Host your site on geographically dispersed servers
Poor page load speeds will hurt any website, and no matter how much you optimize things like the images and the formatting, there’s one thing you can’t get around; the location of the server that’s hosting it.
A sluggish experience is inevitable if you’ve only got your site hosted domestically, and people are trying to visit it from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
This is where using cloud hosting solutions makes sense. Modern platforms let you have instances of your site cached in different parts of the world, without this being a financial burden.
Consider translating your website into other languages
Localizing your on-site content is better than expecting visitors to cope with your native tongue, or requiring them to rely on a third-party service to translate text automatically.
You can hire expert translators to do this work for you, and it’s definitely worthwhile if you have a particular overseas market in your sights. There are even fully-fledged software platforms that can automate much of this.
Also remember that you’ll need to translate other elements, such as your CMS. Learning how to do CMS translation the right way is wise to avoid unwanted snafus.
Research cultural differences to sidestep sensitivities
What works for one audience might be jarring for another, and so you can’t just expect your existing site to click with overseas audiences who have a different cultural background informing their values, ethics, and expectations.
Even if you do manage to make sure that there are no potentially sensitive topics tackled in your content or as part of your product line-up, you should also aim to go deeper than mere translation with your website localization efforts. For example, using idioms that are region-specific, rather than sticking with sayings that make sense where you come from, will prevent confusion and make for compelling content.
Offer local contact details
People are more likely to trust a business that appears to be based close to them, rather than functioning solely across international borders.
One great way to create this illusion is to have a telephone number that is local to a given country or even a particular county or state within a country.
The same goes for a contact email address; if you have one that ends with that country’s top-level domain, it will build trust and also make it easier to categorize the correspondence you receive.
In fact, if you want to push this even further, it’s worth buying a new domain name that has its own national TLD. This can redirect customers to your main site and automatically implement the native language version accordingly.
Get feedback and respond positively
Even if you do all this, there’s still a chance that your website won’t achieve the results you’re looking for when it comes to courting clients around the world.
If this is the case, you can proactively ask for feedback on the experience of visitors from foreign climes. You can also take advantage of web analytics to see how user behavior differs depending on their point of origin.
Most of all, don’t rush this process, and be prepared to make mistakes along the way as you spread your web presence worldwide.
