Ecommerce in Belgium
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Do you have a Dutch site and want to take it abroad? A good first step is to expand to our southern neighbors and start with ecommerce Belgium. In 2021, 55% of ecommerce involved purchases abroad, of which 34% were in the Netherlands. So it definitely makes sense to offer your products or services in Belgium as well. Since they speak the same language, there is no need to translate the site. Do pay attention to certain terms: 'showroom' for example is 'showroom' in Flemish, and 'sale' they call 'solden'. These minor word adaptations will cause Belgian search engines to pick up your site as well. However, there are some differences between Dutch and Belgian customers. Read about the online buying behavior of the Belgians on this page.
Top 3 foreign online purchases:
Netherlands
China
Top 3 product categories:
Clothing & shoes (29%)
Electronics (16%)
Beauty & health (15%)
Top 3 favorite payment methods:
Payment card (34%)
Credit card (25%)
Digital wallet (Paypal, Allpay; 24%)
Figures: Crossborder e-commerce shopper research conducted by the International Postal Cooperation (IPC)
Pay and ship to Belgium
In Belgium, people prefer to pay by debit card. But they don't know iDeal. Instead, they use Bancontact as their electronic payment method. So if you want to bring your website to Belgium, it is important that you add this payment method to the site.
For shipping, you can usually just use the Dutch postal service. The Belgians even find it important that we just deliver their packages through the familiar PostNL network with its service. Since they know this company, it inspires confidence when you send your products with PostNL. This trust, in turn, contributes to the likelihood that people will purchase something from your website.
