eCommerce

Main concerns of international online shoppers

Presents for family in America   Presents for the kids Present for Grandma Click, click, click.  My Christmas shopping is nearly complete, and 80% was purchased online.  The gifts that haven’t been dropped into my online shopping basket have at least been researched and price-checked online.  Judging by the latest eCommerce research, I am not alone. Consumers around the world are shopping online in increasing numbers.  It’s quick and often cheaper; getting the lowest advertised price only takes a quick Google search.  And with free shipping options, it’s cheaper than paying for city centre parking! Buying gifts for friends and family in another country is also a lot easier – no queuing at the post office! – and saves the cost of international postage. With your international eCommerce site, the concerns are very much the same as for English-language only websites, however there are a few additional points to consider for your foreign-language pages. Simply translating the English content is not sufficient.   Delivery charges […]

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Grow your business internationally – our Top 6 tips

Global trade has never been so easy! The web has removed geographical barriers from international trade. If you can overcome language and cultural barriers, the world truly is your oyster. The UK export trade is worth millions, and with a well-localised website, you are better positioned to tap into these growing international markets. Positioned between the translation and web industries, Web-Translations offers a unique, low-risk, low-cost approach to international eBusiness. Here are our Top 6 tips for growing your business internationally: 1) Make friends with Google. Google has a host of online tools to help you analyse market data and understand trends around the world. The Market Finder tool can recommend the best market for your business, providing insights to help you reach the audience in a particular country. Google Trends shows what topics are trending in a particular country, as well as providing data on individual search terms. More fantastic graphs and charts help you to decide if a […]

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Choosing the right domain

Have you seen fewer .co.uk sites recently? Many companies with an international presence have moved to a single site with subfolders for each country. At Web-Translations, we started with a .co.uk domain in 2003, and as we grew, we added a .com domain, then a .jp domain, and over the next 10 years we purchased domains for many different markets including .es, .it and .pt. It began to get expensive and complicated! In 2014, we moved our primary site to a .com domain, with subfolders for different languages. Previously, we would have advised against this. Top-level domains, such as .de and .jp, are automatically picked up by search engines, and are therefore good for in-country SEO. However, with newer geotargeting techniques, a single site with subfolders (also known as subdirectories) can be as effective as a ccTLD.

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Google’s new Expanded Text Ads: what we understand so far

With the new-format Google ads running alongside standard text ads for nearly a month, we’ve noticed some quirks, understood a bit more, and most importantly – seen the benefits. Google announced the change back in May, and launched the new Extended Text Ads (ETAs) at the end of July. Advertisers have until 26 October to create old-style standard text ads (STAs); after this only ETAs can be created. Google hasn’t given an end-date for running STAs, but it’s in your best interests to make new ads. We recommend you start by running both sorts of ads simultaneously; if your ETAs don’t perform as well as your old ads, tweak them until you are comfortable removing the old ads. The Google guide to expanded text ads is helpful, as is the Google blog post from the day of the launch. More Content The old-style character limit rule of 25/35/35 no longer applies. ETAs have 2 headlines and a description, and the […]

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Word of the day – bounce!

We all talk about bounce rates, but it seems that many people don’t fully understand what a bounce is. Simply put, a bounce is a one-page visit. It doesn’t matter which page it is, how long the visitor spends on the page they visit, or if they click on a link on that page which leads them to a different site. It doesn’t matter if they come to you via a search engine or type in your URL. What matters is that they only visit one page before the specified session-timeout occurs. If you’d like to learn more, Wikipedia has detailed formulas for calculating bounce rates, and Google has tips for improving them.

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