This post is an explanation of how our International Blast service works, as it’s something we are often asked about.
International Blast was developed as a first step localisation for companies who wanted to begin trading internationally online, but preferred a cautious approach rather than investing a larger amount of money, time and resources in localising their whole website.
Even localising just one or two key pages of a website yields results, and often generates sales in a new target market. By pricing the service at £295, it is also an affordable option if a company wish to test several new markets at once.
International Blast involves localising the homepage (and often another key page), of a company’s website for a selected country. We then build a microsite containing just these pages, and submit this to search engines in the target country, so that the website will be indexed and start to appear in Search Engine results. We also list the site on relevant directories and build inbound links.
International Blast can be used to achieve several objectives:
- Raise awareness of your brand in a new country
- Gain subscribers for a newsletter or service that will be launched later
- Showcase a product to be launched in that country
For sites with extensive content or product catalogues, such as eCommerce websites, we’ve had great successes in localising key information, then notifying the visitor when they are about to visit a page that is in English. By managing the user’s expectation in this way, they are not disappointed by arriving on an English page, and statistics show that many visitors (around 40% in recent cases) will go on to make a purchase from the English site.
International Blast is also comparable in cost to Pay-per-click advertising. With a localised microsite, clients can expect to pay less than 12p per visitor – in some cases, it has been as little as 2p per visitor, which is a much better value option than Pay-per-click, where in a competitive market a spend of £295 may not get you far.
The other advantage of attracting visitors with localised web pages is that they stay online for as long as you like – unlike a Pay-per-click advert, they won’t disappear once your budget has been used up.
Clients who’ve benefited from using this approach include:
Golf Online, Quiet PC, London Zoo, & Baker Perkins.
30 July 2010 09:26