Ensuring overseas customers can access your website is very important and it’s something we get asked about quite a bit. You can make sure it’s ready by following our simple steps below.
If this is all sounds a bit confusing, ask your web developer to make sure your website is ready by sharing this article with them.
cLanguage.
Make sure your text is easy to navigate and written in plain english. Better yet, translate important pages or products on your your site. Google translator is a good place to start and if possible hire a translator to check your content and ensure it all makes sense.
Currency.
If you sell products on your site or display your pricing, make sure its available in your customers currency and it’s clearly labelled which currency is being displayed.
Geolocation.
If you sell products on your site, it may be worthwhile using metadata to locate where your visitor is coming from and automatically deliver the content and pricing in their language and/or currency.
Time zones.
Don’t forget to mention your business hours! On your contact page it’s a good idea to include your local office time and contact hours.
Purchase your international domain name.
To protect your brand and establish yourself in foreign countries it’s a good idea to purchase your domain in their domain extension. ie. Australia is .com.au.
Use a content delivery network (CDN).
Using a CDN such as Cloudflare will ensure your site loads quickly in foreign countries, even if your website lives in Australia. A content delivery network will speed up your site no matter where your customers are. It’s very important your website loads quickly as internet speeds across the world vary and mobile traffic accounts for a large majority of web traffic.
Optimise for local search engines.
Ensure your site is found by submitting it to the popular local search engine. Whilst Google & Bing are popular, some websites aren’t available in certain countries. For example in China the most popular search engine is Baidu and in Russia it’s Yandex.
Have consistent branding
It ensures you stand out amongst your competitors here in Australia & overseas. Your colours, logos fonts etc should be consistent with your product and tailored to your overseas market. For example, if you’re selling products in Australia you may not use koala or Australian imagery however this may be your point of difference overseas and give you an edge against foreign competitors.
