So you’ve got a nice new website, ensured it’s fully mobile responsive and you’ve had it translated into English. That’s all you need to do to attract international customers, right?
Now you can just sit back and watch as your turnover increases.
Well, probably not actually.
While translating your site into English is fundamental to increasing your foreign market penetration, by itself it’s not going to be enough.
Now it’s true that since the dawn of the web, over two decades ago – feeling old yet? – English speakers have enjoyed the majority of web content being in their native language. But recent studies show this trend to be changing, and the reason for that is ecommerce.
It’ll come as no great surprise that over 70% of internet users are not native English speakers, and while people all around the world may be happy to log on and watch cat videos in any language, they’re not so willing to put up cash and pay for something without the security of doing so in their own language.
So why should you translate and localise your site?
The internet has now penetrated into almost all aspects of our lives, and given the evidence that customers prefer to engage with websites in their own language, it’s surprising that 66% of Fortune 500 companies still haven’t invested in translating their websites. Even more so when you consider that those Fortune 500 companies which have made an investment in localisation have been found 1.5 times more likely to show an increase in total revenue.
Examples of successful localisation are easy to see, take Microsoft for example. The PC giant saw a huge increase in revenue when it became possible for frustrated user all over the world to read “application failed to load” or “cannot access printer” in their native language.
Then of course, there was Facebook’s localisation project, which saw the world becoming Mark Zuckerberg’s unpaid translation service, as everyone with knowledge of a second language clamoured at the opportunity to give the correct translation of “poke”, “like”, and “log out”. Facebook has now become one of the largest and most powerful online marketing tools ever, thanks largely to its local appeal.
So you’ve decided to localise your site?
One of the biggest obstacles to localising a website is deciding where to start. Between education, product, blogs and videos, a well established website could potentially contain thousands of pages. Do you really need to translate them all?
Probably not.
This is where a trusted SEO professional and thorough analysis of your customer journey will become invaluable.
Where are your customers coming from? The answer to this could be as simple as looking to see where your products are shipping to. But does that reflect where you need to focus or simply where your site is already successful? Does your site show a high bounce rate for certain territories, where customers are landing and then clicking away before converting?
Increasing your international market penetration requires careful analysis of your data, and a look-before-you-leap mentality. You’ll also need a good knowledge of your target audiences, and how best to appeal to them. How much does social media really affect the Chinese for example, and what is the best time of day to email an Englishman?
We’ll be looking more at how different nationalities behave online and how best to attract customers from different countries next week.
maka language consulting