Web Globalization & Localization
Having a Web site means that anyone anywhere can view
your company’s products and services. Expanding
your reach to a global audience produces
several questions:
• How do you market to a target
audience in a foreign country?
• Is it expensive?
• Do you need to have someone on staff that knows
the language?
• How do you get ranked on foreign search engines?
• Does the entire site need to be translated?
• What is localization and Web
globalization?
• How effective is translation software?
• Is it worth it?
These are all great questions in which we can answer.
The last question “is it worth it?” is especially
important. It’s a question we often hear.
Consider these statistics from a June 2006 report from
Internetworldstats.com:
• 1 billion+ people use the Internet world wide
• English represents 30% of all Internet users
• North American usage is 21.1% of the entire
world
• Asia represents 36.4% of all Internet users
• Internet usage in Europe is 28.4%
Just sheer numbers would indicate that considering
Web site localization and globalization
would be worth considering. The numbers also indicate
that if you only market to North America you are missing
about 80% of total Internet users.
According to Export America, statistics indicate that
a customer is twice as likely to stay at a web site,
and four times as likely to purchase goods or
services, if the site is in his or her native
language. According to Forrester Research,
businesses that present Web sites only in English lose
up to $10 million in potential sales per year
Marketing your products or services globally
can dramatically increase your revenue if you do it
effectively. How can you do it effectively? Here are
a few tips when dealing with Web globalization:
• Research the countries laws, culture and product
use/need
• Think beyond U.S. English
• Consider a Web globalization
strategy BEFORE a site redesign
• Know the country's top search engines
• Do not use language translation software
• Build a internationalized Web site
How do you know if your site is internationalized?
Chances are if you are not sure then it is probably
not. Internationally ready means that your site can
easily be translated and localized for a foreign
language.
Translating, Web globalization and localization is often
not enough. To truly penetrate a countries' culture
the site should be culturally
customized Dr. Arun Pereira, co-author
of The Culturally Customized Web Site©
has recently partnered with ePlus Marketing to
provide our clients special insight to achieving a site
that is truly customized culturally.
If you are already marketing to a global audience and
want to do more or just considering it contact
us to see if Web Globalization makes sense for you.
Some of our most recent success with
some of our clients:
• Increased international Web visitors
by 179%
• Increased targeted country Web site visitors
by over 300%
• Increased the percent of total revenue by foreign
companies by 25%
• Increased Web ranking on foreign search engines
to the first page
• Increased Web site visits referred by foreign
search engines by 251%
• Increased conversion
ratio for international customers by 150%
Also visit our Links page for to
see some useful sites regarding International Trade,
Web Globalization and translation.
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