Episode Summary
Jana Krekic of YLT Translations talks about How to Scale Your Amazon Business on International Marketplaces.
In the Sellernomics Podcast Episode Jana Krekic of YLT Translations will also talk about What are the newest marketplaces on Amazon? Are there any new regulations when it comes to EU marketplaces?.
About Jana Krekic of YLT Translations jana@ylt-translations.com
Jana is a certified translator, international speaker, an e-commerce consultant, and also the founder of a 7-figure Amazon dedicated translations agency – YLT Translations. She has had over 5 years of experience working with various 7 to 9-figure Amazon sellers and is very passionate about her work. Recently the agency has partnered up with the fastest growing unicorn – Thrasio. Jana was also a business development manager in one of the biggest North European online eCommerce platforms for 8 years where she had gained a lot of experience with online businesses. She doesn’t only lead the team of 60 people, but also completely understands E-commerce and Amazon and has created an Amazon dedicated translation agency that helps sellers scale their businesses across different international marketplaces.
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Find the Full Transcript Below
Introduction 0:04
Welcome to the Sellernomics podcast, sharing valuable tips and information in the Amazon and e-commerce space. Each week we deliver the best interviews with some of the top Amazon personalities in the industry to help you grow your business. Today’s episode is brought to you by GETIDA, the global leader in FBA, auditing, and reimbursements. And now, here’s your host, Rob Stanley.
Rob Stanely 0:31
Hey, everyone, welcome to Episode Two. This is gonna be a great one. I got Jana Krekic from YLT Translations. And Jana, She’s the second guest. So I was talking about this with Ryan, and that she’s always the last couple of podcasts I’ve done. She’s always been, my last guest. So I wanted to make sure she was on early and on almost first. So welcome to the podcast. Jana.
Jana Krekic 0:55
Hi, Rob. Thank you so much. And I love the fact that I’m the second guest. I’m super excited. As you said I was one of the last ones on your podcast. I feel very honored. I have made a progress on the scale, obviously.
Rob Stanely 1:12
Absolutely. So yeah, once again, I welcome everybody to the Sellernomics podcast. I’m Rob Stanley, your host, and owner of the Sellernomics, podcast. Yay, I actually own the podcast now, which we talked about with Ryan. And that was super fun. So Jana is a super awesome person. I love talking to her. She has all kinds of great information. And so you know, a lot of people and just so everybody understands, like they think, oh, translations, okay, she’ll translate my stuff. There’s a lot more to this. There’s a lot more to the translations than you think. And not just for those listening to you, we’re looking to expand. And we’re going to kick this right off with a bunch of questions, Jana, and let’s get right to it. So we’re always talking about Amazon. And what are some of the newest marketplaces on Amazon that you guys are kind of reaching out to? And of course, we’ll dive in later about how wild tea translations are helping and what they can do for you, but just kind of cover some of the newest marketplaces on Amazon right now.
Jana Krekic 2:07
One of the newest marketplaces, definitely Amazon Turkey. Amazon, interestingly enough, like there was a website, Amazon Turkey was available for a couple of years now. But it just had recently been kind of pushed out to the audience. And, you know, Amazon kind of pushing sellers to go there. So AmazonTurkey is really interesting. And Amazon, Sweden, and Amazon Poland have been pretty much new. But what’s very interesting is that from all those these like top three like that’s I like to call it like a rising star marketplace. Poland has been super interesting for people. Because the Polish market is like an e-commerce marketplace, has 12,000 online stores and Allegro is their biggest marketplace. And it has basically, it’s in the top 10 of the worldwide marketplaces right after tea mall and shopping. And that’s like mind-blowing information. Because when you think of Poland, first of all, I don’t know much about this country. But second of all, you’re like, well, this is interesting, because you would not expect that from that country. But there is a really good e-commerce penetration over there. And it’s basically strategically nicely placed in Europe. So it’s kind of close to everything. So even before Amazon, like a lot of big international companies have had their stock there in their warehouses, because it was much cheaper to ship out from Poland than it was from Germany or France or some other countries in that region. So I would say that those three marketplaces are definitely trending. And I think that Amazon will be pushing more and more marketplaces. I’m definitely curious to see what’s happened that’s going to happen in South America like Brazil, Colombia, Brazil, I’m sure that they’re gonna, you know, tackle their fingers over there and launch something very interesting as well.
Rob Stanely 3:58
Yeah, no, I, I agree with that. And they’re definitely I mean, Amazon’s trying to expand as fast as they can to conquer the world, obviously, but with marketplaces everywhere to try to help everybody. And that’s absolutely true. So a lot of times, you know, we kind of know what a lot of the US sellers, the first place they expand to is Canada, that’s kind of like a basic, that’s their very first one. And then usually, they kind of look at Europe as the next choice. So and Europe, I mean, you know, obviously, people know, Europe isn’t just a few countries, it’s very, very diverse, lots of different languages, lots of translations that need to happen if you’re going to sell in, you know, different areas there. So are there any new regulations when it comes to the European marketplace that you could share with us? And by the way, just real quick, I forgot to tell everybody so yeah, I got Jana on and we are talking about how to scale your Amazon business on new marketplaces. I forgot to mention that part. It’s been a day Let me tell you, but yes, why don’t you go ahead and tell us more about that? Are there any new regulations kind of going on with the European market that you could share with us
Jana Krekic 5:00
Yes, so what’s very interesting is that these regulations have already been there, you know, for a couple of years, but nobody was paying attention to that. And Amazon just gonna let old products be shipped as they are with the packaging and only English only with the packaging. But now a very big problem is that if you want to ship out your, let’s say beauty products to France, there has to be a French, either sealing peel or whatever, it has to have French insert instructions written on the packaging. If you don’t have the French language on your packaging, the product will not reach France, and they will stop at the border, there’ll be like there’s no French on the packaging. So basically, if you’re selling, let’s say, if we talk about Pan EU, you have to have old languages but on your packaging, otherwise, you’re not able to ship the product to that specific country. And that is now absolutely obligatory for all EU countries. So if you haven’t done that, yet, I strongly suggest you do so. And a lot of sellers who are just going to have like the whole English like packaging, you don’t have to change the packaging. A lot of them just like sealing peel labels, and that’s how they solve the problem. But this is one of the very, you know, the mandatory things that you have to be aware of Otherwise, you will not be able to ship your products anywhere in Europe.
Rob Stanley 6:22
Yeah, that seems like you know, a lot of times I’ll buy stuff, not even off Amazon sometimes just get retail things and I’ll see it in different languages. And that kind of is interesting to see probably more with some, when it comes to retail I’m referring to usually it’s more with a bigger brand are doing that on retail. But so do you think like when somebody like a US company is saying starting to design their package? Would it be good this maybe start with those if they think that at some point they’re going to expand outside of the United States?
Jana Krekic 6:52
Yeah, definitely, I would say that, you know, like, if you have your packaging, or if you want to just put like a shorter version of your instructions, that you just put like five or six languages, you know, like when you buy like a shampoo, at least like in Europe, when you’re like you know, any other way around. And you’re like, we like how to use it on the back there, there’s like five or six languages, and the instruction is not that long. So it’s not going to be like 300 words, there’s going to be literally like three sentences with like, very small font, and they’re going to be there. And it’s readable in six different languages. So like, if you say like, there’s a shampoo, like 100-milliliter shampoo, there’s not a big bottle that can fit like six different languages, I’m pretty sure you can do the same for your product. So it’s not necessary to have like, you know, big like novel written instructions, I was just gonna focus on the main key points of your instructions, and just gonna, you know, localize it and understand why Amazon is doing it because sellers love when you speak their language. And I know also like when somebody reaches out to us, and then they’re like, do you have like an Italian speaker like on your team would like to speak with them because we’re not so like, you know, fluid in English or anything people will love when you speak in their language. And I just wanted to mention, the last thing that happened was that you could actually reach out to the consumer that left you a bad review. And you can actually send them a message. And I suppose I mean, right now it’s a template and you cannot change the language and you cannot localize it. But I’m pretty sure that this will be available in the near future. And as soon as that becomes available, I strongly suggest that you write a nice message or a note to reach out to a client in their own language if you’re selling on international marketplaces.
Rob Stanely 8:44
Yeah, sorry, I was, I’m gonna find an example of where they need YLT Translations. So I just, I was trying to find it here to kind of use so just so people understand. So I actually can’t remember if it was this particular item I just bought off Amazon recently, but I was reading through the instructions. And it was so difficult to follow the instruction, Jana, and we’re talking and I don’t want to call him out or what the product is yet, because I haven’t found it. But I will. Anyways, point being though that you know, people that are selling items, how if you’re, if you’re going to sell on an international marketplace, and you’re gonna offer it in other countries where they’re going to need instructions, you got to make sure it’s right. Like I was really struggling with these instructions that I got to be able to assemble this item that I purchased. And man it is just hard and I don’t it’s really hard and it made it I almost at one point was just going to package it back up and send it back. Because I was like, Yeah, what are they say, you know, and it wasn’t that thing where it’s like, Okay, well obviously there’s a hole there and a bolt goes in it. It wasn’t quite that simple. And it’s very frustrating.
Jana Krekic 9:51
I know and just imagine like a French consumer buying I don’t know something that you have to assembly or maybe something that It’s like baby care or something, and they don’t understand, and they’re like, Well, I’m not going to give this away baby, because I’m not 100% sure I understand what this seller’s ingredients are. And then they’re just gonna be like, I’m gonna buy something that it’s like in, in proper French, they don’t care about like, you know, conveying the message from the salad bowl, but they just want like straight facts, and to understand how the product works. And I remember there was a case study within a couple of years ago, where we took an example of like a nursery bag, and it has like different like, functionalities, it can like you can even like, like, place it, it can even like, assemble it. So it’s some sort of like a table or something. It’s very weird. But it was very popular in the French market. And then we compared like, various, various products, absolutely same product. And the worst product was actually the cheapest one. It was identical As for other products, but it was cheapest, but the listing was horrible. So even if it was the cheapest product, people didn’t buy it that much. They had like maybe like four reviews. And the more expensive products were selling very nicely. They had like good explanations, they made sense to the native speaker, and people were buying that baby bag, instead of this one that was the cheapest but had a pretty, you know, poorly translated listing, probably like Google translator, one. And you really want to understand how this product works, you know, so whenever you have a product that, you have to do it, you have to do something to it. So it becomes something else, or maybe like a beauty product, or maybe your prize and you really want to know what’s inside, you really want to be crystal clear. And you know this, even if you like read this in English, and it’s like crystal clear to you, would you buy it, like I wouldn’t buy something that I’m gonna like inject in my eyes, and then like get like, you know, like, sold out or something like, I’m not going to buy that because that I don’t understand it. And people are highly unlikely to buy what they don’t understand 100%. And very important, a very important thing is that I read that it is in the Harvard Business Review. And it says that 15% basically from all the whole planet speak only English. So basically targeting every third person on the marketplace instead of every person if you are doing a bad job with the translations or even if you’re leaving English translations as they are, and the times have not changed. And let’s say Germany, the German’s really like when something is written in German. But when it comes to like this product, they love using English words and English keywords. So that’s going to new because usually, you would not use any English words in any of those things. But like now for German listings like resistant bands and stuff like that. smartwatch and you know, they use English words, which is kind of unusual, saying that the culture changes, but they still want the essence to be written in German, for instance.
Rob Stanely 13:03
Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting one, I hadn’t heard that. But, you know, let’s also talk a little bit about like, not just listings, but the packaging, and like I was just talking about, like instructions, and how those really affect, you know, the quality and the quality of experience that somebody has when they’re dealing with your product. And that can really, I mean, you know, I was just saying like, I was having a really hard time trying to put this thing together and in my head. I’m kind of like, you know what, I mean, should I go leave them a negative review? I mean, I’m kind of struggling to do this. So before you answer right and talk a little bit about maybe how some of these incorrect translations, not only our listing but maybe on the product packaging or on the instructions can affect your reviews on Amazon. Before we talk about that. We’re gonna take a quick break. And from our sponsor GETIDA.
Announcement 13:53
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Rob Stanely 14:05
Yeah, so be sure to head on over to getida.com/sellernomcs. We have a great offer there for you first $400 in reimbursements without any fees at all. And so yeah, we were just talking with Yana from wild tea transition translation Sorry, my head’s not translating today. Why not translations and we were just about ready to cover how basically having incorrect information on your on your listing or incorrect information or your packaging or even incorrect information on your instructions can affect your reviews on Amazon now. Maybe let’s talk about maybe the European market when it comes to translation. I think you also have mentioned before we started to show that there’s some things happening with reviews of their so once cover kind of both of those, how can it affect your rankings or your reviews? And then also what some of the things going on in the European market?
Jana Krekic 14:56
Yeah, well, definitely a good thing that global reviews are bad. on European marketplace, I’m pretty sure that Amazon has been testing a lot of stuff for EU marketplaces as well. And as you know, when it comes to regulations, European marketplaces are like lighting years away from us restrictions. So basically, a lot of things still fly on the EU, which definitely don’t and the US marketplace. So there was like, they say it was a glitch, I’m pretty sure they were just testing it, to see like how well that people would respond to just having like a local review, versus the global review. So they got that global reviews are back. So that means that if you have like 10k reviews in the States, when you’re launching in Germany, you’re gonna keep those 10k reviews, definitely. But what’s going to happen with you, if you don’t get like proper, you know, listings, the keywords done and, you know, full follow up emails, in inserts, and other stuff, they don’t make much sense to you, you’re gonna lose your rankings, you’re gonna get like bad reviews, and as you know, like reviews, you cannot fix them. Now you can reach out to do to consumers, if you’re brand registered, you can reach out to consumers and ask them, you know, to maybe, you know, change their mind, or, you know, fix that somehow. But what’s very important is that you will have a lot of negative reviews if you try to address someone in their own language, and then somebody will be totally puzzled and being like, you know, like using English, basically, for reaching out to other people in Europe. So that’s really essential that you know, what you’re doing, and don’t use Google Translate, not at all, because they don’t know how to talk to the person. Like versus in Germany, it’s a very formal way of addressing someone when a follow up email is quite interesting, and not using their first name, but their last name, so you never want to, you know, be kind of more intimate with the consumer that, for instance, you would be like in the States or any other country, like in Germany, that’s not acceptable. And there’ll be like, seen as very rude to definitely want to avoid that. And it’s very important to, you know, just, keep an eye on the reviews, because a lot of times, you can get some really good information and some really good ideas, how you can actually later optimize listings with something that you read in the review, maybe like, you know, I was, I recently saw there was like a product, it was like a marker like, so you could write it like on the board with it. And then somebody said that, like, it’s a such a strong brown color, that they could repaint the basically the legs of the chair, it’s like that good and easy, like fix the chair. And so that’s interesting. And then that seller reached out to us to optimize it to add, like in the fifth bullet, that it could be have like various uses, like blah, blah, blah, that he added whatever he saw the review, that was quite interesting. He got some new keywords. So that’s really interesting. I mean, reviews are very, very good. And you can also like, see tons of keywords by using, you know, the review downloader from helium 10, for instance, and similar tools, that’s always a cool thing to have, and you can only go optimize it that way. And you can definitely see how different people use the product. And that differs from market-based marketplace, as it does, you know, the interest for the product, let’s say like smartwatches, for instance, they are not that well-ranked in Germany, but they’re fantastically around in the UK. Better than in the US, for instance, you know, so every marketplace is very, very different. This is some data that we found in Brunel Linux, and it’s very unusual to see like, you know, what’s popular, what’s not. And also they want some very interesting things that we also recently find out this is actually from from from a speech a Prosper is that AC is like a portable AC’s are number 10, like search frequency in Germany, and they’re like 1000, and something in the US and they’re like, 2000, something in the UK. So they’re selling like crazy in Germany. And why is that? That is because, in Germany, we didn’t have a lot of really hot climates, like the country was just not in that heated area at all. And so a lot of buildings and apartments, they don’t have AC in their apartments, because there was just not use for them. But now, considering climate change and everything. And they’re very old buildings and you cannot install the proper AC in the building. They’re reaching out to our portable AC. And that’s why the sales have been sky high. So if you’re selling a portable AC, I suggest you go definitely sell in Germany.
Rob Stanelt 19:41
Yeah, I think we use AC out here in California. It’s cooking. So the whole West Coast. Yes. So yeah, so that’s some that’s good information to know. And man, I may have to get one of those dark markers. I got a new puppy and it’s true in the furniture, so I’m gonna need it up here. First or so yeah. So everybody, please hit that like and subscribe if you’re watching on YouTube or on Facebook or any other platforms, we really do appreciate it. And again, I got Jana she’s the founder of YLT Translations, here with me today talking about how to scale your Amazon business, on new marketplaces. And we are going to cover also a little bit about and correct me if I’m wrong, Jana. There’s something going on with like HTML code. I think didn’t Amazon set a date that all HTML code had to be out of descriptions or something like that? Once you cover that a little bit and tell us what’s going on?
Jana Krekic 20:36
Yeah, so that’s, that’s also another way of Amazon pushing you to, register for Brand Registry. So basically, they’re just gonna make you, you know, have the notepad look like product description without any paragraphs with it without anything being written in bold. Basically, this is their way of pushing you into having April’s content and going into Brand Registry, as I said. So basically, what they did in the UK, they decided to ban it, middle June. But in the US, I think that the deadline for that is like the 10th of July or something like that. It’s the beginning of July definitely. And they didn’t say anything about European marketplaces, other European marketplaces. So I think that, you know, followed by all other late arrivals in terms of restrictions, we’re still probably going to be able to see HTML files. And on the UK, and us probably that would not be possible after July, the fifth, or the sixth, I don’t remember. But it’s definitely not later than the 10th. So if you have just HTML, like, be sure to if you are not going to be brand registered, just make sure that you can optimize them, I mean, optimize them the best way possible. So that even if there’s like, this notepad text, without any paragraphs, or no sense whatsoever, that it has relevant information, but because it will still be ranked. So make sure that you still use keywords. And I mean, the best thing would be for you to register for Brand Registry to have A+ content, but if you don’t, just don’t be surprised when you have tons of text just gonna put like this and it wouldn’t doesn’t look pretty. So I would just go for product descriptions being as short as possible and making sense and still keeping important keywords.
Rob Stanley 22:33
Which is probably good advice in general anyways, even when there was HTML available, that’s always a good point to have. Yeah, absolutely. And so one of the other things we’ve been talking about is, you know, Europe, obviously, quite a bit, that, as we said, the kind of the stages we see with Amazon sellers, they go to Canada, and then they start going to Europe. And that, but there is a little bit of difference in Europe, right? So they have to give it to get it into different warehouses over there. So if I have inventory, let’s say in the UK warehouse, and I need to get it to the Germany warehouse, kind of what’s the fastest method for that?
Jana Krekic 23:12
Right, so everybody has been complaining about you know, like, post-Brexit time and you know, the Brits are just gonna be devastated because they’ll have all that happen. And so what happens is that if you want to ship the products from Europe to UK, it takes like two months, it just like ridiculous, it takes a little bit less if you ship it from the UK to, let’s say, Germany, but still takes a long time. Like I’ve talked to some sellers, it takes, at least a month for the products to arrive to Germany. So what a little hack with that is and what people figured out that working is to ship their products via Netherlands to Germany, and because that way, it takes like a week. And the best thing of all is like you don’t need to have Dutch VAT or anything, you can just send the goods to just gonna use that in our route and get them to Germany, you just need to have the German VAT and as if you were sending like directly to Germany, but sent via the Netherlands, so cut time. And it’s just an amazing hack because it saves you like, so much time, like it gets to literally like four times faster than the usual way. How would you do it?
Rob Stanley 24:22
That’s perfect. we’re dropping tips. That’s a good one, actually. And just so everybody knows. The other thing is when you’re transferring inventory, obviously things can get lost, and Amazon’s gonna owe you for those. So you got to file a claim with GETIDA because we do handle Europe obviously. So yeah, one of the things that I also want to talk to you a little bit about and we were talking a little bit prior to this is about some of the localization problems when it comes to listings and translations and things like that. So we do need to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor GETIDA, so hang tight.
Announcement 24:55
Did you know that Amazon probably owes you money for FBA reimbursements? Get $400 dollars in free FBA reimbursements at getida.com/sellernomics
Rob Stanley 25:06
Yeah, so please head on over to getida.com.sellernomics, we have a great offer for youfirst $400, whether you get it in a day, or we get to the $400 in a year, it’s no fees on that first $400 so head on over there and sign up at getida.com/sellernomics. So I was just talking to Jana for YLT Translations. And we are covering some localization problems. So why don’t you dive into a little bit on what some of the problems are going on right now with the localization?
Jana Krekic 25:37
Right? So localization is very important. And I know that sellers don’t think about that because they just think that the language barrier is like this horrible, horrib
