Your Website Is Already International

By Author: Mel Joelle
Total Articles: 4328
Comment this article

The primary business language of the world is English 50% of the websites in the world are English. The potential of reaching the biggest audience at minimum cost is already in all web site owners' hands, they just need to utilize it. Here are some pointers when focusing on a more international campaign:

Language Barriers:

Even though the primary business language of the world is English, not all your potential consumers will speak it, or clearly understand it.

That's why it is important to translate your website into the target audience's primary language as well as having it in your native language. And by all means, make sure you have people on staff that speaks- the targeted language fluently. Otherwise you are going to be getting leads in Italian, Spanish, German, etc, and won't be able to communicate properly.

Also they will be able to interpret nuances and idiomatic expressions that don't make sense when directly translated with software programs.

Operating System and Browser Barriers:
The majority of computer users use Microsoft's Windows XP with a Mozilla/4.0 or later compatible ...
... browser like Internet Explorer 6 or 7.0. Mozilla's Firefox browser averages around 20% market share while Safari, Opera, and other browser are fewer than 5%.

To maintain compatibility across all browsers, make sure all your web pages are W3 validated. You can check your web pages by placing your URL into W3.org's html validated at validator-w3-org

They also have a CSS validation to make sure all your codes will be ready by modern and even older browsers.

Accessibility Barriers:

Making sure your website is handicap accessible not only will gain you more visitors for an almost ignored audience, but also will show that you are willing to take the necessary steps to help your consumers get the information they are after.

www.w3.org has an accessibility section that shows guidelines and techniques to increase the accessibility of your website.

Tracking and Analyzing:
Most web administrators use their preferred tracking system; I like using Awstats and Google Analytics. I started getting into Crazyegg to track user interaction on my sites as well. Awstats give me great details about what is going on my server whether it is robots hitting my site, search crawlers or spiders, as well as visitors, all including a great deal of detail.

I use Google Analytics for a more in-depth detailed analysis of the keywords, traffic sources, and country sources of my traffic. This allows me to see where I am having trouble generating leads from, and where my greatest sources of profitability are.

Crazyegg goes further into detail by allowing me to use heat-map technology to see what people click on my site. If I have a button that is green for example, and I want people to click on it more, I can change it to red and will most likely see an increase in mouse clicks on the site.

Lead Management:

Once you achieve traffic and are able to turn them into leads, you need to make sure that you are able to manage your leads, constantly follow up on them to convert them into sales.

So, overcome these barriers to international exposure and you will take your site to a new level in visibility, conversions, sales and profits. After all, we are truly in a global economy; be international be global!
Click here to read the rest of International Websites. If you enjoyed this article, you also might like our other stories about Search Engine Optimization.