About selling online worldwide

Hello forum,

I just started a web design business and got stuck on a client who wants to sell worldwide through the online shop I'm building.

How complex is this?

The business is settled here in Mexico and plans to ship the product worldwide. It's only one product in a single presentation.

Is this going to be too hard? (I imagine calculating taxes and shipping price for every single location is out of the question) Is there an automatic way to do this through an api or internet service?

I plan on using Zencart and paypal payment gateway, I have absolutely no experience on e-commerce.

Thank you!
Gerardo.

It is not hard at all. That's why places like Amazon, eBay and more do it every day.

As for the tax calculations, that depends on where you are. I don't know what the tax laws are like in Mexico, so I can't comment on much there. The worst that I've seen is some of the US states where they need to charge tax to that state, some other state, but not another state. It's not hard to set up tax rates, and all of the good shopping carts let you do that. It can be a pain to set up the first time, but once it's done, you don't need to do it again.

Apart from that you need to worry about advertising and distribution. There's a lot of good companies that have been let down by bad (or no) advertising, and even the best company will fall over if they can't delivery a basic order in a reasonable amount of time.

Just get into the back end of the cart and play around with setting things up. You'll soon find your way around, and most likely will see that it's easier then you thought that it would have been.

Thank you, I guess I'll just dip in and start working on the cart then.

Gerardo.

There are a lot of well reputed companies that have been let down by bad (or no) advertising, and even the best company will fall over if they can't delivery a basic order in a reasonable amount of time. But Amazon, eBay and others,you can use..