International Business and Technology Blog

Don’t give your website visitors the creeps (well, unless you’re selling props for horror movies or promoting a haunted house tour). Give them the experience they deserve! In this Halloween blog special, we’ll give you three design elements that you should avoid having on your website, because they’re terrifyingly outdated, deadly boring, or just… bloody awful. So what are these website ghosts?

Content Management Systems (CMS) are not our fellow human beings, they are just online tools for building and editing websites. So why do so many of us feel so passionate about them? If you discover a new CMS feature that will simplify your work, you love your CMS. But if it doesn’t work as you instructed and the editor displays a mess instead, you hate your CMS. The relationship gets sometimes complicated. But whatever that is, today’s question that we will answer is: What should you require from your CMS when building multilingual websites?

Way back in May 2015, the European Commission (EC) presented its Digital Single Market (DSM) directive. Four months later and the program has advanced rapidly, with all concerned stakeholders now actively involved: not surprising given the economic and political import of the DSM! The European Parliament has held debates and issued statements; the European Council similarly, the EC has held numerous public consultations and published findings; European and non-European business interests (from digital infrastructure to service providers) are researching, employing lobbyists and taking position, while lawyers and accountants are readying themselves for streams of income. US interests are not on the side-lines, in fact market makers and leaders such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) are the most visible piece of this DSM influencing relationship, which the US Mission to the EU considers one of its top three priorities.

Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union is a huge challenge, above all at this particularly delicate time as the detailed program faces strong political as well as economic headwinds. But inaction can’t be blamed on lack of Presidents in Europe - we have lots of them: European Commission (EC) President, Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Euro Summit, Donald Tusk, President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. Earlier this year, the 5Ps got together for some quality time, culminating with the release of the "Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union" report. Coming after numerous reports over many years with similar objectives, this latest missive is grandly dubbed the "Five Presidents Report".

Just over two years ago in July 2013, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations began; relatively recent in the grand scheme of the past 500 years of transatlantic trade relations. Practiced in the art of international trade negotiations, US and EU trade teams run permanent parallel trade negotiations, currently with more than 20 other countries and trading blocs (including China, India, ASEAN…), and consider TTIP progress as “very good”. Back in July 2015, trade teams met in Brussels for the 10th TTIP Round of Negotiations, described as low key. EU chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero, summed up the week’s work: “At their last meeting in June, the leaders of the G7, including Presidents Juncker, Tusk and Obama, gave the EU and US clear indications to intensify our discussions on TTIP and identify the way forward on all areas” and that this has now been achieved. However, today TTIP is about politics, and finding that way forward. A political review has been convened for later this September 2015 between EU Commissioner Cecelia Malmström and US Trade Representative Mike Froman, and is understood to be critical as to where TTIP goes next in terms of timing and action. The other takeaway from round #10 as Bercero aptly put it: “we want to make the life of SMEs easier”.

In 2014, Germany boasted over 51 million online consumers, only superseded by China, Japan and the USA. In terms of e-commerce, Germany comes 2^nd in Europe after the UK, with over €41 Bn annual online sales, as reported by the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association.

E-commerce sector represented 9% of Germany’s total retail industry in 2014. The German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association forecasted a 12% growth in 2015, reaching a revenue of nearly €47 Bn. Other sources predict even higher growth rates, between 20-30%. According to the Association of the German Internet Industry, more than half (53%) of German GDP generated in 2017 will be e-commerce related (compared to 37% in 2012).

Did you miss it?

Walking around any place in the UK it is hard not to see someone looking at their smartphone, therefore it is not surprising that the UK’s Ofcom(1) report out in August 2015 heralding in the official status that the UK is a “Smartphone society” went largely unnoticed. So if you missed it (buried in the depths of a 435 page report) here it is…  “For the first time, the smartphone has overtaken the laptop as the device internet users say is the most important for connecting to the internet; in 2015 33% chose their smartphone…” and there is even a funky graph to go with it.

We are continuously looking to see how effective our online marketing is, and one of the great benefits of digital marketing is that there are some excellent tools to tell you just that. We are running a series of webinars which are very popular, with over 50 people registered for the last one. Now, my challenge is to set about doubling that number. We share some of our own online marketing activities to help you improve your marketing return on investment.

The UK and the USA are among each other’s top export markets.The USA is the largest single destination for British exports, and the UK is America’s largest export market in the EU (#5 overall). UK <=> US trade alone equals $214 billion a year. 

Many of our clients with an American/British English website ask whether it’s really necessary to build a country specific website for the UK/US markets given the language similarity. Ideally - yes, you should build a country specific website for each of your geographical markets, but it is of a lesser urgency than building a website for let’s say a German/French market that speaks a completely different language.

The transatlantic economy is bigger than ever. Big, trillions big and compared to other international economic relations, the biggest by far. US foreign direct investment (FDI) in Europe totals >$13.6 (£8.4) trillion. By return of compliment, European FDI in the USA has reached >$9 (£5.8) trillion. Do the math, and we have >$22 (£14.2) trillion of transatlantic FDI. Need more convincing? The transatlantic economy generates >$5.5 (£3.5) trillion in annual total commercial sales. The detail is to be found in this year’s “Transatlantic Economy 2015 Report” which puts it succinctly: “Despite economic turbulence, the US and Europe remain each other’s most important markets. No other commercial artery in the world is as integrated…” The Transatlantic Economy 2015 Report is an Annual Survey of Jobs, Trade and Investment, conducted by authorities on the subject including John Hopkins University, the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union (AmCham EU) and the Trans-Atlantic Business Council (TABC). The full version comprises 112 information packed pages, reminding us all (which we do need from time to time) of the pre-eminent importance of the economic relationship between the 62 European countries (28 of which are in the European Union) and the 50 United States. The report is very readably structured into: A Tale of Two Economies, The Post-Crisis Transatlantic Economy, The 50 US States and, the last chapter is entitled, European Countries. These are then followed by the somewhat heavy going statistic packed appendices, of which there are more than 40 pages! If you are looking for US/EU stats, look no further. For the time pressed amongst you, I strongly recommend the Transatlantic Economy 2015 Pocket Version, a more digestible 28 pages. Let me share with you some of the key points that I found most revealing and useful.