eBay officially announce expansion in Europe

23/02/2010 at 10:40

eBay European ExpansioneBay have just officially announced their expansion into the 6 new European territories revealed last November. Around 180 million shoppers in Russia, Czech Republic, Greece, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are now able to use an eBay site tailored for their own language.

Users in these new countries will see all of eBay translated into their own language, with the exception of the seller’s item titles and descriptions. They’ll be able to search across all eBay sites globally, but will only see search results from sellers willing to ship to their location. Prices will be displayed in local currency and they’ll be able to access customer support in their own language. You can see the new site at http://global.ebay.com/.

If you want to translate your listings to make it even easier to attract new customers Gumtree might be the place to go. Gumtree currently has over 6,000 ‘Skills & Language’ adverts live on the website, and has seen a 15% increase in the number of people looking for language lessons since the end of 2009. There’s a range of offers from lessons and interpreters, to simply translation services which would enable you to add shipping information etc in the new eBay users mother tongues.

It’s becoming increasing difficult for eBay to increase sales in existing territories, especially in the UK which is one of the most heavily penetrated eBay countries, so cross border trade will become increasingly important for growth in the future – however a potential 180 million new customers should do the trick in the near future.