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Simplest way to sell globally: interview with P. Smarzynski

Is there a single, most efficient way of growing your international sales? Quite likely it’s ecommerce translation & localization. If your goal is to expand your online business and maximize your store’s sales, today the real potential starts beyond your domestic market.

  • How and why can ecommerce translation & localization grow your online store on unprecedented levels?
  • What’s the simplest way to multiply your sales, combining technology and human thinking?
  • How does it tie in with globalization, free trade and possibilities for your online store?

Patrick Smarzynski, CEO at Webinterpret with over 15 years’ experience with ecommerce technology, talks about ecommerce solutions, innovation, Webinterpret’s mission and foolproof ways to grow your sales.

November 2, 2023

Last Updated on November 2, 2023 by Zeljko Drazovic

patrick smarzynski opening worldwide commerce
Patrick Smarzynski, CEO at Webinterpret

The simplest and fastest way to grow your international sales: interview with Patrick

In today’s changing environment business owners can easily lose sight of their company’s mission. What’s Webinterpret’s mission?

Patrick: The Webinterpret mission statement and core values are the fabric of our company. When we set it up over 10 years ago, our main goal was to fully democratize international ecommerce and allow anyone to buy any product from anywhere in the world.

We’ve had our challenges, but eventually, we’ve managed to deliver our promise. There are about 3 million stores on the Internet and our AI-based, automated solution has already helped about 30,000 online store owners grow their international sales. It’s also helped around 40 million buyers find and buy the desired products on international markets.

Opening worldwide commerce, we’ve been working towards a more connected world. We believe in a free marketplace. It’s part of our mission, but also corporate social responsibility.

Our mission hasn’t changed and is constantly driving us in the innovative solutions we’re developing. It enables any online merchant to directly sell their products worldwide, whilst allowing any shopper to buy any product anywhere in the world. We want to bring local products to the world.

How has the Webinterpret ecommerce solution evolved over the last ten years?

Patrick: For years our internationalization technology served mainly eBay and Amazon merchants. But we wanted to connect even more buyers and sellers, beyond marketplaces. So we opened our technology to any online stores around the globe.

Today we support most ecommerce platforms, e.g. Magento, Shopify, Woocommerce, BigCommerce and many more. In the latest offering of our product, we’ve integrated our ecommerce localization proxy, a cutting-edge technology that makes translation and localization of online stores even more seamless.

In line with our core values, we’re constantly pursuing innovative global solutions. We believe in staying a few steps ahead at all times.

Opening worldwide commerce, we want to bring local products to the world.

How do you see innovation?

Patrick: We look at innovation from 3 angles. It’s about technology, user experience and a business model. This is what we’ve combined in our latest offering.

First, a cutting-edge technology allows us to localize an online store into 100 markets fully and instantly. Second, a frictionless user experience enables sellers to internationalize their store in 1 click, whilst enabling buyers to automatically visit their prefered online store with their own language, currency, payment methods and competitive international shipping rates. Third, with an innovative asymmetric business model we can offer our basic solution for free and generate revenue share through discounted shipping rates.

It’s a big challenge to offer such a full-stack solution, but it’s worth all the effort. Once you get it right, the generated value is amazing.

ecommerce online shop

What type of translation & localization technology do you use?

Patrick: Over the years, we’ve trained machines specifically for ecommerce needs. Our language specialists have taught machines how to translate ecommerce content, according to specific rules and specific dictionaries for most ecommerce fields. Also, we extensively use machine learning as part of AI.

We’ve seen many times that combining human expertise and machine automation delivers the best results with a minimum of critical errors and a maximum of revenue-generating efficiency. Machines will consistently and accurately perform what they’ve learnt.

But translation is just the beginning. Stores need full localization that also involves currency and size conversion, local payment methods, international shipping and much more.

The goal of localization is to give international buyers an online shopping experience that is indistinguishable from their normal native experience. They need to feel at home, browsing your store, which goes beyond the language aspect.

Combining human expertise and machine automation delivers the best results with a minimum of critical errors and a maximum of revenue-generating efficiency.

How about SEO? Will the localized store/products be found by foreign buyers?

Patrick: International buyers search for products using keywords in their native language. First, the new localized versions of your online store will be in the buyer’s native language. Second, they will be indexed in search engines in languages native to buyers to improve your organic international traffic.

All this means that a French buyer, for instance, who searches for products in French will also be able to find your product.

What’s the feedback from merchants using the Webinterpret Online Stores solution?

Patrick: As the localized store is set up in a way that gives the buyer a familiar, native user experience, merchants that decided to activate the Online Stores product report much higher conversion rates.

Sellers also like the fact that they can build their international SEO and benefit from paid marketing, using channels like Google Shopping or Facebook ads.

What are the main benefits of the Online Stores solution?

Patrick: Since 2010 we’ve localized over 250 million ecommerce products. Through the years we’ve managed to build solid ecommerce translation rules and memories. Thus, we can easily access the verified translation and reuse it.

This way we can make our solution affordable for all online sellers, large and small. In fact, thanks to our automated process, we can offer our translation services for FREE as part of one of our free or paid plans.

Further, our solution works almost immediately and hassle-free. In just a few clicks your store is open to buyers from 100 new countries. It’s instantly available in multiple languages and in multiple currencies. If you want to optimize your international shipping, we can do it for you as well.

The bottom line: we take care of the international versions of your store and you can focus on the development of your business.

Total international ecommerce will be about $1 trillion by 2020. We are just at the beginning of our journey to fully open worldwide commerce.

patrick smarzynski vision

It looks like the Webinterpret mission has been accomplished?

Patrick: Some of our partners originally thought that our innovative and simple solution was too good to be true. Eventually they were amazed to see us deliver our promise. This allowed Webinterpret to stand out from the competition and yes, accomplish its mission.

However, this doesn’t mean that we will now take a breather from further innovation and making our solutions even better. We are building solutions to make a significant impact on global ecommerce. To this date, we’ve generated approximately $1 billion of extra international sales. Total international ecommerce will be about $1 trillion by 2020. So we are just at the beginning of our journey to fully open worldwide commerce!

Picture of Karolina Kulach
Karolina Kulach
Karolina Kulach is a content marketer and non-fiction writer, specialising in global ecommerce and online sales trends.
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