a lot less sense to be doubling up on the work and costs given there are a lot less of them now.
My ideal would be to have a cart that allows customers to pick from a list of major currencies and do their shopping and make their payment in the currency of their choice. Currently that’s not an option with my existing shopping cart, but I keep hassling the developers about sorting this out!
Anyway, good luck with your new shop! I think selling in USD is a perfectly sensible option particularly to start with and to see where your customers are coming from, especially given the USD and AUD are currently almost at parity.
by Simone on 8 January 2012 at 3:09 pm |