International Business and Technology Blog

Canada is a great market for US companies testing the international export waters for the first time, but equally offers a great long-term international business growth opportunity. Canada is the go-to export market of many US companies, not only thanks to its close proximity, which allows for easier, more affordable shipping and order fulfilment, but also thanks to lower language and cultural barriers. But how about the barriers of the online world? What should you consider when building a website(s) for Canada?

Googling away on my iPad mini, while stuck at yet another airport somewhere, I found reference to a book called “Think Outside the Country”. The subject matter looked interesting, promising to be “A Guide to Going Global and succeeding in the Translation Economy”. I wanted to know more, clicked to my Amazon account and for $29.00, two days later in yet another hotel somewhere, the hard copy was mine to hold and read.

IBT Online provides website localization and international online marketing services to help companies grow their sales, brands and businesses online globally, and that since 2002. So at IBT Online we all think outside the country, and perhaps more importantly, we all do Online Global outside the country, as we have delivered more than 1,000 localized country specific corporate websites through our succesful Online Global program. 

When I read about the author, it stated that John Yunker is “the world’s leading expert on web content globalization”. Now that is an ambitious claim that sets expectations. So this blog turns out to be something of a book review.

Mexico is arguably Latin America’s most dynamic market for ecommerce for both the B2C and B2B worlds. Retail and ecommerce giants Amazon and Wal-Mart clearly think so and are backing their ambitions with huge investments. Amazon launched in Mexico in June 2015 and according to Juan Carlos Garcia, CEO of Amazon Mexico, the company sees “a big opportunity in the Mexican market. It’s a market which right now is at $12 billion and growth has been in the double digits.”

Google's perpetual drive for innovation means more disruption is coming our way. An example is Google’s new translation system that has delivered measurable improvements in the fluency of Google Translate. Google has begun rolling out the service across all its languages, chat boxes, web pages, articles, blogs, emails, social media, message forums…First updated were the most commonly used primary languages (English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Korean and Turkish), as well as Google’s >192 country specific search engines, the Google Translate website and the Website Translator plugin. Our research shows that Google Translate is now better than ever for personal use, but remains bad for business!

The land grab for internet users in India is in full swing and nowhere more so than in ecommerce. India now has the second largest number of internet users in the world, behind China, but this still means that about 65% of India’s population is not yet on the internet. While there are many Indian tech companies there are surprisingly few independent internet players, leaving the field open to the internet giants of the world. Google, with a historically impenetrable 96% market share in India, is facing serious competition from Chinese search engine giant Baidu. Amazon and Alibaba are dividing up online retail, gobbling up homegrown talent while Uber, Facebook and others all look for a slice of the cake.

Is India’s online world finally coming of age?

Lured by the potential size of the market, an intrepid US manufacturer we know started exporting to India in early 2012. While it found willing in-market partners, the challenge of complex tax structures, patchy infrastructure, poor logistics and out-dated payment systems, meant that its B2B and B2C sales objectives were far from achieved. Yet this year, fortunes appear to be changing. 

Leading Chinese search engines

Two years ago, Baidu boasted 80% of the Chinese online search market. Today, Baidu’s market share is estimated at 55% (1). But the winner has not been the otherwise world dominant Google, but other Chinese search engines including Qihoo 360 and Sogou.

While Baidu’s dominant position among the search engines in China has eroded, Google has not been a beneficiary since it has been banned in China as of 2010. Besides censorship, ClickZ (2) cites different online search behavior as one of the factors why Baidu and other domestic search engines have been more successful in China than Google. For example: an average Chinese internet user spends 3-6 times more time on page on average, does not focus on the upper left corner of the page as their Western counterparts do, searches mostly on smartphones and prefers to choose from a list rather than by typing keywords.

Google Translate boasts 103 languages, covering 99% of the online population and processes more than 1 billion user translation requests per day. I love Google Translate because it is so easy to use and it costs nothing. I hate Google Translate because the results I get range from an approximation to complete gibberish. Great for personal use, but bad for business. Given the complexity of languages in the world (check out our translation article), those of us challenged with international communications know that quality language translation is extremely complex: it is hugely demanding of expertise and time, and so of money. As they say, “you get what you pay for”. 

Our blog How to sell online in Germany introduced the attractiveness of the German ecommerce market and outlined the main expectations of German e-shoppers, including payment methods, delivery, returns, mobility, personalization and terms & policies. Today, we will have a closer look at the theme of German online payment methods.

According to the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association (bevh) study, the most popular online payment method preferred by 39% of German e-shoppers are online payment services. Besides the international platform PayPal there are many local online payment service providers such as Sofortüberweisung.de, ClickandBuy and Giropay that are well known and have a significant market share of the online payment services.