Scandinavian market

Hi,

Here are some answers.

> I am from Estonia and the population is about 1.4 m.
> So I need to expand and the obvious choice is
> Scandinavia, of course.

Yes. Even if e-commerce is global business in nature, it usually is a good idea to start offering products first to nearby countries. To get experience on international business, local market and marketing, payment systems, taxation, customer support requirements, consumer laws, etc..

And when you have the experience, go global!

> - do people buy online, do they have habit, don't they
> have fear buying online or do they prefer to buy from a
> regular shop, even it the price is higher?

People do buy online and the growth is very high. According to ECF (Electronic COmmerce Finland, www.ecf.fi) the consumer e-commerce in Finland alone is 3,9 billion euro this year.

People buy from local webshops but also very much from Amazon, eBay and others. For example hifi and tv:s are bought from webshps in germany quite a lot.

The price usually is not the issue. People buy from internet because it is easy, convenient and always open. Comparing products and webshops is easy. And if you need the product right away, you can most of the time pay extra for overnight delivery.
 

> - is it enough to have just credit card payment (because
> otherwise I should sign a contract with every single
> bank), how many % of the population have credit cards?

Yes, Credit card is enough.

> - where do you advertise, perhaps there are some online
> shop directories? Do you use Google Adwords?

SEO in general is important. And local shops here also use a lot of Google Adwords. Wosbee also supports Google Analytics, so you can measure what keywords really make sales!

Also one thing you might want to try is Tradedoubler. Give for example 2% of you sales for the site that brings you a customer that orders something.

> Do you use news portals? Is it expensive? I had a text
> link on the largest news portal in Estonia and paid about
> €500 for 4 weeks. Or maybe you can suggest some internet
> marketing agencies?

When using banners on portals, it is important to remember your target group. Use google to locate portals / websites that you think attaract people also interested in your products.

> - what you think of my shop, would it work in
> Scandinavia - I sell designer T-shirts: www.outlet.ee
> (the site is in Estonian so far, so are the prices -
> divide by 1.7 for SEK and 15.6 for EUR)

Looks very good, mayby shop of the week!

In scandinavia people speak good English in general so I think if you have your site in English, you can serve most of the people in Scandinavia.

Good luck!

- Jaakko