Expand Global Reach With Multilingual Site

“Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.”

This is a famous quote by William Arthur and how true it is in your personal life or when considering your business. As the internet continues to grow, it has become a default means for individuals to search for information, goods or services. Building an effective web infrastructure to reach out to global audience is essential for business growth. Today, businesses with strong roots locally are willing to expand to newer markets and strengthen their presence in international territories. And this is also one of the biggest challenges that organizations are facing today.

Web CMS and digital marketing often play a crucial role in establishing brands in diverse global markets. For business willing to take advantage of this, creating a multilingual website is the most effective means of expanding the customer base and securing higher sales volumes. Research says that customers usually prefer to make purchases while browsing the site in their native language.

In fact, reports show that 52.4% people bought from sites that were in their own language. Furthermore, 85% preferred to gather information in their own language when making important decisions. Two thirds of international buyers visit websites in English and nearly three quarters don’t make purchases if they are unable to use their own local currency.

35% of the internet users use English as their first or second language and Chinese ranks second with 13.7% of users. Other leading languages include Spanish, Japanese, German and French. Thus, by creating a multilingual website, you will be able to attract about 80% global internet users and this will lead to more traffic and increased sales.

Source:http://redie.uabc.mx/index.php/redie/article/view/190/110

A multilingual website is a site where the web content is written in more than one language. The information remains the same, but it is displayed in different languages to give the site a local feel or an international look. It can also be described as the most cost effective marketing tool that offers huge business opportunities to capture new customers and at the same time allows building relationships with already existing customers.

If your company has decided to capture the international market, then there are two means to efficiently communicate with your customers. They are:

• Multiple sites: You can decide to treat each targeted language separately and create different sites for each of them. Suppose if your company has offices in the US, UK, Germany and Japan then you can create separate sites for each country. But to manage these multiple sites, you have to choose tools that reduce the chance of duplicate work and aid in keeping each site updated. A good CMS can surely help.
• One site-Multiple languages: Some companies prefer to have a more tightly integrated multi-language site and prefer one website that offers multiple visitor selected language outputs. In this case, users can easily select the language on any page on the site, instead of navigating separate sites to get information in another language. But creating such a side can be tedious and highly technical.

• Move from English users to others: The internet is dominated by English websites and users. But with changing times and internet users growing in other countries like New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy and many more, it is a good idea to target different countries around the world by creating a multi-language site.
• New customers: Offering local versions of your site often help generating awareness and interests in the customers. By making your site accessible to thousands of people across the globe, your non English speaking customers can have a look at your services and products they are actually interested in.
• Impressive traffic: A huge percentage of internet users prefer to access sites that display information in their local language. Creating a multilingual site will attract heavy traffic and you can expect the visitors to make purchases also. This means impressive revenue from your business.
• Cost effective marketing tool: Having the ability to connect to the international audience in their native language often allows the company to promote their products and services and create awareness of the brand. It is an efficient means to market and advertise your company internationally without investing too much money.
• Remain competitive: In today’s business market, it is very important to remain competitive and think out of the box. If you want to differentiate yourself from the competitors, then creating a multilingual site is a good idea to establish your brand abroad before they do it.
• Local search engines: In many countries like Japan, China and France, major search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo are not their default search engines. Local search engines are emerging and are proving to be more successful as they work in native languages and are more focused on the needs of the local users and their habits. So, accessing the market in their native language will help local search engines to rank your site and increase more traffic to it.