IT

5 easy steps to take your online business global

Author: Igal Stolpner / Source: The Next Web

How many websites are you familiar with that are truly global?

You can probably think of a few, and some of the largest online companies will likely come to mind including Facebook, Amazon, eBay, a couple of travel sites and maybe a few others.

There’s a lot of potential in specific local markets throughout the world, but expanding it to a global scale can help you reach a much wider audience and grow significantly faster.

Why don’t we see many more companies succeed at going global?

While many businesses simply prefer to focus on a limited audience — and are perhaps even afraid to try their luck beyond their own limited borders — the vast majority of companies that try going global simply fail. This isn’t due to the company’s size or budget restraints either, it’s down to a failure in executing, and even acknowledging, some vital steps needed to do so.

They look at basic cultural differences, but you need more than just the basics. Converting the currency or tweaking the colors isn’t enough to make locals feel they can trust your online brand.

They translate, and while it’s a crucial step, it’s only a step. Translating the texts will make your website readable, but not necessarily offer the kind of value the local market will appreciate.

They think they have SEO and marketing covered, but international SEO requires more than just picking the right URL structure and adding hreflang tags. If your site doesn’t rank in a specific country right now, then simply launching a brand new website for it and adding the right tags from your original site won’t cut it.

Here’s what websites should take into account to succeed at going global

To scale globally, you need to be ready to make adjustments, and take every country into account individually.

At my company, we have 30 localized editions in 23 different languages. Our international websites are responsible for over 70 percent of our total traffic, and going global is what allowed the website to grow to over 90 million monthly sessions.

1. Local research

For every single country or region you wish to enter, start with local research. The purpose is to decide whether to enter that local market or not.

A few questions to answer:

How many potential users are there?
What do these users currently rely on?
Will your current business model work?
How will you handle support for local customers?
Are you legally authorized to bring your product, use your brand name, hire the needed people, and monetize it?

Pro tip: You can use your own Facebook page to get insights, by narrowing down your audience to a specific country. This is a great way to get insights from locals who already know your product. At my company, after launching an English local edition for India, it was our Facebook audience that helped us decide we didn’t require a Hindi edition too.

You need to really understand the local market, their habits, how they use the web (and mobile), if and how they buy online, and how they engage with products like yours.