Going Global with Your Business -- Building an International Web Site

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Web Marketing Today, Issue 22, September 22, 1996

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This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on ecommerce and selling online.

If you've been on the Internet very long, it becomes obvious that you've entered a global medium. You'll exchange e-mail with people in Estonia and South Africa, the Netherlands and Singapore. It's a truly globe-shrinking experience; global village and all that. But the paradigm shift is much more profound than many small businesses realize.

Let's say you own a specialty parts business in Tuscaloosa and want to increase your exposure. Wouldn't it be nice if people could find you on the Web rather than you spending lots of money for display ads in the trade magazines? So you get a Web page with visions of the world beating a path to your door. If it does, will you be ready?

Inadvertently, we are often oblivious to business in countries other than our own. For example, does your e-mail response form have a field for "country". Mine did, and early on I thought I would help people fill it out more quickly by making "USA" the default text. Oops. It almost cost me a client in Quebec. Then I made the mistake of requiring the user to fill in the "State" field until I learned that many countries don't use that category. Oops.

Like it or not, when you set up a Web page you just began a global business! Now you may be a poor global businessperson or an accomplished one, but you have hung out your shingle to the world. On any given week hundreds of people form scores of countries visit my Web sites. How easy do I make it for them to do business with me?

While I can't say I've begun to implement all these ideas in my own Web sites, I've prepared a checklist to jog your thinking about global business readiness:

• Can potential markets read your Web page? Does your Web page need to be translated to open markets to you? Face it. Even though English may be the lingua franca (grin) of the world, fully one-third of the world's population speaks Chinese.
• Does your shipping table take international shipments seriously? You may offer products that cannot be obtained easily in various parts of the world, so even if the shipping rates seem exorbitant to you, they may be acceptable to your customers.
• How do you handle international funds transfers? Ask your bank how easy and expensive it is to process international bank drafts and wire transfers. How will the exchange rate affect your sales?
• Does your Web page presentation reflect a cultural bias you are not aware of, or say things in a way which may be insulting to readers in different cultures?
• Have you advertised your Web pages on the growing number of regional search engines.
• Do you need a mirror site (a duplicate Web site in a foreign country) so access and download times are not excessive in your target marketplace on the other side of the globe?
• Have you thought of developing international contacts who can aid your business in other countries?
• Have you explored the resources from your government on exporting which are available to you?
• Have you developed strategies to target your Web marketing to particular countries and cultures. The shotgun (easy to do on the Web) is much less effective than the rifle, which takes more skill in aiming.

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Sidebar: Resources for Global Marketers on the Web

This list is only suggestive. But if you follow out all these links and the pages linked to them, you'll learn a great deal. Please excuse the US bias revealed here. ;-)

• Journal of International Marketing, 1993-1995, published by Michigan State University Press. Abstracts and executive summaries of articles on-line.
• International Business Resources on the WWW, an extremely rich linking resource from the Center for the International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at Michigan State University. Links here to lots of information made available by government agencies from Europe and Asia.
• GEMS (Global Export Market Information), U.S. Department of Commerce. Information for US small businesses wishing to trade abroad.
• STAT-USA Export and Trade Information. Gathers the most crucial, timely business and economic information from over 50 Federal Agencies and distributes from a central source. Available by subscription, $50 per quarter, $150/year. http://www.stat-usa.gov/BEN/subject/trade.html
• A Basic Guide to Exporting, U.S. Department of Commerce. (Also available in print version from the GPO linked below).
• Frequently Asked Export Questions, International Trade Administration, U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
• Export/Import publications which may be purchased on-line from the US Government Printing Office (GPO).
• Importing into the United States, October 1994, for example, may be purchased for $6.50 at the GPO site above.
• Translation services on the Web. Search AltaVista placing quotation marks around the words "translation services," and you'll find many companies doing this sort of work.
• Intercultural communication consultants. One of my clients is WBC Associates, which provides consulting services for companies seeking to do business in China, India, and other Pacific Rim countries.
• National Export Directory gives address and phone numbers of multiple locations where export help can be obtained in all 50 US states.
• Olsen and Associates 164 currencies converter, which gives you instant exchange rates, updated daily at 6 am Zurich time.