Internationalize Your Website 7 – Welcome Your International Visitors

Last Updated 17 August 2008

Internationalizing your web site is the first step in improving your international online communication to develop your international business.

Good web site internationalization is also highly recommended as a first step if you are hoping to develop your online business internationally.

International business development normally migrates towards website localization in each country you sell to.

When your market expansion take your there, it is much easier to create localized websites if you already have an internationalized website. An internationalized website is friendly to all of your visitors, including all of your international visitors.

Do your international visitors feel welcome on your website?

Don’t Forget To Be Friendly To Everyone

Your first step is to make your website friendly to your foreign visitors.

We know how to communicate with our next door neighbors and our colleagues.

The further afield our audience is, the more we have to pay attention to how we communicate.

Why You Need To Welcome Everyone

Foreigners will feel the cultural differences in your web site compared to what they are used to back home.

Different cultures have different online practices.

Sales have a different flavor.

And even friendliness is different.

Your international visitors will know they are some place different. They will probably need to adjust themselves to read and interpret what you have to say.

Invite Dialog

International visitors sometimes feel hesitant to call or contact you because their language skills are not that great.

They may also feel embarrassed to call knowing it will take them 5 minutes to explain something that would take them 2 seconds in their own language.

Welcome your international visitors to your website and you invite them to dialog with you. The more dialog you have with them the more you will learn to develop your international business.

Welcome Everyone

Keep these cultural barriers in mind when writing your web site.

How would you greet someone who was not used to your habits and ways of communicating?

A certain readiness to greet different people. It can be very subtle. And you do not need to write paragraphs. Often the smallest of touches speak more.

Find the simple touches you would do and translate them online. Simply be considerate to other cultures and you will find the right way to a more “open” tone on your web site.

Use Small Gestures

Is there something you can do while internationalizing your web site?

Convey your willingness to serve all of your international clients in small touches and it will appear convincing and natural.

Creating a relationship with international visitors can be as simple as having some text in the right place. Here’s an example:

• “We welcome all international clients”

If you have this next to a phone number and email address, for example, your international readers will pick this up.A welcome in the right place this will be a flashing neon sign to hesitant international prospects.

These few words of welcome can make the difference to a prospect either contacting you or moving on.

Be Yourself

Don’t pretend to be something you are not. It is easier to sniff out the truth than you imagine.

Don’t give up your unique identity. Just as you cannot ask your international prospects to be any different. Cross cultural communication is about moving towards each different culture. It is about being open to other cultures.

Simply remember your web site may have international visitors who might not feel as much as ease there as you do.

Degrees Of Welcome

Don’t Forget To Welcome Foreign Clients

It is easy to identify the contrast in different degrees of friendliness.

A foreigner can easily identify web sites that seem totally hermetic to international contact.

Other websites make foreigners want to get to know them straight away.

The various degrees of “openness” or “friendliness” between the extremes are sometimes difficult to qualify.

Tagged as: greeting, website internationalization, welcome