Just like business owners conducting international business in person must be sensitive to the cultural nuances and differences in the business practices of other countries, entrepreneurs who conduct business online must take these same factors into account when they design their companies’ Web sites. Entrepreneurs must “think local” when they create Web sites that target customers in other countries. While having a single domain name with separate “language” buttons for translations is simpler and less expensive, e-commerce experts say that having different domain names for each targeted country produces better sales results. The design of Web sites that target foreign customers must reflect the local culture, customs, and language. For instance, not all cultures read from left to right, and colors that may be appropriate in one culture may be offensive to customers in another. An entrepreneur won’t have much luck listing “pant- ies” for sale on a Web site aimed at customers in the United Kingdom; customers there would search for “knickers.” Google Global Market Finder is a free market research tool that shows entrepreneurs how many times people around the world use particular key words in online searches in 56 different languages. Business owners can use the Global Market Finder as a tool to test the international appeal of key words on their Web sites and to isolate the key words that are likely to produce the best results in their search engine optimization strategies.
Prior to the advent of the Internet, small businesses usually took incremental steps toward becoming global businesses. They began selling locally and then, after establishing a reputation, expanded regionally and perhaps nationally. Only after establishing themselves domestically did small businesses begin to think about selling their products or services internationally. The Internet makes that business model obsolete because it provides small companies with a low-cost global distribution channel that they can utilize from the day they are launched.
While most of the small businesses handle their foreign sales efforts in-house, another way to get into international markets with a minimum of cost and effort is to use a trade intermediary. Trade intermediaries are domestic agencies that serve as distributors in foreign countries for domestic companies of all sizes. They rely on their networks of contacts, their extensive knowledge of local customs and markets, and their experience in international trade to market products effectively and efficiently all across the globe. These trade intermediaries serve as the export departments for small businesses, enabling the small companies to focus on what they do best and delegate the responsibility for coordinating foreign sales efforts to the intermediaries. They are especially valuable to small companies that are getting started in the global arena, often producing benefits that far outweigh their costs. Lawrence Harding, president of High Street Partners, a trade intermediary that manages foreign sales for small companies, points to the example of a company that imported telecommunications equipment into the United Kingdom to sell to its customers there.
Going global can take you a long way in the success of your small or large-sized business.
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