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Is world domination your end game? No, I’m not talking about being a James Bond villain. I’m talking about expanding your flourishing business overseas. Doing well domestically is a great achievement. However, if you’re looking to grow internationally, then there are some things you’ll want to do to adapt your shop to local markets. In other words, the key to globalising is localising.In today’s blog, we’ll look at some of the most important elements of your online shop that will need to be adapted to local markets. We’ll also look at some tips for achieving those goals. As it’s pretty in-depth, I’ve created a table of contents for you:
Part 1: Switch to the local language
Part 2: Best Practices for Multilingual E-commerce Websites
Part 4: Offer more payment options
Part 5: Free Google tools for internationalisation
Before we begin, you might want to know about our European holidays marketing calendar. It will help you plan your marketing campaigns based on the holidays happening in your most important markets:
Switch to the local language
You might think that English is the international language and that is certainly true in today’s global economy. However, shoppers don’t think like deal-makers and business people. They are shopping from the comfort of their own home and comfort is indeed the keyword here.
When a customer sees a website in their language and can read product descriptions and reviews in their native tongue, they are more willing to trust a website. Besides this, having your website in different languages communicates something important to your customers: your company thinks BIG.
Top 5 languages to localise your website into
The world is a small place, and with the internet, it’s getting even smaller every day! Though it may seem that the world is shrinking, at the same, it is continuously evolving. English content and websites have completely dominated the online world for the better part of two decades.
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However, it doesn’t maintain the same “stronghold” today as it once did. Other languages are catching up. There are many reasons to localise your website, but one thing is clear: it is as important as ever, and you can bet that e-commerce has had a huge roll in changing all that.
So what are the top languages and markets that you should focus on if your company has aspirations of going global? We’re going to look at the top 5 languages that will help your company get bigger as the world gets smaller.
First, some numbers
As you might have guessed, the numbers on the internet languages don’t exactly reflect the world population, but yes, English is still the most spoken language among internet users today.
According to Internet World Stats, English speakers make up about 26.3% of the internet population. However, 51.6% of internet pages are created in English. This kind of makes sense, considering that the internet was basically created in the U.S. and has developed there for many years. However, when we look at the rest of the numbers, they don’t really add up the way we might think.
As far as internet users go, we see Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese rounding out the top 5. When we compare those numbers to the content that already exists, we see Russian, Japanese, German and Spanish in the top 5.
Spanish is, therefore, the only language besides English that we see in both top 5 lists. Naturally, these numbers are estimates and fluctuate every year. Perhaps, the fact that many eastern European users speak Russian is what makes it a popular language for websites.
However, Chinese (or Mandarin) is really the most surprising number here. Though Chinese speakers make up more than 1/5 of internet users, only 2% (or 1/20) of websites are written in Chinese.
It will definitely be interesting to see what happens with these numbers over the next few years as economies, technologies, and industries continue to develop.
Spanish
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. With almost 8% of current Internet users speaking Spanish, the proportion of websites published in Spanish (5.1%) seems to be mirrored most accurately here compared to other languages.
Considering that most South American countries have developing economies and Spain has been pulling itself out of the recession, my guess is that these numbers will increase very much in the coming years, especially with technology developing to the point that many people are gaining internet access where they didn’t before.
Between Argentina and Mexico, they make up 21.2% of e-commerce sales in Latina America. By 2019, they are expected to combine for about 30.2% for the region, according to Business Insider.
Keep in mind that the Spanish used in each country might vary a bit, so it might be worth investing in multiple Spanish translations, depending on your products, your content, and the market involved. If this seems like too much work, consider just localising your marketing campaigns into the "local" Spanish.
Note that Brazil is the leader for sales in Latin America. Of course, (Brazilian) Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, so we would like to put Portuguese as an honourable mention considering that Portuguese speakers are also in the top 10 of total internet users and in the top 10 of total online content.
German
Though German speakers barely squeaked into the top 10 of internet users, notice that in terms of content they are #4. This reflects the fact that German-speaking countries have quite strong economies. Between the economies of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the DACH market) and their high internet usage rates, it is clear why so many websites are written in German.
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According to E-commerce Worldwide, e-commerce sales in Germany hit a turnover of €105.6 billion in 2016 (up 10% from 2015). Considering the strength of the German economy, this trend is not showing any signs of slowing down. Germans buy a lot online, including clothing (Zalando), electronics, and even coffee. When it comes to cross-border sales, Germans are buying from the UK, the US, and France the most.
French
French is bigger than France. Considering that français (French) is the official language of over 29 nations, including Belgium, Switzerland and more than a few African nations, it’s obvious why the French language cannot be ignored.
When all is said and done, French speakers account for 2.8% of internet users. That might sound small, but it adds up to over 100 million potential customers! From an economics perspective, France, Canada (Quebec Province), and Switzerland are 3 French-speaking countries with strong purchasing power.
Mandarin
When you consider that China has about 1/5 of the world’s internet users, this should be reason enough to want to invest in localising your website for them. In fact, to give it even more perspective, you’d have to combine all of the internet users from the US and India to get relatively close to China’s numbers (you’d still about 100 million users short). Those are some mind-bending numbers.
On top of that, China’s purchasing power is almost on par with that of the USA.
One thing to keep in mind is that the normal websites and apps popular around the world (aka Google, Facebook, Twitter) are not the most popular ones in China and are often completely forbidden. That means that your SEO, and social media strategies should reflect that.
For example, Baidu is China’s most popular search engine, and WeChat dominates social media there.
Arabic
Though Arabic, similarly to Chinese, may be a very difficult language to translate, it may indeed be worth it. After all, 27 countries list Arabic as their official or co-official language.
Interestingly, Arabic speakers come in at 4th place in terms of internet users. However, Arab-language content does not crack the top 10. This opens up a big opportunity for online businesses.
However, this market may not be for everyone. One reason is that there does seem to be a wealth gap in many of the Arab-speaking countries. Therefore, if your business sells luxury goods, it would seem that Arabic would be a good language to display your website in.
Best technical practices for multilingual e-commerce websites
The more markets you expand into, the more traffic you’ll drive - and the more sales you’ll secure for your e-commerce store. There are many ways to drive more traffic to your business and one of the best ways is to make your website multilingual.
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Naturally, it sounds like a daunting task. But creating multilingual websites for your e-commerce business is easier than you think, and much of it has to do with altering your site structure.
And nope - you don’t need to be multilingual yourself.
In this section, we’ll be taking a look at the best practices for multilingual e-commerce websites so that you can start selling to an international audience.
We'll look at three core topics:
- Site structure (URLs)
- Hreflang Tags
- Content
Site Structure (URLs)
In order to set your e-commerce website up for an international audience, you need to set it up for international SEO. Either you can set up on your own or hire an e-commerce developer to help you with it.
This means setting up one of the following options:
- Different ccTLDs for the root domain
- gTLD with subdomains
- gTLD with subfolders
Let’s take a look at each one and explore their pros and cons. There is no right or wrong approach here, each business is different.
Different ccTLDs for the Root Domain
Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) send signals to Google in regards to which country your e-commerce store is targeting. These signals are the strongest possible—for instance domain.co.uk is easily identifiable as a UK domain.
Sephora is an example of a company that uses different ccTLDs for the root domain. For their French site, they use the domain sephora.fr:
The issue with this option is that you will need to spend more money, due to the fact that you’re essentially launching numerous domains. As a consequence, you’ll then have to maintain each domain, creating separate backlink profiles for each one.
ccTLDs are still a highly favorable option, however, with research by Moz showing that search engines produce more accurate results when a website uses ccTLDs.
That said, we would also argue that ccLTDs are a better option for large e-commerce websites with bigger budgets than smaller websites with smaller budgets.
gTLD with Subfolders & Subdomains
When it comes to multilingual SEO, you can use a gTLD with a subdirectory or subdomain. They’re both solid options and lots of e-commerce companies utilise both of these practices. Let's take a look at each of them:
gTLD with subdomains
gTLD with subdomains can be installed as a standalone CMS. This makes them ideal if an e-commerce company wants to assign specific staff to run certain language versions — making the CMS more secure.
Here’s a great example from HubSpot of what subdomains look like.
For international versions, your site might look like fr.your-shop-name.com for the French market.
It’s worth pointing out that gTLD with subdomains can be the most complicated of the two, thanks to the fact that they can be quite technical and not very user-friendly.
If you have no experience with web development, or if you have a small website, it might be a better idea to go with gLTD with subfolders...
gTLD with subfolders
gTLD with subfolders are great for SEO since any rankings will get passed along and boost the SEO of pages published in different languages.
There are lots of examples of other companies using subfolders for international SEO, like https://www.zara.com/uk/.
However it is important to note that having too many subfolders in a URL can negatively impact SEO rankings.
Hreflang Tags
Hreflang tags display the right version of your e-commerce store’s web pages for the right geographic region. They help you to organise content according to various languages and they make it easier for your customers in different parts of the world to find your website.
Source: Shutterstock/sondem
For example, if a user types a Spanish search query into Google in the U.S., such as “SaaS funding” for startups who are exploring finance options—they will be shown the Spanish version of the various web pages that Google brings up (in theory, at least).
While hreflang tags aren’t that complicated per se, the main problem that businesses run into is simply implementing them correctly—and consistently.
The main things to bear in mind when implementing Hreflang tags are:
- Add the hreflang element to all of the pages on your e-commerce website that have an alternate language version
- You can use the hreflang on regional sites
- Create a separate hreflang element for every separate URL that you have on your site
Your hreflang tags need to be added to either your XML sitemap and HTTP, as well as the head of your HTML. You don’t have to add them to all three and each one has its own advantages. HTML is ideal for beginners because it's the simplest one to use, while XML necessitates more markup.
Content
Optimising your site structure and hreflang tags will make your store’s web pages visible to the right people in the right parts of the world — but unless you also optimise your content as well, you won’t convert as many customers. You’ll also struggle to keep bounce rate down, which is bad for e-commerce SEO.
Here are some tips:
Localisation
Localisation is when you focus on the different cultural aspects that exist between different countries. For example, an Australian site visitor might expect to see green and yellow colours on your e-commerce store, while a French site visitor will feel more welcome with the familiar colours of blue, white and red.
Speaking of colours, an American site would use the spelling colors while the UK site might use colours.
It’s really important that you adapt content according to a geographic region so that users don’t do a double take when they arrive on your web pages.
Canonicalisation and Avoiding Duplication
Duplicate content can occur if you have multiple versions of your website that are aimed at different countries. This is bad because Google prefers unique content over duplicate content.
In order to avoid duplication, use canonical tags to let Google know which pages need to be indexed if there happen to be duplicate versions of it.
Adapt to the markets
There's a lot that goes into learning about each market. They each deserve their fair amount of research.
Adapt to the local language
We touched on adapting your content to local languages. Translations are the first step, but it might be well worth hiring a professional here. There are small things that might make a big difference in terms of how your brand is perceived. For example, should your brand use the formal or informal form to address the customer?
Of course, certain phrases or connotations might be unknown to you as a foreigner to this market.
Adapt to the market's shopping habits
This is of course general advice, and we'll touch on some more topics in detail below, but it's important to keep your new audience's unique habits in mind.
Certifications are very important in many markets, like Germany. Did you know the Trusted Shops Trustmark (which includes the Buyer Protection) has a 77% brand awareness in Germany? Founded in 1999, it is a big part of the German e-commerce experience for many people.
Adapt your currencies
There’s not much to say here, but changing your currencies to local prices gives shoppers a certain peace of mind. Offering your products in a foreign language with foreign prices is not your best bet for getting more conversions.
Imagine your hesitation about shopping online when the only thing you’re sure about on a website are the photos (and even that is not really a sure bet, is it?). The reputation of the shop is foreign, the language is foreign, and even the prices are foreign. Why on earth would you shop there unless you had money to burn?
Offer more payment options
Let’s come back to this comfort thing. People are indeed creatures of habit, and they need to feel comfortable, safe, and trusting of a website to shop there. This rule applies for shops that are both local or foreign. That is why offering your market’s preferred payment option is crucial to building trust for your company.
Research is key here. Figure out who the big sellers are in that market and check out what payment options they offer. These days, PayPal is quite popular around the globe, but it’s usually not the number one choice anywhere. Find those number-ones and strongly consider implementing them into your shop if you want to seem trustworthy to your new market.
More than credit cards?
Credit card payments are often the first option that you offer in your online shop. It is, after all, the most preferred payment option in the UK followed by PayPal. But what about other countries? Will foreign consumers be satisfied with this? Why do the payment methods that you offer affect your internationalisation strategies?
Every market has its own preferences
If asked, consumers would probably opt for a payment method like invoice where they receive the goods first and need to pay for it only after 2 weeks. From a retailer’s perspective, the earlier the money is received the better. These two sides of the coin are probably universal.
Studies indicate that offering the demanded payment method has a positive effect on the conversion rates of an online shop. Whereas in the UK, customers are happy if you offer credit card and PayPal payment options, in Germany, for example, it has been proven that shopping cart abandonment rates decrease with an increase of payment options.
Strategic internationalisation
Knowing that the payment methods you offer can have dramatic effects on your sales, retailers should analyse the preferred payment methods in the countries that they want to expand to.
Relying on the preferred payment methods that you have been offering so far in your home country won’t take you far in new markets.
The online world is strongly connected to the offline world. This is clearly seen with credit cards in the UK: you can basically pay any amount in any place with credit cards. In Germany however, it is very uncommon to pay by credit card in shops and this is reflected online as well. Understanding market differences is the only way that you can stay competitive.
Understand the payment methods favoured in Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland:
Information obligation
With the Consumer Rights Directive, harmonisation was introduced for the information on the payment methods offered in online shops. This requirement acknowledges the effect that payment methods have on sales.
The information about the payment methods offered in the online shop must be disclosed at the beginning of the ordering process (at the latest!). An easy way of doing so is by including a term in your general terms and conditions or by adding the icons of the payment methods that you offer in the shopping cart.
The intention of this regulation is to avoid disappointment with consumers when they find out that they can’t or don’t want to use any of the payment methods available in the shop.
Free Google tools for internationalisation
With a new year comes new opportunities. And if you’re a business owner, you’ll be thinking about new markets as well. If you’re thinking about an internationalisation strategy this year, you’re going to need to make some in depth estimates to gauge each market’s potential. We'd like to share some free Google marketing tools and tips with you.
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In order to be really successful in a market, it has to be fully understood. Apart from the many legal and organisational issues, you’ll also have to consider the demand and the structure of the market. Which Google tools can help you with your assessment?
Consumer Barometer
The Consumer Barometer is designed to help users understand Internet usage in different countries. You can use either your own reports or ready-made insights here. There is data from 60 countries available and they can be viewed without logging in.
Market Finder
The Market Finder helps find new fitting markets and assists in the creation of a business plan. Three steps are suggested:
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Recommendation of new markets (based on the given industry)
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Use of the resources provided
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Reaching new international customers
Questions about income levels, languages and device usage in each country are mentioned here. To register, you must enter your website. It will then be scanned by Google and some categories that match your website will be proposed. You can, however, adjust these manually.
After registration, data from 180 markets and 32 different sources are available. In addition, Google promises direct support.
Proposed markets are initially presented by 4 key figures:
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Monthly searches for the selected category
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CPC level in dollars
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Value on a scale of 1-190 indicating how easy it is to do business in the country generally. A high score means stricter regulations. For example, the UK carries a 7, while France has a 29.
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Average household income
Further details include population size, languages, currency, corruption value, GDP, payment methods and more.
After selecting three markets, Google suggests matching material on the topics of payment methods, customer service, logistics and taxation.
Display benchmarks
The Display Benchmarks are designed to give you an overview of the performance of Display campaigns in different countries and industries. For example, you might want to know how the click-through rate in Germany has developed in the clothing industry? You can see that:
Depending on the country and sector, different amounts of data are available.
More Google resources
Google Trends
With Google Trends you can get a general insight into relevant topics of the respective country and which topics develop seasonally.
Google Analytics
If you’re already using Google Analytics, it's worth taking a look at the country and language reports. Find out which countries your visitors are coming from and for whom it might be worthwhile to create a dedicated offer. You can reach these reports under Audience > Geo.
Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner gives you numbers on the search volume of your keywords in different country and language settings. If you have a Google Ads account, then you already have access to this free tool.
As you can see, Google can provide suggestions for keywords in foreign languages depending on the settings you enter:
Conclusion
Adapting your shop to international markets can help your company grow exponentially. Though there are some things you need to pay attention to, like language nuances, formatting, and legal requirements, being prepared and doing a little research can take your business to great new heights.
Check out our whitepaper on how to localise your website in order to succeed abroad by clicking on the banner below.
