As shopping journeys become more fragmented and discovery becomes increasingly borderless, international demand is reaching brands faster than many are operationally prepared to support it at scale. As a result, for many brands, international growth has become less of a market-entry challenge and more of an execution challenge.
International e-commerce depends on pricing, payments, duties, taxes, compliance, delivery, returns and fulfillment systems working across markets — often involving multiple teams, vendors and platforms at the same time. When shoppers experience friction around those operational layers, they become hesitant to complete purchases — constraining growth on a global scale.
According to ESW Signals, new research based on more than 23,000 consumers across 18 markets finds that nearly half of U.S. consumers cite shipping costs as a barrier to international purchases, while more than half say long delivery times discourage them from buying from overseas retailers. This underscores how e-commerce conversions are sensitive to cost, risk and confidence at the point of purchase.
“International growth used to be about expansion. Increasingly, it’s about execution. Customers already shop globally. The challenge is creating an experience they trust enough to complete the purchase,” said Tonia Luykx, Chief Revenue Officer at ESW. “Checkout is no longer just a transaction step. If brands haven’t reconsidered how checkout performs market by market in the last 12 months, there’s a good chance they’re already losing conversion.”
To solve for this and streamline the customer journey, savvy brands and their partners are identifying where performance breaks down. By coordinating operational complexity and addressing pain points, brands offer a seamless, trusted and locally relevant customer experience that fuels revenue growth.
“The strongest international brands absorb complexity behind the scenes so the customer experience feels simple and predictable,” Luykx said. “Customers decide very quickly whether an international purchase feels familiar and trustworthy. Pricing transparency, payment preferences and delivery expectations all shape that decision. Increasingly, growth depends on how quickly brands can identify and resolve friction market by market.”
How Dsquared2 redesigned fulfillment to drive double-digit revenue growth
Operational coordination is becoming increasingly difficult to manage as brands expand across direct, marketplace and wholesale channels, which are further fragmented by regional systems and vendors. Disconnected systems and teams also make it difficult for businesses to identify where conversion friction occurs.
“Customers rarely see operational complexity. They experience it through unexpected duties, unfamiliar payment methods and delivery uncertainty,” Luykx said. “However, these issues rarely sit in one place. They often span checkout, payments, fulfilment and logistics simultaneously.”
For instance, apparel brand Dsquared2 had global demand, but growth was limited by the complexity of managing payments, fulfillment and customs on a market-by-market basis without compromising the customer experience. Dsquared2 partnered with ESW to more efficiently meet customer demand, enabling the brand’s expansion into 76 countries while also managing its domestic e-commerce in Italy.
“What converts in one market will not automatically convert in another,” said Luykx. “Payment preferences, duties expectations and delivery norms vary significantly market by market.
“ESW coordinated several interconnected operational levers: localized payments, dynamic pricing, multi-origin shipment and ship-from-store capabilities,” she said. “Together, these changes gave Dsquared2 a more flexible, market-specific model for managing conversion, availability and delivery speed.”
By improving how its operational layers worked together, Dsquared2 reduced customer-facing friction and made the path to purchase more predictable across markets. Ship-from-store increased GMV by 12% in the first four months of its launch, while payment success rates exceeded benchmarks by 4%. Conversion rates also increased by 8% year over year.
How Damiani scaled globally while protecting the brand experience
For luxury brands, international e-commerce is as much a brand-control challenge as it is a conversion challenge. In other words, an operational inconsistency can quickly become a brand inconsistency.
Italy’s Damiani Group enlisted ESW to support the luxury goods company’s DTC e-commerce strategy and further accelerate its international growth. As Damiani Group’s cross-border partner, ESW is responsible for managing the complexities of global online retail, including localized customer experiences, translations, compliant payment solutions and efficient logistics.
ESW implemented tailored e-commerce solutions for Damiani across more than 36 countries, including high-performing markets such as the U.S., Korea and Japan. The strategy spanned multilingual checkout, payments in more than 140 currencies and seamless logistics management that aligned with luxury standards. ESW also connected online and in-store experiences, including ship-from-store capabilities, to further enhance Damiani’s omnichannel strategy. After localizing checkout, payments and delivery and removing points of uncertainty with ESW, Damiani saw a 17.4% jump in conversions and a 17.5% year-over-year increase in order growth.
“Luxury brands are balancing two priorities: maintaining globally consistent brand standards while making the purchase experience feel intuitive market by market,” Luykx said. “Global consistency doesn’t mean identical experiences in every market. The strongest luxury brands localize operational moments — including checkout experiences, payment methods and fulfillment expectations aligned to local norms — without fragmenting the brand experience.”
Technology and AI will continue to impact e-commerce operating systems
Ultimately, many e-commerce operating models need to evolve to keep pace as marketplaces, social platforms and AI-driven discovery drive global demand.
Per the ESW Signals 2026 report, 45% of U.S. consumers discover products via social platforms, yet only 27% trust social commerce checkout environments. AI is expected to accelerate global demand as shoppers become more comfortable using it to discover, compare and evaluate products. However, confidence falls as purchases move closer to payment: just 24% of U.S. consumers say they are comfortable with AI-powered payments.
“TikTok creators generate demand globally in real time. Customers discovering those products do not think about customs rules or cross-border logistics,” Luykx said. “They expect to purchase quickly, confidently and without friction. As customers move closer to purchase, tolerance for friction drops sharply.”
And while AI and technology increase pressure on brands to deliver consistent, localized experiences, it also equips brands with improved visibility into demand patterns and conversion breakdowns. As Luykx explained, AI is helping teams identify conversion issues across pricing, payments and fulfillment much earlier than traditional reporting models.
“The strongest use cases today sit across checkout optimization, payment routing, fraud management, delivery visibility and operational forecasting. Brands seeing the best results are connecting AI-driven discovery to localized checkout and fulfilment experiences through one coordinated operating model,” Luykx said. “AI can accelerate discovery and improve decision-making, but operational execution is still what converts demand into revenue. The brands seeing the strongest international growth are the ones creating consistent, trustworthy experiences market by market.”
Partner insights from ESW
