A Romance language, and almost none of the Western assumptions apply.
Romanian looks familiar to anyone who reads French, Spanish or Italian, which misleads people into assuming the market behaves like Western Europe. It does not. The currency, the checkout habits and the competition level are all different, and all in your favour.
Start with the free 15 point site check. Two working days, no call required.
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373
products migrated
- 822feed offers, zero errors
- 4.3%conversion rate across all campaigns, Jul to Aug 2026
What is actually different about selling into Romania
The specifics that change the build, not a list of countries I will work in.
The regulator
The National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing. The GDPR applies in full.
Checkout
The leu, not the euro. Paying when the parcel arrives is still a large part of online retail, though card payment has been taking share year on year.
The language
Romanian is a Romance language with Slavic vocabulary layered in. Familiar enough to look easy to translate into and different enough that translations from Italian or Spanish read as foreign.
The market
Around nineteen million people, among the largest in the region, with results pages far less contested than a market of that size would be further west.
What usually goes wrong on a Romanian site
A checkout that assumes the money arrives first
Where a large share of orders are paid on delivery, the order flow, the stock logic and the analytics all have to handle an order that exists before the payment does. Most shops get at least one of those wrong.
Euro or dollar pricing
The leu is the currency buyers think in. Converted prices add friction and signal foreign supplier at the same time.
Romanian translated from another Romance language
The shared roots make this tempting and the result reads as foreign, because the vocabulary diverges in exactly the everyday words that matter.
Diacritics dropped
Romanian uses letters that are frequently stripped in URLs, titles and copy, which looks careless locally and creates avoidable duplicates.
Not sure which of those it is? Send the web address and the written 15 point check says so in two working days, free.
What the work actually is
The same list whether you are in Romania or anywhere else I work.
The 15 point technical check
Speed, indexing, structured data, redirects, consent and the rest, written out in the order worth fixing rather than the order a crawler found them.
Pages for what buyers search
Built from real search data in the language your buyers type, not translated from an English page and hoped over.
A redirect map before anything moves
Every old address mapped to a new one and tested before launch, because this is the step that loses rankings when it is skipped.
Tracking that waits for consent
Nothing loads before a choice is made, and the banner says what it does. This is the part regulators are actually acting on.
Google Ads on a flat fee
A fixed monthly amount whatever the spend, so the advice does not get more expensive when the budget does.
Shopify and WooCommerce moves
Products, variants, media and URLs moved with the search positions held, on the same domain where that is possible.
Custom systems when software is the problem
Order flows, stock feeds and internal tools, when the honest answer is that no amount of marketing fixes the process underneath.
Plain monthly notes
What was done, what it changed and what is next, in a page you can read without a glossary.
Want the number first? Every price is published, including the ones I would not charge you.
Delivery payment changes the whole order flow
If a substantial share of your orders are paid when the parcel arrives, your site is not really an online shop in the Western sense. It is an order capture system with payment happening later and sometimes not at all, because refused deliveries are a real cost. That has consequences everywhere: stock has to be held or not held, the confirmation email has to set expectations, returns handling is different, and the analytics must not count revenue that has not arrived.
The published figures for how common this is disagree sharply, and part of the reason is that some sources count the share of shops offering it and others count the share of orders paid that way. Those are different numbers and they get quoted interchangeably. The useful answer is your own: offer it, measure it, and build the flow so both paths work properly.
A large market with thin competition
Romania has roughly twice the population of the Nordic countries put together and a fraction of the competent search competition. The pages ranking for Romanian commercial queries are frequently local sites that have had no technical attention, which means structure, speed and genuinely useful content are enough to compete.
That will not stay true. Romanian online retail has grown quickly and the suppliers are catching up, so positions taken now are cheaper than the same positions will be later. If you are weighing this year against next, that is the actual argument for this year.
A furniture retailer: three storefronts, three ad accounts and a CRM
A Dutch furniture retailer with three brands and a ten to twelve week order cycle, where the online numbers alone made a busy business look like a failing one until the measurement was fixed.
What I will not do
Said before you ask, because it is usually the deciding part.
Promise a position
Nobody controls Google's results, and anyone who promises a ranking is either guessing or lying. I will tell you what is winnable and what is not, with the search data in front of you.
Hold your accounts
Analytics, Search Console and every ad account are registered in your name from day one. If you stop working with me you lose nothing but me.
Bill a percentage of ad spend
A percentage pays me more when you spend more, which is the wrong incentive. Advertising is a flat monthly fee whatever the budget.
Take the work if it is the wrong spend
If the free check says your problem is not a website problem, the report says so and I tell you what would actually move the number.
Rather just ask? One question by email or WhatsApp is fine.
The rest of South East Europe
Neighbouring markets, each with its own regulator, language and checkout.
Every market I work in is listed on where I work, with what differs in each one.
Fair questions before you get in touch
You are not based here. Does that matter?
It has not so far. Everything runs by email and WhatsApp, the accounts are in your name, and the work is the same work wherever it is typed. I am in Pakistan and I say so on every page, because finding that out later is worse than reading it now.
Should we offer cash on delivery?
In most consumer categories yes, and then measure what your own buyers choose. The important work is making sure the order flow, the stock logic and the reporting all handle an unpaid order correctly.
Can we price in euro?
Not for Romanian consumers. The leu is what buyers think in, and converted prices read as foreign at the moment you least want that.
Who writes the Romanian?
A native speaker, from Romanian search data. Translating from Italian or Spanish is the specific temptation here and it produces copy that reads as foreign in the everyday words.
Why are the prices on the website?
Because the alternative is a quote form, and a quote form exists to get you on a call before you know the number. The free 15 point check, the 290 euro audit and the monthly and rebuild prices are all published. You can decide before you ever write to me.
How long before any of this shows up in search?
A new page on a site that already carries some authority can move within weeks. On a site with very few links pointing at it, expect months, and expect the first movement on specific questions rather than on the obvious commercial terms. I will not give you a date, because nobody controls the result. What I will give you is the order of the work and what each step is meant to change.
Send your web address. That is the whole first step.
The written 15 point check comes back within two working days, free. It says what is holding the site back, in the order worth fixing.