Gengo - Ecommerce

2017 Mobile Shopping Trends

Gengo — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000

We’ve shifted into mobile-first lifestyles. Smartphones are capable of providing the news, helping us communicate globally and giving us a platform to shop for whatever we want from the palm of our hands. Mobile shopping is huge. More than 60 percent of smartphone users have made an online purchase from their phone in the last six months. It’s been reported that the vast majority of today’s shoppers use a smartphone inside an actual store to compare prices, read product reviews or search for alternative store locations. Catering to mobile-first lifestyles is just good business. Amazon began 1995 as a small company that sold goods over the Internet. Today, it’s reached Fortune 500 status and operates in at least 16 countries. Amazon is a great example of how mobile shopping and ecommerce are picking up speed across the globe, especially in large mobile markets. Understanding trends in these markets can help ecommerce businesses capitalize on increased demand overseas, and ultimately, increase revenue. Here’s our list of 2017 Global Shopping Trends from major mobile markets:

Asia Pacific

More than half of the world’s mobile subscribers are located in this market, which includes the Philippines and China. The biggest shopping trend to look for in this region is has to do with mobile payments, which have increased 48 percent since 2012. According to a recent survey, Asia Pacific currently leads the world in mobile payments with more than half of its consumers using their mobiles to pay for good or services at the point of sale. Mobile wallets are poised for growth. This also includes cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which recently faced government regulations in China and Japan on exchanges due to its increasing popularity. Why is this important? Understanding how transactions are made in international markets may force you to adjust your business strategy, which includes localizing content for payment apps that are different than other international markets.

India

More than 40 percent of the apps being downloaded in India are social networking apps. In 2016, EY projected the country’s social media ad spending to include by more than 15 percent. Confirmed by the Retailers Association of India, social media investment will include bigger budgets than any other digital tactic. Retailers will increase their spend in online banners, pay-per-click campaigns and search marketing to reach even more shoppers across social networking platforms. Other international markets have started moving away from banner ads and click bait, so if you’re doing business in India, be prepared to adjust your advertising content accordingly, by getting content localized in the format the market will respond to.

U.S.

In the U.S., November and December drive 30 percent more ecommerce revenue than any other month of the year. Four out of five holiday shoppers in the U.S. are using their smartphones to make a purchase or help inform one. It’s important to note that having a successful mobile platform or business strategy is key during the country’s holiday season. Another shopping trend in the U.S. worth exploring is interest in sustainable products. Because American consumers are so fluent with using the Internet before they make purchases, they’re now interested in knowing more about the materials that make up the products they’re purchasing. Additionally, these consumers value transparency in the brands they buy from. The biggest takeaway from consumers in this market is that your company needs to be clear in it’s mission and values. For example, you can explain how products are made or describe what drives your business. Be sure to engage localization professionals who can help you articulate the best way to communicate this to the respective market. Learn more about how you can use Gengo for ecommerce. or Contact us

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Why you should sell internationally during the holidays

Gengo — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 15:00:00 +0000

If you’re not selling overseas during this year’s holiday season, you’re missing out. Ecommerce sales in the US alone are expected to jump 16.6% during the 2017 holiday season, motivated by increases in mobile commerce and the intensifying online battle between large retailers and digital marketplaces. While the US holiday shopping season lasts from Thanksgiving through Christmas, the global season is much longer, kicking off in early November and ending around February. As more people worldwide shift their shopping habits, traditional holidays and the weeks leading up to them have become prime online shopping time. To prepare, take a look at the season’s top global holidays.

Mark the calendar

With origins in the US, major shopping days Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and its internet-only counterpart Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) have transformed into truly international holidays, now familiar to people in the UK, Italy, Spain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Portugal and beyond. While Black Friday is historically a day for in-store doorbuster-style promotions, online discounts that last through the weekend are now standard. Similar to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Australians catch deals to jumpstart the holiday season during Click Frenzy (November 18), an online megasales event where retailers join to offer major promotions. Because November is the peak month for Australian internet sales, Click Frenzy is a great opportunity for Australian and overseas retailers—despite preferring to buy from Australian brands, Australians make a significant proportion of purchases with overseas companies. Other holidays to put on your radar? Diwali, India’s largest holiday and shopping period, is the earliest of all of major shopping-heavy holidays. This year, the five-day festival of lights begins in late October, and retailers like India’s Flipkart and Amazon.in run large seasonal promotions. Many lucrative global holidays also fall outside of the year-end months, like Les Soldes in France, two six-week sales seasons in summer (June-July) and winter (January-February). The largest online shopping event of them all, however, is China’s Singles Day (November 11). Thanks in large part to Alibaba, Singles Day generates more money than America’s Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined. On 11.11, as it’s called, both China-based retailers and marketplaces like Jingdong, Suning and Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao will offer discounts of at least 50% off to shoppers. It’s not only domestic brands benefit from Singles Day; in fact, international brands like Gap, Adidas and Microsoft made up 27% of Singles Day sales in 2016.

Make a list, check it twice

It’s clear that November through February is critical for online ecommerce sales around the world, but how should you prepare for the season? Selling internationally takes work, but isn’t as hard as it may seem—as long as a site is accessible in their language and serves their area, most online shoppers are more than willing to buy gifts from overseas. Here are some tips for ecommerce retailers both big and small:

Optimize your site from top-to-bottom for multilingual shoppers and multiple devices, whether you’re purely an online retailer or mostly sell from brick and mortar stores. Offer detailed product listings and high-converting user reviews in all supported languages for comparison-shopping customers
Start early and plan extensively to offer international shoppers fully localized online experiences, down to the tiniest buttons and automated messages
Know which holidays are hot in international markets and craft targeted, localized campaigns around these key dates

If you’re not ready to sell abroad this season, remember that it’s never too early to start preparing for 2015. Even the smallest online retailers can benefit from inching beyond their borders. Learn more about how you can use Gengo for ecommerce. or Contact us

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Five tips to boost global ecommerce sales this holiday season

Gengo — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 15:00:00 +0000

As of last year, the overwhelming majority of U.S. shoppers are buying online, and ecommerce sales worldwide hit a record high of $1.3 trillion. The news couldn’t be better for ecommerce predictions for ecommerce sales this holiday season—global sales are expected to grow 6.4%. But just because there’s enough pie for everyone at this holiday table doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a slice. Here are our tips for tapping into the potential profits of a global marketplace.

1. Go global, but think local

A marketing strategy that works well in North America won’t necessarily do the same in Asia or Europe, which means you’ll have to rethink your strategies and messaging for each target market. It’s going to take research—and lots of it—to find the words and images that resonate best with each audience, but it’s not only the people you have to impress, it’s also their preferred search engines. For example, SEO strategy should change to target the more popular search engines used around the world—Google hasn’t taken over the earth quite yet. Yahoo is more used in Japan; Baidu in China; Naver in Korea; Yandex in Russia; and Bing gives Google stiff competition in the United Kingdom.

2. Localize your mobile app (omni-channel advantage)

Some 66% of all time spent on ecommerce sites is done from mobile devices—and 61% of customers will leave a site if it isn’t mobile friendly. More than that, Google will now prioritize mobile-friendly pages on search engine results (UX is the new SEO, if you haven’t heard!). But it’s not enough for you to make your site and product pages responsive to mobile—you have to ensure that the brand experience is consistent across all platforms and in all countries.

3. Translate user-generated content

User-generated content like reviews and comments do more to increase international buyer confidence than any other marketing activity, which is why we recommend translating them. While translating user-generated content is usually last on the priority list for companies, for online shoppers in particular, reading reviews is an important part of the purchase process (especially when buying holiday gifts, people might be willing to take a chance on themselves with an unknown product, but not on dear old grandpère). For ecommerce companies, it can drastically enhance customer experience to translate page text, product listings and user reviews as one bundle. (Read more about translating user-generated content here.)

4. Embrace local payment methods

Ecommerce makes global retail more accessible now than ever before, but two barriers stand in the way for many buyers: language and currency. Ecommerce sites interested in global markets know they have to translate product pages, but fewer think to change how their currency is listed. When buyers see a product price in an unfamiliar currency, a string of questions begins:

How much does it cost in my currency?
Are they willing to ship it here?
How much will shipping cost?

And the more they hesitate, the less likely they are to purchase. But, by listing products in the local currency, you remove that barrier and signal that you are willing to shop (and it won’t cost an arm and a leg). However, currency symbols aren’t the only things that will have to change to remove friction in the buying process for international customers. You’ll also have to consider how they pay. A recent study found that only 36% of consumers trust online retailers to secure their personal information, which isn’t a very high number. This means that ecommerce sites have to put extra effort into helping customers feel comfortable shopping with them. Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to use the primary payment methods of your target countries. For example, PayPal is used most in the U.S.; in China, it’s Alipay; in the Netherlands it’s iDEAL.

5. Take advantage of key shopping holidays

Holiday shopping in the U.S. stretches from before Thanksgiving to the day after Christmas sales, and Black Friday is almost another holiday in itself. But when you enter the global market, you can take advantage of other shopping occasions, like Single’s Day in China, Diwali in India, El Buen Fin in Mexico and Boxing Day in Commonwealth nations. Black Friday also appears in other countries under different names. In South Korea, buyers take advantage of Black Friday sales (South Koreans bought more than $1 billion worth of products from ecommerce sites based abroad in 2013) but call it Beufle. In Dubai, White Weekend takes place from on November 27–28. Cheers to a very happy and busy holiday season! Learn more about how you can use Gengo for ecommerce. or Contact us

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Translation tips for selling to Japanese customers

Gengo — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Is Japan on your list for global expansion? It definitely deserves a spot. The Japanese ecommerce market is expected to grow from $52 billion to over $80 billion over the next five years, according to a report by A.T. Kearney. Exponential eretail growth, along with intensified localization efforts in preparation for the 2020 Olympics, make it prime time for market entry into Japan. As it is now, about 99% of the population only speaks Japanese. Therefore, localization is the key element to cross-border success in Japan. Here are our best tips for catering your language translation efforts to a Japanese audience.

1. Build a detailed translator style guide

It’s extremely important to define your target audience in Japan. Unlike English, the Japanese language has many levels of politeness depending on who the audience is in relation to the speaker. As such, it’s necessary to maintain your brand’s style and tone. The best way to ensure that your brand image is accurately portrayed across languages is by implementing a company-specific style guide at the beginning of the translation process. This document outlines the grammar, syntax and tone translators should use to accurately represent a company’s offering. Style guides offer invaluable insights that translators can use to cater their writing to a specific audience’s needs.

2. Take advantage of key translation tools

Translation API Manually managing hundreds of files doesn’t make sense. Our recommendation for larger online retailers is to use an API to send and receive content from a translation provider like Gengo. This streamlined approach gives you complete control over your workflow, and allows you to dynamically order translation as you scale. You control your website, and all your translated content. Translation memory (TM) You may find the translations of several words and phrases can be recycled for each product release. As new SKUs are added to your ecommerce site, usually fields like color and size will remain consistent. Translation memory is a common translation tool that compares untranslated segments against previous translation data to make sure you don’t pay for the same translation twice. Partnering with a language service provider (LSP) that utilizes translation memory can help you achieve the quality you require while maintaining consistency, saving time and reducing project costs.

3. Focus on mobile ecommerce

Japan’s population is quick to adopt technology, especially when it comes to smartphones and tablets. It’s no surprise that mobile shopping in Japan is growing quickly, with half of all transactions conducted via mobile devices. If you want to grow your ecommerce presence in Japan, you need to up your mobile strategy as well. Whether it’s localizing your mobile app or optimizing your website for mobile and tablet use, you need to ensure that the user experience is equal for all your international shoppers, no matter which language they’re browsing in.

4. Increase buyer confidence with translated user reviews

Japanese consumers require a great deal of assurance when they make purchases. A business will simply not succeed in Japan unless it can earn the trust of its consumers. One surefire way to help gain customer trust is by translating user reviews. User-generated content has proven to have a positive effect on customer-company relationships and sales. Translating real user opinions will help you achieve better conversion rates, customer engagement and retention.

5. Measure the success of your localization program

The ultimate goal of international expansion is to increase revenue. But how can you measure the impact of translation, especially in the early phases? We suggest you to embrace kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement, as your mindset when going global. Regularly check key performance indicators (KPIs) such as SEO performance, customer engagement, conversion rates, regional sales and other figures to gain a better understanding of your localization program. When you observe a tactic that works well, you can use it again to bring more success in the future. If there are efforts that fall flat, you know it’s time to change things. In all of the excitement of attracting and converting global shoppers, it’s easy to forget the key to sustainable growth: building trust and obtaining lifelong customers. Through testing different strategies, consistently putting in effort, and measuring your performance, you can increase your retention rates and significantly increase your global sales. Though geographically small, Japan is an economic and ecommerce powerhouse. If expansion into Japan aligns with your company’s goals, it can be a great market to explore. Gengo has assisted many online retailers establish and grow their presence in Japan. In fact, Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten experienced a 16%+ conversion rate boost using Gengo versus machine translation. Contact us today to learn more about how this market fits into your language translation strategy. Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform. or Contact us

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Launching global websites in the French market

Gengo — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

The 103rd Tour de France is well underway, with almost 200 cyclists covering 2,200 miles around France over the course of three weeks. The world’s biggest cycling race is being broadcasted to over 190 countries, attracting millions of viewers both domestically and internationally. France is the sixth largest economy in the world, and events such as the Tour de France present rich opportunities for businesses looking to expand globally. If expansion into France aligns with your company’s goals, it can be a very worthwhile market to explore. Here are several insights into planning for language translation targeted toward French audiences.

Quick facts

There are over 220 million French native speakers around the world, making French one of the most widely spoken languages
With over 85 million foreign tourists visiting the country in 2015, France is the world’s leading tourist destination
France is the third largest EU ecommerce economy, valued at approximately $72 billion in 2015
France had about 30 million online buyers in 2015

Visual design

Compared to Asian websites, for example, European sites generally exhibit simply designed interfaces with straightforward messaging. France, in particular, is a highly visual nation. French websites are typically very stylistic, often including rich graphical elements and high-quality photos. As a result, an emphasis on design and visual content resonates strongly with French audiences.

Translation tips

In general, translations from English into French require about 15–20% more words, making target translations more lengthy. This is simply a linguistic feature of the French language, and businesses looking to localize should take this into consideration when designing and launching French websites. In addition, you should keep in mind the geographic area and dialect you wish to localize into. For example, French Canadian is distinct from the French spoken in France. Just because your content is localized into French doesn’t necessarily mean that the content will be understood by both audiences. Don’t make the mistake of using one language for both markets—you’ll offend at least one population. Subtle discrepancies such as appropriate word choices can be a driving factor in forming quality relationships with customers. Is France on your roadmap for global expansion? Gengo has helped many businesses expand into France and other French-speaking markets. After launching the French version of their website in 2014, designer homeware retailer Amara saw explosive growth, with a 20% increase in conversion rates from France and a whopping 650% increase in revenue within one year. Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform. or Contact us

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Technical do’s and don’ts for global ecommerce

Gengo — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Content management is simple in your home country. Your ecommerce website typically does everything for you except write the content itself. But when expanding into foreign markets, you’ll be confronted with technical decisions you’ve never faced before. All of a sudden, content management goes from simple to complicated. Before you decide to sell overseas, make sure you familiarize yourself with the technical do’s and don’ts of global ecommerce.

✓ Do: Make it simple

Reducing complexity is a key challenge when offering multi-language and -region products. Along with product information in multiple languages, you have numerous advertising campaigns, several shipping taxes and different users. So wherever you can, focus, reduce and avoid complexity.

✓ Do: Understand structured data vs. translation memory

Structured data is extra information that can be added to the HTML markup of a page that helps search engines understand what’s on it. Structured data can also be used to tag content that requires translation, making it simple for your translation service to identify and translate content more quickly. Providers like Across and Acrolinx offer tools that let you create content at scale, which reduces translation time. Translation memory (TM) accumulates all previous translations phrases and sentences and can be used to automatically translate new content, so you never have to translate the same sentence twice. The more you build up your TM, the faster you can complete new translations—but it’s not foolproof. This auto-translated content still requires a human editor.

✓ Do: Own your own content

Some companies, when they go international, choose the proxy approach. Hosted proxy services for translations can be convenient for smaller ecommerce sites because they offer a simple “plug and play” solution. However, proxy servers don’t let you own your own content, which can be problematic for larger ecommerce sites with hundreds or thousands of products. If your service provider fails or you move to another system, you may face a significant problem.

✓ Do: Design your website with the potential for multiple languages

Let your web designers know that going global is a goal from the beginning. This lets them know to make sure buttons, navigation and menus can accept longer “strings.” For instance, German and Russian strings are usually considerably longer than English, meaning your navigation may take up to 25% more space. In contrast, Japanese and Chinese strings may be significantly shorter. Always design with dynamic text where possible—translating and updating text within images is a more complex process.

✗ Don’t: Use manual file handling

With an API solution, translation of your product content is something you can do within your normal workflow. A translation API can be fully integrated into the administration area of your ecommerce site, giving you the control to order and manage translations of product descriptions. That way, you can minimize file handling between you and your translation service. This reduces error and manual effort, and allows you to efficiently manage content at much larger scales.

✗ Don’t: Build your own translation tools

Because the initial problems that need to be solved look easy, many internal development teams try to make simple translation/localization tools instead of relying on external services. Normally this just delays problems for the future. As your translation needs grow, self-made tools either don’t scale, or require more and more attention from the development team. Instead, use trusted third-party tools and APIs.

✗ Don’t: Become a translation company

Smaller ecommerce sites can often manage translation into one or two languages by using freelancers or local country managers to translate much of their content. However, once they approach more than three languages, the overhead of managing these processes can turn the company into what looks like a translation agency. For most companies, this is not their core competency or their company vision. Similarly, larger ecommerce retailers may be able to achieve some cost reductions by handling translations internally. In the process, they may lose flexibility, scale, and the best practices that translation companies own. Do’s and don’ts are a good place to start, but to avoid spending all of your time managing content, you’ll also need to put some labor-saving systems in place. Is your ecommerce company ready to make the tough technical decisions that come with internationalization? Learn more about how to structure your international website and more with our free download, Going Global: Ecommerce Best Practices.

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The guide to managing global ecommerce content

Gengo — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Your website may contain hundreds of pages of content, especially if you have thousands of products. When you go global, you may think you’ll have to translate everything at once, but in fact, the opposite is true. What you need is an efficient way to prioritize which content gets translated first, and which content needs more attention than others.

Static vs. dynamic content

There are two types of content on your site: static and dynamic. Static content includes website navigation and buttons. Dynamic content includes product descriptions, blogs and any other content that needs to be regularly updated. So-called static content forms the framework of your site, and often appears on every page. Because this content changes rarely, and is very visible on your website, it should be treated slightly differently. This content should always be translated at a high level and quality assurance checked before launch. Dynamic content, however, comes in all shapes and forms. It’s important to keep in mind the types of dynamic content, and how to manage your translation accordingly.

Understanding types of dynamic content

Product pages: The vast majority of ecommerce content is likely in the form of product pages, and it might be such an overwhelming amount that you’ll be tempted to use machine translation. Don’t. You’ll likely damage your search ranking, which can be a long, difficult and expensive problem to repair. Instead, you can keep costs to a minimum (and return on investment to a maximum) if you put a system in place that tells your translation company which product pages to translate first based on when they reach a predefined sales threshold. User reviews: Never underestimate the power of user reviews to influence and speed up the buy cycle. They are invaluable! Translations of user reviews can be indispensable to creating your local foreign presence by creating a sense of trust and having SEO benefits. But you don’t need a high-end professional translator for these—if they sound too polished, it could actually work against you. Marketing copy, emails, offers, blog posts and press releases: Creative copy and careful brand messaging are required when it comes to content marketing, and that requires translators who not only understand the words, but also the theory behind them. You’ll need to balance the need for quick turnaround with high-quality translation, so ask your translation company what you can do to help minimize turnaround time. Landing pages: If you use a lot of landing pages for categories and product descriptions, you’ll likely need high-impact marketing copy as well as more search engine optimization (SEO)-driven copy. This requires a highly-skilled translator for the marketing part, but less skilled translation for the more basic SEO sections. Ask your translation service about the best way to do both effectively. Customer support: Support tickets can be answered by a native speaker on your customer service team, or you can set up translation integration with your support ticketing system. Some companies translate incoming messages via machine translation, but use a human translator for outgoing messages.

Help your translator out

Create a content style guide that includes company-specific information about the company profile, brand voice, tone or requirements around character limitations.

Create a translation glossary of your most commonly used brand terms to ensure that, in each case, they are translated consistently. This protects your brand, guides the user, and helps your translator.

Create an accessible data feed for product content. This allows your translator to more easily translate content, and allows local markets to integrate the feeds into product comparison sites.

The best practice is for all your content to be translated at the appropriate quality level, and for you to be able to push through however much content you need, at any given time. Whatever translation service you use, it should follow the demand and targets of your ecommerce site—not the other way around. Is your ecommerce company fluent in the language of success? Learn to choose your target markets, how to approach ecommerce content translation, and how to structure your international website with our free download, Going Global: Ecommerce Best Practices.

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The art of defining your global offering

Gengo — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Is your ecommerce business the online equivalent of a big box store, carrying everything including the kitchen sink? Or does it feature a limited, but popular, selection of products? Have you thought about exactly which of those products you want to first offer your global market? The next installment of our Going Global for Ecommerce series will give you insight into what factors to consider when expanding into foreign markets.

Choose the appropriate market

We could write a book on how to choose the next foreign market for your ecommerce site. But you’ll need to take the following factors into consideration:

Competitor presence
Local proximity for shipping
GDP per capita and market size
Language
Currency
Electrical system
Web and mobile adoption
Tax
Channel partner presence
Trade agreements
Political stability

Treat market choices as seriously as you would a hiring decision. If red flags appear in your research, do not treat them lightly. If there are shortcuts (for instance, translating into Spanish provides access to larger audiences), take advantage of them.

Decide what to offer—and how much

Some businesses embrace the “everything under one roof” model. This works well if there isn’t a competitor in your target market that offers such a broad range of products. Other businesses choose to focus on offering just a few products to their foreign market, a decision they come to after performing market research and finding a specific need those products serve. If you go this route, you may want to provide a way for international users to request unavailable products, especially if you’re known for them. Either way, careful research of your target market is essential. But before you decide on your offering. Identify competitive and/or non-competitive categories. Which products or categories of your store will be appealing to your target international audience? Consider:

Electrical needs
Weight
Fragility
Cultural factors
Cost advantage
Availability
Seasonal needs

Test a subset of your products. You don’t want to test all your products at once— translating and optimizing all of those pages and converting currency would take too much time and resources. Instead, choose a subset of your high performing products by revenue or sales to test in the foreign language. Trying things out on a small scale allows you to refine your approach with minimal investment. Iterate (and translate) based on performance. If you’ve contracted with an “always on” responsive translation service, they can translate product pages one by one as each stock-keeping unit meets a predefined threshold. If you need to decide which pages to prioritize for translation, this is the leanest method.

Determine your level of service

Just like you have to determine which products to offer, you also have to decide on the level of internationalization for your website. There’s “shallow” internationalization that covers the basics like multi-currency and international shipping, but that route won’t make your website any easier for foreign prospects to find and use. We recommend striking a balance between investment and accessibility. Consider:

Translated international content
International currency support
Internationalized payment methods
International billing addresses
International shipping
Internationalized content
Country-specific content

All of these come with the perks of making your site easier to find and use for your target international market. You’ll also want to plan for “globetrotting” users who have a different billing and shipping address, and don’t forget to warn users who cannot purchase your products (if they live in an unsupported location). Is your ecommerce company ready to launch its products into the wide world? Learn to choose your target markets, how to approach ecommerce content translation, and how to structure your international website with our free download, Going Global: Ecommerce Best Practices.

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The basics of global ecommerce

Gengo — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Large and lucrative, with the chance for low-cost distribution, global markets are tempting bait for ecommerce businesses. Even though success seems to dangle there for the taking, it’s hard to know where to start, what to focus on first and how to ensure your internationalization strategy works. As a wise man once said, “Let’s start at the beginning”—with the basics.

You need a strong leader

The international branch of your expanding company will need to operate much like a new business, and it will need all the pieces of the startup puzzle: funding, purpose and a leader. One accountable leader, with the power to make decisions and iterate based on results, can make the difference between success and failure from afar. Who is the right person for the job? While we can’t headhunt for you, here are four characteristics we believe are helpful:

They’ve worked or lived overseas
They have experience launching new products and/or new companies
They have worked on a test-as-you-go basis
They are adaptable, scrappy and used to working with limited resources

This isn’t a position for the faint of heart.

You need a strategy

Going global is a risky endeavor, but those risks can be managed and mitigated with the right strategy. Your guiding principle should be to research and plan first, test second and grow based on the results. Essentially, this is the “startup attitude.” Things can and will go wrong, and plans will need to change accordingly, but that can all be part of your overarching strategy. One way to begin refining your global strategy is to translate and optimize a product page, or even a simplified version of your product, to begin testing what works and what doesn’t. The goal is to learn as quickly as possible while making a minimal investment.

You need to go lean

Lean, sustainable growth is based on a pattern of low-risk testing and iteration that keeps costs low while maintaining high flexibility. Listening to feedback is essential as you optimize and grow. But the most important part of lean growth is to go slowly and methodically. Airbnb is one of the most successful startups to claim a truly lean beginning. Founders Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia failed on their first attempt to rent rooms out for a 2007 San Francisco design convention, but kept trying different tactics to convince people to let strangers stay in their homes. Two years later, they had gained some traction, but not as much as they wanted. So they traveled to their most popular destination, New York City, to interview their most successful Airbnb hosts. Based on what they learned, they sent changes back to their San Francisco headquarters to make each place look more professional and appealing. In short, they made the idea of staying in a stranger’s home look respectable, safe and stylish—and all because they tested, listened and iterated.

You need the right goals

Set appropriate, realistic benchmarks for each growth stage. Many entrepreneurs and CEOs make the mistake of setting goals that are too big with the intention to inspire—but the opposite is the case. Setting reasonable, achievable goals based on existing data is far more satisfying and keeps energy and momentum high. You may want to monitor the average numbers of your local market to ensure your expectations are in line with your new location. Is your ecommerce company ready to move past the basics into the nitty gritty of globalization? Learn how to choose your target markets, how to approach ecommerce content translation and how to structure your international website with our free download, Going Global: Ecommerce Best Practices.

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Tips for overseas growth and operations

Gengo — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Operating a company at home is a whole different ball game than operating and growing one overseas. In fact, they might even be different sports. Your home game is strengthened by your knowledge of the playing field—you understand what people expect and how to fine tune your knowledge of what they want. You’re familiar with your customers’ cultural expectations, as well as your employees’. You know that if you reach out to a blogger to form a mutually profitable relationship, they’ll likely be on board (the only questions are fit and price point). But once you cross that country line, all bets are off and balls start flying at you from left field. All of a sudden, employees expect a different work environment. Bloggers may see guest-posting as highly suspect, if not downright bizarre. And customers can’t be found using your usual channels. You’ll likely find that in order to grow, your company needs to change to reflect its environment. Here are our best tips for making that transition easier.

Test and iterate

Entering a new market requires research, hard work and patience. But, most of all, it requires letting go of all prior expectations and testing to see what’s really there. Start small. Begin by testing a translated and optimized landing page or product description and iterate until you find some success. Then you can think in terms of growth. Remember to be objective in how you measure success and not only look for what you’re hoping to find. Throughout each testing phase (tests should continue through every marketing campaign), it’s vital to communicate with accuracy and cultural sensitivity. You’ll need translators who not only know the language, but can be your Sherpas into the culture. The foundation of your success in foreign markets is the ability to speak their languages—literally and figuratively.

Give your new company an “owner”

In many ways, branching out into a foreign market is like starting a new company, and you wouldn’t start a new company without a CEO, would you? That single point of contact is crucial to direct your efforts and defend your interests in your new location. Just as crucial is giving them enough resources to succeed.

What gets funded gets done

What are three basic things any new company needs? A founder, funding and a purpose. Funding should walk hand in hand with your list of clear short-term and long-term goals, all of which serve your ultimate purpose. Then, add more funding as each goal is reached. This way, you’ll build a roadmap with incentives at every stop along the way to success.

Keep it simple, startup

It’s tempting to grow as fast as you think you can. Why not offer your product in 30 languages? You’ll reach that many more people, right? Not necessarily. You may miss significant opportunities by spreading yourself too thin, or find yourself going into debt with unforeseen expenses. One online company, Pureprofile, moved into 43 countries in just a few months and did see staggering success. But, according to their director, Marina Cilona, they underestimated how much content would need to be translated and retranslated due to cultural sensitivities and contextual issues. That miscalculation, the result of haste and ambition, cost them more than anticipated. Scaling and operating your global business isn’t easy, but it could be the best decision you’ve ever made. For more tips on how to overcome the challenges of entering into foreign markets, download our free eBook, Going Global, Part II: Lean Globalization.

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