Skip to content
©2026 Alify® — Independent digital agency Loading experience

A L I F Y

Websites · Brands · Growth

000%
Design — Build — Optimise Karachi · Working worldwide
ALIFY
Start a project
hello@alify.agency
USA · Canada · Europe · Australia

Get a Free Quote

JOURNAL — 016 · E-commerce

# Selling Internationally: Localization Beyond Translation

MQ Mahnoor Qureshi, Head of Design · August 16, 2026 · 4 min read

Currency, sizing, duties, payment rails and returns psychology — what actually changes buyer behaviour when you cross a border, from our EU and Gulf launches.

Stores fail internationally for reasons that never appear in analytics: unexpected duties, wrong payment methods, and size charts nobody can read. Localization is 20% language and 80% removing foreign-ness: local currency, local payment rails, landed-cost clarity and return addresses that don't feel like a gamble.

## Email is the margin department

Paid traffic rents attention; email owns it. Stores with disciplined lifecycle flows routinely see a third of revenue from a channel that costs almost nothing per send — and it's the only channel that gets stronger as ad costs rise.

The build order is revenue order: abandonment recovery, browse follow-up, post-purchase cross-sell, replenishment, winback. Each flow has suppressions so customers hear from you like a person, not like a trigger.

If email is under 15% of store revenue, the store is leaving its most profitable section unstaffed.

## What kills store conversion fastest

1. Surprise shipping costs revealed at checkout step three
2. Forced account creation between intent and payment
3. Product pages with no answer to 'when does it arrive'
4. Variant selectors that reset images and selections
5. Reviews hidden, filtered into fiction, or absent entirely

## Analytics that answer questions

Most store dashboards are museums of default settings. The questions that matter are behavioural: where do buyers hesitate, what do repeat customers do differently, which traffic source sends tourists versus payers.

We instrument fewer events, with owners: PDP scroll-depth, variant switching, cart edits, checkout step drops, and cohort revenue at 30/60/90 days. Every metric either changes a decision or gets deleted.

Data you don't act on is guilt with charts. Report less; decide more.

> Your store is a salesperson that works 168 hours a week. Train it like one.ALIFY commerce practice

## Speed is a revenue line

Every 100ms of mobile delay shows up in the P&L — not as a metric but as a conversion leak you can photograph in a cohort report. Stores feel this before anyone opens PageSpeed Insights.

The sequence that works: hero image pipeline first, app-script governance second, font and font-display discipline third. Theme-level fixes beat 'speed apps' because they remove work instead of adding a cleanup layer.

## Merchandising is the store

Templates make everything look like a store; merchandising makes it sell. What appears above the fold on the homepage, which products lead collections, what the first search-suggestion shows — these are revenue decisions dressed as design decisions.

We plan assortment like a buyer would: hero categories by margin and momentum, proof products for trust, ladder pricing visible at a glance. The grid is where strategy meets the shopper.

Most 'redesigns' that tripled revenue were actually re-merchandisings with new paint.

> Every store has a leak. The winners are the ones who meter the drips.Humdan Ali, founder

## Where to start this week

Try buying from your own store with a German address and iDEAL, all the way to delivery. The three moments that feel sketchy are your expansion roadmap.

Then keep it honest with a short list:

- Load test the top five revenue pages at 10x normal concurrency
- Audit checkout with real cards, wallets and a declined-card path
- Freeze app changes two weeks before the sale window opens
- Put the date on the calendar — playbooks without Fridays are just reading

And when the scope outgrows the spreadsheet, that's precisely what our team is for.

## Straight answers

### Do you migrate stores between platforms?

Yes — products, customers, order history, reviews and subscriptions, with a redirect map preserving organic equity. Migrations run parallel until cutover, so revenue never touches zero.

### Can you work with our in-house marketer?

That's the usual shape: we handle platform, performance and CRO infrastructure; your marketer drives campaigns and content. Clear lanes, shared dashboards, one roadmap.

### How do you improve conversion without a full redesign?

A conversion sprint: analytics and replay review, then targeted surgery on the top leakage points — usually PDP clarity, cart friction and trust placement. Most stores see movement within the first cycle, no rebuild required.

E-commerce ALIFY Journal 4 min read
MQ
Mahnoor Qureshi
Head of Design · ALIFY

Leads brand and product design at ALIFY. Believes taste is a process, not a gift — and conversion is a design metric.

Keep reading

## More from the journal.

E-commerce June 30, 2026 8 min read Shopify vs WooCommerce in 2026: An Honest Comparison We build on both platforms, so we can afford honesty: neither 'wins'. Here's the decision framework we walk every client through — cost, control, conversion and the mistakes that actually hurt. Read article E-commerce November 7, 2025 4 min read Anatomy of a Product Page That Converts at 4%+ We rebuilt 23 product pages and measured everything. The layout hierarchy, proof placement and micro-copy decisions that separate 1% pages from 4% pages. Read article E-commerce November 16, 2025 4 min read Checkout Customization on Shopify: What's Actually Allowed (and Worth It) Post-extensibility, Shopify Plus brands get real checkout control. Which customisations move conversion — and which are expensive decoration. Read article
→

Start a project

## Like how we think?

Imagine what we ship. Intro call + fixed quote in 48 hours.

Get a Free Quote See the proof

Cookies, minus the crumbs. We use essential cookies to run this site and optional analytics cookies to improve it — analytics only load after you accept. See our Cookie Policy.

Before you close the tab

## Leaving without a plan?

“Most agencies sell hours. We sell outcomes — and we’ll prove it in a free 20-minute teardown of your current website.”

- Free homepage & site-speed audit
- Three quick wins you can ship this month
- A fixed-price roadmap — zero obligation

Book my free audit Just say hi

Free framework — instant download

## The 90-Day Growth Framework

The exact playbook we use with clients across four continents: audit, quick wins, compounding channels, automation. Get it free in your inbox.

Email address

No spam. One email a month, unsubscribe anytime.

ALIFY Assist Online · replies in minutes
Type your message