5 Reasons Why International Trade Will Help Your Business
International trade has many benefits, some of which are more obvious than others. Detailed below are key benefits highlighted by clients who have made international trade a major part of their on-going business strategy.
Read on as Charles Purdy, Director of Smart Currency Exchange Ltd gives his insight on the main advantages of international trade.
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Expanding Horizons: International Trade Seminar
ABDN is working in partnership with UK Trade and Investment to host a seminar on International Trade in Leeds next week.
Date: Wednesday 18th May 2011
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Venue: Irwin Mitchell Solicitors Leeds, 2 Wellington Place, Leeds, LS1 4BZ (more…)
Wéb-Tränslatiôns partners with euro.message in Turkey
Web-Translations is pleased to announce its partnership with Istanbul-based e-marketing company euro.message.
euro.message is one of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies, and the largest e-marketing service provider in Turkey. (more…)
Join us at the Internet Retailing Expo – 23rd-24th March
Web-Translations will be exhibiting at this year’s Internet Retailing Expo at the Birmingham NEC from 23rd-24th March.
The expo brings together leading marketing, software and service providers to help all kinds of companies involved in online retail to grow and succeed.
Our Managing Director Daniel will be presenting as part of the Jumpstart programme:
Increasing export sales to foreign markets
While the UK leads the way in ecommerce, relatively few etailers profit from exploiting foreign markets. In his presentation, Daniel Rajkumar will explain how a multi-market, multi domestic approach to ecommerce helps increase visitor confidence to drive up conversion rates. In addition to best practice, Daniel will divulge secrets and practical tools for your multilingual eMarketing strategy, including the use of Social Media, SEO, PR and local affiliate networks to drive traffic and revenues.
Whether you’re a global company operating in many markets or a domestic business looking to export for the first time, Daniel’s presentation is pitched to cover the basics as well as some advanced practices, useful to strategic decision makers and practical implementers alike, you are sure to come away with ideas and inspiration that will open your eyes to the lucrative potential of non-English markets.
View the presentation schedule online
Register online free at http://www.internetretailingexpo.com/
We hope to see you there!
Are you ready to "Go Global"?
Join Web-Translations and a host of other international business experts at the betterbusiness Going Global Workshop, next Wednesday (9th March) at Lacon House, London.
This event will focus on how to take your business global. With growing populations across the globe and the rise of the developing nations, can your business afford to miss out on these lucrative markets? (more…)
Web-Translations meets with Lord Stephen Green
On Friday I had the opportunity to have lunch with Lord Stephen Green of Hurstpierpoint, Minister for Trade & Investment.
Entrepreneurs from businesses across Yorkshire attended a lunch event hosted by Angloco in their Batley premises. Angloco manufactures fire engines for all kinds of organisations around the world, and exports to over 45 countries. (more…)
Look to overseas markets for growth, says CEO of eCommerce success ASOS
It’s always good when a prominent figure echoes what we’ve been saying for years – expanding into foreign markets using your website is a great way to grow your business, and is a low-risk option in these difficult financial times. (more…)
Wensleydale: A Yorkshire institution
The Wensleydale Creamery in Yorkshire is one step closer to realising their goal of achieving Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) for their cheese, according to an article in the Yorkshire Post. This would provide the Yorkshire cheese with the same protection as products such as Parma Ham and Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, ensuring that no other cheese makers could use the name ‘Real Yorkshire Wensleydale’.
The original recipe, now over 800 years old, is still used in the production of the cheese. As the managing director of the Wensleydale Creamery, David Hartley, commented: ‘Applying for PGI status will protect the integrity and provenance of our cheese and elevate it above and differentiate it from manufacturers outside the region.’ (more…)
Making the case for Multilingual SEO
SEO is just as important for your foreign language sites as for your English one. Simply translating content and putting it online unfortunately does not mean that any of your potential customers will find the pages you have created for their benefit.
As Nataly Kelly of the Common Sense Advisory says:
“It just doesn’t work to assume that a target audience who has been linguistically underserved in the past will miraculously show up at your site in the months following the launch of your new content. […] you need to publicize your new content and drive your target audience to the new site. Just as with your source language website, expect the traffic to build over time.” (more…)
How International Blast works
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. (more…)
Web-Translations is proud to showcase its new portfolio of work
Have a look at some of the recent projects we’ve been working on:
- South African Airways, national airline of this year’s World Cup host nation – this project involves website localisation and managing multilingual updates.
- Aspinal of London, famous for their iconic leather goods – we set up a new ecommerce system, localised the site, and Aspinal now have a fully functioning Japanese ecommerce site.
- The Dorchester Collection, an international hotel management company – we’ve localised websites for various individual hotels in the collection, and translated documents for print as well.
- Future Publishing, an international special-interest media group – we provide translations of newsletters, press releases and magazine articles for their client Colnago.
- Citigroup, a leading global financial services company that operates in 140 countries – we translate various documents and web copy for several departments.
- Quiet PC, a leading supplier of PC cooling and quietening products – Used our International Blast service to test new markets to see where their products would be most popular.
If you’d like to be featured as one of our success stories, get in touch!
Yorkshire businesses are well-positioned to sell into Scandinavia
Yorkshire companies are “well-positioned to sell into Scandinavia”, according to Danish business expert and former diplomat, Benny Sørensen.
At a recent event to inform businesses in the region about opportunities in Scandinavia, the organisers (Import-Export consultants SØRENSEN, and Denmark’s inward investment organisation Copenhagen Capacity, teamed with the Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce International Department) experienced unprecedented demand from Yorkshire businesses wishing to attend, and have urged companies who are interested in trading with Scandinavian countries to act quickly to make the most of the opportunities available. (more…)
Quiet PC gains European web visitors for only 2p
“The results of localizing the key pages into 11 languages have been excellent; the traffic to the French, German and Dutch has been especially good and equates to a cost of 2p per visitor
– that’s fantastic value compared to pay-per-click advertising in a competitive industry like ours!
Web-Translations definitely go the extra mile – we’ll be working with them again to expand the multilingual sites.”
Glenn Garrett, Partner – Quiet PC
Internet changes likely to impact international Web businesses
A recent article in New Scientist reports on the imminent release of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from U.S. national control. ICANN is responsible for maintaining the various technical standards that make the Internet possible on a low level.
Under an Affirmation agreement with the U.S. department of commerce ICANN will not be coordinated by any specific government, allowing representatives from many countries to take part. The likely offshoot is that Internet standards will become more inclusive of Internet users outside America. For instance, the article reports that we might reasonably expect domain names to be available in Chinese and Arabic characters in little more than a year. They also report that current browsers cannot access domain names written in these scripts, which is quite right, but a reasonably small change I cannot see any major browser manufacturer delaying in releasing to their customers.
New EU language Regulations for Pharmaceutical and Medical Device manufacturers
Latest EU regulations demand that all packaging and instruction leaflets for pharmaceutical products and medical devices are translated into the official language of the country they are being exported to.
American companies in this sector who intend to export their products to Europe must comply with these regulations, and indeed should embrace multilingual packaging in order to compete with their European counterparts.
International eMarketing seminar – November
International eMarketing 12th November, 13.00 – 17.00
The Source, Meadowhall, Sheffield (£35)
Learn about ebusiness strategies to promote your business in non-English markets using the Internet.
Maximise exporting opportunities with a multilingual website
According to a recent EU report, 2 of the main obstacles faced by UK businesses who are exporting for the first time are language and cultural barriers, and how best to promote their websites using SEO and online advertising.
The first step in trading internationally is to localise your website. This way, you can gain enquiries and orders from overseas customers with only a small investment – with even just one or two pages translated into foreign languages you can use your website to “test the water” in a number of countries at once, and see which ones gain you the most web traffic.
By monitoring the visitors to your localised webpages, you can choose the countries which warrant extra investment and focus on marketing your product or service there.
Online Purchases Increase Across Europe
As e-tailers prepare for another record Christmas period they should consider the changing trends in consumer confidence across Europe for new opportunities. Consumers are buying more frequently in every country in Europe, but as the pace of growth slows in the UK and competition stiffens, smart businesses will look to serve multilingual markets where consumerism grows faster and is less competitive.
International Trade – ask the expert!
This month in Yorkshire’s Insider magazine, Daniel Rajkumar, managing director of Web-Translations answered readers’ questions about web translation and emails, and setting up internationally usable websites.
Q: I have set up a new arm of my company in France as a base for drawing in business from across Europe. As I am looking at a lot of different countries do I need translation of the whole of my website or blog into all the possible European languages? Won’t English do?
A: “If you are serious about drawing business in from Europe you will have to have the website or blog professionally translated for the main language of each country you are targeting. People use the web for research and they search in their native language, so if your website is not multilingual, it will simply not be found.
International Trade will keep your company afloat
Trade figures have recently shown an improvement in business exports – partly due to the weakened value of our currency. According to research, companies which trade internationally are more likely to stay in business longer and are usually more profitable than those which choose to concentrate only on domestic sales.
Exporting is a great way to expand your business – those who trade internationally grow faster and fail less often than companies that don’t, and the current weak curerncy makes our prices much more competitive, so there’s no time like the present.
Which products/services sell well in Europe?
Machinery, engineering products and consultancy, vehicles, aircraft, plastics, crude oil, chemicals, plastic and rubber, metals, foodstuffs, beverages, textiles & clothing are all in demand throughout the Eurozone, and a little effort in approaching a potential client in their own language can go a long way. Even something as small as localising key pages of your website for a foreign market show that you are interested in foreign customers, and are a forward-thinking company.
What about in Asia?
The main exports to China are electrical/mechanical equipment, precision instruments (medical, optical, photo, technical), plastics, iron & steel, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and Automotive , Biotechnology & pharmaceuticals, Construction, Engineering, Financial services & ICT are all industries which have experienced growth there. As for India, there is a similar focus on engineering, sciences and technology, but in fact opportunities exist there for most sectors.
Where else should we look to?
Emerging markets have been identified in Poland, Vietnam, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Singapore, and Argentina. Opportunities exist in various sectors in these countries, notably design, consultancy and engineering – the sectors that are most commonly successful for overseas trade.
Brazil and Russia will also continue to be key areas for companies trading internationally.