GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 8 - April 2009

26 GPWA Times | EXPANDING INTERNATIONALLY ? Don’t take any shortcuts. If webmasters want to maximize conver- sions they can’t leave any evidence that the site was produced somewhere else. It has to be natural. “ ” By Connie Burstin O nline industries are by their na- ture global industries, which is why an ever-growing number of companies are realizing the value of adopting cross-culture operations in an attempt to either enter into or strength- en business in foreign markets. With the necessity of competing internation- ally in order to stay competitive, many companies find themselves seeking the counsel and services of outfits that spe- cialize in foreign market transition and penetration. I have seen so many companies that hoped to attract international custom- ers, but were not equipped to actually communicate across cultures and across borders. Many companies weren’t even translating their foreign sites or making an attempt to localize the content of Web pages for different regions. It may seem obvious that content lo- calization and proper language and cultural translation are critical to sell- ing a product or service to a non-native market, but when properly done, these processes can be laborious and re- source intensive – which is why many young companies often overlook them or put them off. This is a huge mistake. Companies tend to assume or simply hope that people in other countries will understand their product or service. But the reality is that language and cultural differences can make a top-selling brand in one region end up in the water in another. It’s not just the language that’s important; you need to know how individual cultures think, and then design your company’s different Web sites based on that thinking. I’m talking about the look, the feel, the language, and the concepts used to com- municate your product or ser- vice; for healthy i n t e r n a t i o n a l growth and suc- cess in non-na- tive markets these elements must be tailored to the region. If you’ve ever seen a foreign commercial for a product you’re used to seeing advertised in your own country, it can be a bit shocking, and in some cases it might look like a totally different product. Take English and Japanese commercials. Aside from the language dif- ferences, many Japa- nese TV ads can seem downright surreal and unintelligible to Westerners, and well-known Western brands often have to engineer a radical image change to appeal to a Japanese market. Nowadays implementing that image change is as important online as it is for traditional ad mediums like TV, radio, and billboards. Take online casinos, for instance. They have risen in popularity since about 1999 to make up a large chunk of total online commerce, and they also repre- sent a sizable portion of Burstin Group’s business, in both the affiliate market- ing division and, now, in localization and translation services. For online casinos the necessities of international online marketing are particularly ap- parent, mainly because the industry’s bread and butter comes from affiliate Expanding internationally? Don’t take any shortcuts.