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Wednesday July 16th 2008

Comment: European online retailers ready for language challenge

Archived article dated Wednesday July 16th 2008

Recently The Retail Bulletin reported that many business websites are ill-equipped to deal with cross-border e-commerce.

by Greig Holbrook

This article looks at multilingual online retailing could help these businesses deal with this challenge, and even thrive.

Nearly two-thirds of European retailers say they are ready to carry out transactions in more than one language. However, only one third of EU consumers say they are willing to purchase goods and services in another language, according to the European Commission's Eurobarometer report.

This means that the time is ripe for multilingual online retailing.

Many retailers choose not to sell their products in countries other than their own. For those who do, markets in other countries can provide additional welcome revenue streams. Overcoming language barriers is one of the key challenges to tapping into new international demand.

However, simply translating a website is not the answer to unlocking this potential. In order to rank well on that culture's local search engines, sites much be optimised with the keywords that the consumers are most likely to associate with the product.

Keywords in other languages will be different from those in English. This means that the most popular English keyword for a particular product may not necessarily be so popular when translated into the target language.

Nappy retailers take note: german searchers use the term 'kinder diaper' for nappy, mixing both German and US English. Of note to tourism retailers: Indians use the term 'LHR' (London Heathrow) to look for destinations and information regarding the UK.

“Online retailers can simply be invisible to large numbers of potential customers if their websites are not optimised for particular search language and behaviour, says Greig Holbrook, Managing Director of Oban Multilingual, a specialist company focussing on international search engine optimisation. “They could be missing enormous sales opportunities as a result.”

It is also important to note that search behaviour differs in different countries. For example, Chinese people tend to search using ideas and concepts more than concrete phrases. Russian searchers will commonly type English sounds in Cyrillic. For example, “business travel” would often be written in Cyrillic but would sound English when pronounced phonetically.

Knowing the various forms of search behaviour in the target country helps solidify a cross-border internet marketing plan.

Multilingual SEO cannot create new markets; there must be a demand for the products or services on offer. And of course an online retailer has to be able to fulfil orders internationally. But global retail websites which are optimised for each market are key to success in capturing and maintaining new business in a globalising marketplace.

Greig Holbrook is Managing Director at Oban Multilingual

Tagged as: online retailing | language

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