How to beat your competitors to the global market – our top tips
In today’s competitive business environment, it pays to be the first company to market with a new product or service. Here are our tips on how to beat your competitors and take full advantage of global opportunities in your sector.
1. Be the early bird – get there first!
Localise your homepage for multiple markets – then you have the pick of where to focus your attention & resource rather than being forced out of the markets your competitors already operate in.
2. Forge your own path
China, Russia, and other fast-growing economies will compete with you in markets you hadn’t even begun to consider. Don’t follow the herd, but blaze your own trail. This takes confidence and a strong business plan but it is the only way to keep competitive advantage.
Case Study: Crystal Bridal Accessories
We met Amy Karim at the Internet Retailing Expo in March, where we spoke to her about expanding her online bridal accessories business internationally. She’d already decided to target Germany as a new market, and so our International Blast service was the ideal solution to get her started. (more…)
Maltese language rarely used on the internet
A lot of websites on the internet are available in more than one language, and some in a number of different languages. This is a topic that features every now and then on this blog, as we comment on which languages are most popular, how the languages in which a website are available affect the traffic to a website, and so on.
One language that doesn’t get much press or attention is Maltese. Maltese is a very interesting language; about half of its vocabulary is borrowed from Italian and Sicilian, and English words make up as much as 20% of its vocabulary. (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…)
Highest ever online sales from South African Airways multilingual website
“Only a couple of weeks after the relaunch of our website, we achieved our highest revenue ever from online sales! I’d expected it to take longer to achieve results, so am really impressed with the outcome.”
Benjamin Schubert, E-Commerce Project Manager – South African Airways
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…)
How to localise a content-managed site – Case Study
We’re going to take you step-by-step through a localisation project to explain how it’s done. The example we’ve chosen is the multilingual site we did for Loc8tor.
Loc8tor.com is an ecommerce site where customers can buy Loc8tor devices to help them keep track of keys, mobile phones, pets and all sorts of other belongings. This is an ideal showcase for the different elements involved in the professional localisation of a website.
With any website, the first step is to get the content into a format that translators can easily work with.
There are two main ways of translating content from a CMS – the translators can work directly into the system and input translations as they go along, or an export can be obtained from the system – usually either XML or Excel format.
Translation is not always done in a linear fashion – starting at the beginning and finishing at the end – a translator needs to be able to skip parts and come back to them later, raise queries if something is unclear etc. When it comes to proofreading the translation, a file will usually be easier to work on and edit than the content within the CMS. With this in mind, an exported file is often the best method.
So, the Project Manager will deliver the file to the translators, or give them access to the CMS as necessary. Once the translation is complete, the proofreaders do their part. Any images or other parts of the website not already part of the CMS/export file would be localised at this stage too – a professional localisation includes everything, not just the obvious text components of the website.
If an export file has been used, then this needs to be imported back into the CMS. This is usually done by the client’s web team, but sometimes we are given an access login to the system and can upload it ourselves.
The published sites we localised for Loc8tor can be found at www.loc8tor.eu, www.loc8tor.fr and www.loc8tor.es.
With some projects, this is where our involvement ends, but there are other stages that are recommended in order for the localised website to be a success:
Usability testing – this is especially important for eCommerce websites or any others where transactions take place. The localised site is tested from the user’s point of view to make sure all functions work correctly, links lead to the pages they should, etc.
Multilingual SEO & eMarketing – just because you’ve invested in localising your site doesn’t mean that customers in that particular country know it is there! Submitting your site to local search engines, building some inbound links and promoting the new website online will all help get more traffic, and these initial measures are included as standard in our Strategic Approach to Localisation packages.
Managing updates – it’s important that you consider how updates to the website will be managed. Many CMSs can be configured to send updates for translation, which minimises the delay in keeping the multilingual site current.
Keyword Research – Knowing the most popular search terms for your product or service is critical. We help to capture maximum exposure by identifying not just your keywords, but also complementary keywords and competitive keywords to help you optimise your website, and maximize the effectiveness of your multilingual Pay Per Click campaigns.
Pay-Per-Click – ideal for giving your web traffic a boost, for promotions, sales and to announce new content. In most industries it will be expensive to stay at the top of results using PPC alone, but it should form part of your overall web strategy if you have sufficient budget.
A good localisation strategy will consider these additional elements of the process as well as simply translating the main body of text on a website.
If you have any questions about website localisation, or any comments about this article, please let us know.
Warehouse Express website localisation brings phenomenal results
“The results of localizing our website have been phenomenal. Our brand is now well-established in Germany and we’ve received lots of positive feedback from our German customers.”
Russell Morris, European Director – Warehouse Express
Web-Translations’ MD to speak at Internet World
Our MD, Daniel Rajkumar, will be speaking at this year’s Internet World!
His seminar – entitled: Global eMarketing: How to make your website an international selling tool will take place at 15:45 on Wednesday 28th April.
Daniel’s session will take delegates through the why, what & how of website localisation, and introduce the benefits of being multilingual, giving a step-by-step guide to the localisation process, illustrated by a client case study, then highlighting some important dos & don’ts before summarising how to make the most of your global potential.
To get a free pass into Internet World and catch Daniel’s talk, as well as saving yourself £20, register here: http://www.internetworld.co.uk/page.cfm/Action=PreReg/PreRegID=1/t=m
We look forward to seeing you there!
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
Web-Translations joins the ATC
We’re proud to announce that Web-Translations has become a member of the Association of Translation Companies.
As one of the oldest and most respected professional bodies in the translation industry, members of the ATC are carefully vetted before admission into membership, adhere to a strict code of professional conduct, are subject to the rulings of a professional ethics committee and carry full professional indemnity insurance cover to safeguard the interests of the translation purchaser.
Membership bestows upon Web-Translations some well-earned recognition of the excellent service we offer – it’s great to hear from an independent party how great a job we’re doing!
Web-Translations helps London Zoo welcome international web visitors
“We were unsure of the best way to present translations of key information on our website – we’d always used PDFs before.
The Wéb-Tränslatiôns team was very knowledgeable – I was impressed by the way they talked me through what was best for us and how their International Blast service could achieve this.”
Paul Hutton, Web Editor – ZSL (London Zoo)
"Top-notch" translations for Efficient Frontier
“Our French reviewer was very pleased with the work Web-Translations did on a White Paper for us recently – he said it was a top-notch job!”
Merinda Peppard, Global Marketing Manager – Efficient Frontier
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.
Web-Translations recommended by BGB Engineering
“Web-Translations are always very friendly and responsive.
They’re a great help, and I would recommend them – our project manager (Cassandra) was able to advise us on which sections of the website to include in the localisation, and worked directly with our web designers, which made it so much easier for us.”
James Tupper, Marketing & IT Systems – BGB Engineering
Web-Translations meet Totesport’s requirement for fast email and website translations
“Totesport chose Wéb-Tränslatiôns for their ability to meet our requirements for fast turnaround times on website and email translation as we look to move into the European market.”
Josh Darby, Casino Operations Manager – Totesport
Web-Translations provides Lipoxen with excellent customer service
“Web-Translations provides EXCELLENT client service, one to one interaction, meets tight timetables and is very cost-effective!”
Scott Maguire, CEO – Lipoxen