Expanding your website to other markets, targeting non-english speaking users, with a good translator on your payroll that shouldn’t cause too much problems, or at least you would think so. Well, think again. As to put you on the right track before you start brainstorming about expansion on the web, take a look at these commonly made mistakes with bad impact on your website’s internationalization. Let’s also thank the unlucky webmaster who went through all these mistakes and shared them with us.
1. Not using a local domain name like .be (Belgium) or .br (Brazil) can damage the locals’ trust and gives plenty of opportunity for domain grabbers to make money out of your brand, using your web address with a local extension. So before you expand, make sure to purchase local domain names.
2. Conducting no market research prior to launch can be dramatic for both your website and finances. Make sure you know about local brands, products and websites but also investigate culture, mindset and buying patterns before attacking the market.
3. Not using a local server might affect your rankings in the local Google listings.
4. Spelling mistakes are your worst enemy. Don’t make any attempt to sound serious if you write obvious spelling mistakes in another language. Of course this mistake is also ridicilous, and probably even more damaging for your site, when you write in your native language.
5. Being too late. You can either be too late to register your national/local domain or be too late to enter the market. Don’t worry, both mistakes will sink your new site. A national domain has to be purchased long long time in advance in order to be considered an authority and thus to be ranked. Being too late on the market is another story, in this case your competitors have built up such an advance that it is hard to compete and catch up in the race. We collectively think of Facebook’s failure in Germany where it had to compete with the pioneering student network STUDIVIZ.
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