The benefits of selling globally are boundless and a quintessential factor in leveraging economies of scale. If done right, your product could be the next Coca Cola. Amazing right?
Some online store owners think they are selling their product to a global market just because they are based on the internet. But, are they really? Selling globally means so much more than that. It means connecting with each customer on a personal level, like you would in a physical store. This is not so easy to do when there are so many socio-cultural differences between audiences. So where do you begin to navigate the world of global selling? Language is a great place to start.
Do you have language translations on your site?
One of the benefits of selling online is the ability to expand your product reach to overseas customers. So your online store should consider that their audience may not be speaking English as their first language.
Considering that only 13% of people in the world natively speak English, detailed in a recent report by Statista; it is a small market to restrain your product to. In order to capitalise on the other 87% percent of the population, it’s a good idea to add a few different languages to your site.
We recommend Spanish, Mandarin and Hindi as a starting points because they add the most amount of people to the mix. This will help you connect with more people and more importantly will increase your brand’s exposure across countries.
A multilingual ecommerce site doesn’t just help you with overseas sales, benefits can also be seen closer to home. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 28.2% of Australia’s population was born overseas with around 15 percent of the population speaking a language other than English at home. Those are huge numbers for an island with a population of only 23 million. Catering for multiple languages will help you tap into potential customers at home and help solidify brand trust.
Adding multiple languages to your website is a cost-effective way to jump start you into really taking advantage of the global market.
Selling globally is a hard thing to do, hence why not everyone is able to do it right. It also involves much more than just adding languages to your site but it is a start. Everyone needs a place to start.
Writers note: Consider how the language is written. More complex characters such as Mandarin might need to be in a larger font so they can be clearly understood. Languages like Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left so your store will need to cater for this. Having a good platform like Magento can really help you build the strong foundations of your website. If you are unsure about the benefits that Magento offers read here for The 6 Reasons why Magento is seen as the best ecommerce platform.
