When a business enters into international market targeting 73% of users, speaking languages other than English, it certainly means targeting lot of money but it needs lot of care and vision. Following are some tips that will help your business go local in number of regions generating the promised bulks of money.
In order to be an international business, the best way is to make your website local because any global website won’t be of much help, especially when it comes down to communicating to larger number of people internationally.
First off, know as much as you could about the relevant local market such as local rivals, routine language, etc. For example, in Switzerland people use Italian, Swiss-German and French for their routine dealings. So, you have to decide the language of your website, and deep research will help in the right decision.
If in-house resources do not permit you to conduct research yourself, you can always hire number of local agencies to provide you the desired information. These agencies are at an advantage with access to local experts and consequently you can have a superb international website.
Some local agencies do have a vast pool of good translators. These translators can explain you the difference between unknown cultures. They can help you with local languages and give good advices related to your business success as well, based on their up-to-date knowledge of cultural & political changes.
Remember, translator is a very precious asset because that person is going to convey your message to the new potential customers. No doubt, machines are good translators too, but they will never be able to give you a feel of the local place, and little errors can cost you a lot.
For instance, if a machine translates your message, it may render long sentences and use of ‘or’, ‘but’ and ‘have’ can give it a “translated feeling”, but when a translator translates your message, they will keep local customs and users in mind, and will give it a fresh feel, which surely will result in bringing more customers to your website.
In case, you’re conducting localization yourself, you can find different freelancing translators by language, location or sector, according to your requirements at online sites such as Proz.com or TranslatorsCafe.
You surely wish to make your website unique but remember innovation is as necessary as the content in it. Translators surely help you with getting the content local but its design and style are equally essential. Variation in culture means variation in features of the website as well. So, you must focus on the local culture of your market and accommodate the changes accordingly. Work on colors, textures, layout and interactivity of the website. It is either going to get you users or lose them completely.
To develop a better understanding of any culture’s requirement, the theory of High Context (HC) vs. Low Context (LC) by Edward Hall can be helpful. HC cultures, here, is referring to Asian countries where people expect the content to be interactive and social, having background information and videos. And LC cultures refer to Northern Europe region where content is liked to be easy and aimed at individuals.
You can look at different sites like www.newedgegroup.com.au, www.apple.com, etc to get an idea about the adaptability of your website and get rid of any doubts. Besides, you can take help from other tools like quick language or location indicator function.
SEO is very critical and can be quite hard especially when you’re dealing with different languages. Still you have an advantage here. When it comes down to English, there are bottlenecks of content but the volume of content in other languages is still quite less, which gives your website the chance to be found much easily by the respective Search Engines.
Summary
It’s great to be a global business but you need to be practical as well. So, when you are aware of different novel cultures, becoming a local name won’t take much time.
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