Global business
Few businesses have unlocked global opportunities as skillfully as Airbnb. The hospitality trailblazer has harnessed the potential of a global website from day one to connect with customers across cultures—driving engagement and sales worldwide.
Every business planning global expansion needs a global website to truly thrive. By providing a range of language options, a global website can be a powerful tool for fostering a meaningful connection with audiences in different target markets.
In this guide, we will explore what a global website is and why it’s essential for international business. We will also outline what makes a strong global website strategy so you can create your own international online presence more effectively.
A global website is an online platform designed to cater to a worldwide audience. It can range from a basic homepage available in multiple languages to a cohesive strategy that connects a network of sites—each catering to a specific language market.
The goal of a global website is to provide a seamless user experience that feels “native” for all visitors, regardless of their location or language preference. For example, Starbucks’ US website may look completely different for visitors in Japan. This is because web designers consider cultural differences when designing global websites—a process known as UX localization.
Creating a global website offers several advantages for businesses on track for international growth:
One of the most significant benefits of a global website is expanded market reach. While transcending borders and language barriers, your business can tap into new markets, reaching potential customers you may never encounter otherwise. This opens up opportunities for diversification, ultimately leading to increased revenue streams.
A solid global presence instills confidence in your brand’s credibility and reliability. Businesses with a well-designed global website are perceived as established and trustworthy entities capable of catering to diverse international audiences. This enhanced credibility can influence consumer decisions, increasing conversions and customer loyalty.
By tailoring content and user experience to suit different cultures, global websites establish a sense of cultural relevance. This fosters a deeper emotional connection between the brand and its international customers, helping to build long-lasting relationships and brand advocacy.
Embracing a multilingual approach can significantly impact a website’s search engine visibility. Through content in multiple languages, global websites can improve their rankings in various language-specific search results, making them more discoverable to users in specific countries.
In a competitive business landscape, a well-designed and properly localized global website sets a brand apart from its competitors. In demonstrating a commitment to global engagement and user satisfaction across languages, businesses can gain a competitive edge in different target markets.
Creating a successful global website is a process with many steps. Still, by breaking it down into manageable pieces, you can create, manage, and optimize website content that genuinely connects with audiences across cultures and languages.
A well-executed global website strategy hinges on the ability to strike a chord with visitors from diverse cultural backgrounds. Understanding customer needs, preferences, and behaviors in different target markets plays a key role in tailoring the website content and design to create a more personalized user experience.
Thorough market research, audience analysis, and competitor monitoring will all help you craft a website that goes beyond speaking the language of its users and resonates on a deeper level. Personalization based on cultural understanding fosters a sense of trust and familiarity, encouraging user engagement.
This strategy will guide you in establishing standards for tone, visuals, branding, content requirements, and user interface (UI) design across cultures and languages. Ensure flexibility to accommodate differences in text length, character sets, and other design considerations specific to each target market.
A comprehensive global website strategy considers various global business expansion factors:
Once you begin addressing these questions, you are ready to start planning your roadmap. An effective launch typically requires a set schedule with rollouts designed for each country or language version.
Often, global websites are first launched in one or two markets with other ones gradually added. This can help with onboarding new processes with your global site and can make site management easier in the early days by allowing your team to focus on one region at a time.
For example, when deciding on the launch sequence, you could consider starting with the US while focusing on the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region as a separate site group launching after a rollout in North America.
Assess smaller markets that align well with your product or market fit and keep growing your global site’s online footprint—these choices will shape your initial global website development and localization roadmap.
Manage website localization and content translation
As mentioned earlier, rolling out a global website isn’t only about replicating your original content in another language. It involves taking into account cultural differences, legal requirements, purchasing habits, payment methods, and many other aspects that organizations need to address to make their global website appealing to international audiences. This process is known as website localization.
What is website localization?
Website localization goes beyond translation, fully adapting your site to the language and culture of diverse target markets. Learn more about how to make it work effectively.
After beginning the overall planning of your site, you should start planning your website localization. To begin your website localization journey, consider exploring the following aspects:
Speaking of success, the basic building block of a website localization program is a well-defined workflow. Localization workflows can vary between companies, but they typically follow a standard pattern.
The localization workflow begins by preparing and extracting content, ensuring all assets are ready and suitable for localization, and organizing files appropriately for each language in a content repository.
From there, the localization environment is set up with modern localization technology, such as a cloud-based translation management system—and translators are assigned to begin translating content, either participating as in-house or external partners. Automated notifications are used to keep everyone updated on project status, deadlines, and additional tasks.
What is a translation management system?
Learn what makes a translation management system and how it helps businesses seeking to expand globally translate content more quickly and efficiently.
A translation management system makes content translation easier. With an intuitive user interface, it allows linguists to work with established computer-assisted translation tools to maintain consistency and accuracy, a context-rich translation editor with UI screenshots helps them avoid design breaks, while machine translation engines speed up the translation of certain content types (e.g., product descriptions). Depending on the project, other tools may be used during this stage to help linguists work more effectively and accurately.
Once content translation is complete, the localization workflow includes an internal review and approval step where multiple stakeholders, such as project managers, designers, developers, and subject matter experts, can review the localized content and provide feedback from one central location.
The final step is to reintegrate the content back into the source format, automatically deploying it into the project or production environment, with developers receiving notifications when the process is finished.
By using a strategic focus and systematic approach to website localization, you can rest assured that you launch a global website that effectively resonates with audiences worldwide.
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With the website localization process moving and improving over time, it’s time to think about how to expand the reach of your global website in the most effective way possible. By utilizing effective promotion tactics, your website can reach more potential customers worldwide—increasing traffic and conversions.
Embracing these promotion tactics will empower your global website to make a meaningful impact across markets:
As you expand your business, launching a global website will help you connect with and engage diverse international audiences. The key to success lies in having a strategic focus and systematic approach to website localization.
Following the best practices outlined in this guide can elevate your global website and drive growth. Each step—from choosing languages and creating multilingual content to providing a great user experience across cultures—brings you closer to your goals.
Last but not least, take a moment to appreciate the efforts, as publishing your global website will be a significant milestone to celebrate in your global expansion journey.
Last updated on August 16, 2023.
