Goal: sell to “hockey moms” in India   |  January 26, 2009  

Solution: get help internationalizing your Web site

By Lawrence Cummer

The Web opens businesses to the world, but simply jumping into a foreign market with an existing Web site can be a huge mistake.

This is because there are countless nuances to addressing customers in a new market, and a failed attempt wastes resources and damages a company’s brand reputation, said Robinson Kelly, CEO and founder of Clay Tablet, a developer of software that integrates content management with translation systems.

The most common issue, he said, is that people equate internationalizing a Web site with simply translating the content. But international Web sites must also address cultural and regional factors.

Mind your local Ps and Qs
Even language translation is not as straightforward as one might think. Kelly recommended partnering with a reputable mid-sized single- or multi-language service provider to navigate potential issues and help understand regional language differences.

“In your target market, you need to understand how many dialects are there. For example, in India you might decide to translate into Punjabi. Well, there are 22 dialects spoken in India, of which some are virtually unintelligible with others. So you have to pick the ones that are important to your business,” he said.

Kelly noted that a good translator can transform concepts—not just words—into the target language. If trying to communicate the concept of a “hockey mom” in Punjabi, a direct translation for “mother of hockey” will exist, but it would certainly lose the marketing impact it has in Canada or the U.S.

English: it’s not just for Canadians
John Hossack is vice-president of business development at VKI Studios, a Vancouver-based Web developer and Web service optimization firm. He said the first international market for most Canadian businesses is America.

Still, businesses need to pay closer attention to subtle differences between reaching a non-Canadian English market like the U.S. or U.K. Beyond spelling differences, products and services will often use different words. The word “sofa” is popular in parts of the U.S., but Canadians use “couch” or “chesterfield.” So employing the correct term is crucial if you sell furniture.

“Also, so much of what is done online for marketing is done on search, so it’s important to have the right terms.”

Colour it with local culture
Whether it’s avoiding particular colours or unlucky numbers or culturally offensive photos, seek insight into your target international customers, said Scott Snowden, director of solution design and project management at Trioro, a Toronto-based Web application developer.

For example, Trioro had to avoid the number four in a Web site it developed for a Vancouver-based condo developer targeting the Chinese community, both locally and overseas. Additionally, site layout may need to be updated for languages, like Urdu, which run right to left.

To avoid cultural faux pas, turn to local marketing talent, or at least someone with relevant experience. “Don’t just hire someone who knows the syntax of the language, but someone who understands the cultural nuances,” Snowden said, adding that it’s easy to overlook the simple things. “But, it’s also very simple to correct them. It doesn’t take much to slide the menu to the right-hand side, for example. And you don’t have to do extensive cultural testing to get the low-hanging fruit here.”

A picture is worth a million bytes
According to Ezra Silverton, director of marketing for Toronto-based Web designer and developer 9th Sphere, imagery is another area often overlooked. “It depends on the nature of the site, but there are some fairly dramatic changes in imagery from country to country. So in some countries it’s not appropriate to show a lot of skin, and in some other countries it’s not appropriate to show certain facial expressions.”

Technical and regulatory gotchas
And then there are the smaller nitpicky concerns: does the site use or need pictographic characters (UTF-8), will surfers use a different keyboard for transactional entry, does the site need to be hosted locally to avoid transit problems, and are there privacy regulations or regional content laws unique to that country?

“A huge rat’s nest of technical pitfalls can spring up,” said Clay Tablet’s Kelly.

A business should also make sure it owns the regional domain and isn’t using a .ca or .com Internet country code. 9th Sphere’s Silverton said, “It helps a lot with search engine optimization to have local sites. It makes a huge difference.”

Privacy and regulation laws can also be an issue. Experts suggest a soft launch to find and avoid these occasional traps, and to do strong target market research.

The most important piece of advice for building a successful international Web presence is Business 101: know your customer, said Trioro’s Snowden. “If you’re going to have some kind of interaction with the audience—some kind of real, genuine interaction—you have to reach out in a very sincere way.”


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