Multiple currency eCommerce site - advice needed

Jackhammer7

Hi,


We have a an ecommerce site (magento) in development and we want users to have the option of selecting their currency. So we have decided on three currencies - euro, sterling and dollar.


The issue we have is we will have different VAT rates to sell to euro and sterling customers. Also, their are only certain items that we can sell to Ireland and not the UK or the US. So we want the "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" button, for certain products, excluded from the UK and US sites.



The developers have told me that the best option is to have the different currencies in different folders so - www.website.ie will be the euro site, website.ie/uk will be sterling and website.ie/us will be dollar. I am wondering is this the best way to do it?


Will we be penalised for duplicate content because they are in different folders? Would we be better putting them into subdomain - .uk.website.ie, us.website.ie...


Also, they say it is alot of work just to have the one site where the currency changes automatically through the backend because we are using different VAT rates, so they would have to custom changes...

smash

I presume the customer sets up an account? If this is the case and they have selected a location then the products list should only show products available in that location and should show the VAT rate for that location. I don't see any benefit in creating 3 separate product lists at all.

Jackhammer7

Thanks smash

No, the customer can select the different currencies from a drop down in the top right hand corner.

The main reason for the different sites is because the VAT rate will be different and it will give us the option of excluding the Add to Cart and Buy Now button for the US and Sterling sites for certain products. But I dont know if the developers are just trying to make life easier for themselves

smash

Jackhammer7 wrote: »

The main reason for the different sites is because the VAT rate will be different

This should be stored in the database, the sites don't need to be split.

Jackhammer7 wrote: »

and it will give us the option of excluding the Add to Cart and Buy Now button for the US and Sterling sites for certain products.

The buttons shouldn't be removed, the products should. It's simple product filtering.

Jackhammer7 wrote: »

But I dont know if the developers are just trying to make life easier for themselves

Sounds like it.

Jackhammer7

Smash,

Thanks for your help. I quoted you and they are going away to work on it and come up with an alternative...

fc2060

Hi Jackhammer
My website, www.speech-writers.com, is also based on Magento. We actually have a number of different websites in different languages and we use separate domains for each one. The main reason for this is that we think the customer in Germany is more likely to buy from a domain name that is in German.

We used 12 different currencies and in any month we could sell in 60 or 70 countries. We use in IP address matching database from www.Maxmind.com.

So when a customer lands on our site we know with 99% certainty what country he is in and this determines what currency he will see. in our case we charge different prices in different countries. For example in low-cost countries which charge much less than developed countries. Our product is an electronic one so this makes sense for us.

In general Magento is a wonderful system and very flexible but the developers need to know what they're doing

Jackhammer7

fc2060,

Thanks for that. Can I ask, how much are you paying for geotargetting? This is something that I have been looking into?

Regards,

Simon.

fc2060

I am paying $15 a month

Jackhammer7

Thanks fc2060.

And you find those guys you use for it very good? I thought you could do getargetting for free...