International Business and Technology Blog

It’s all about the user – whether that user is German, English, French, Italian or Estonian - any of the 500+ million European citizens from one of the 51 countries, speaking (and reading) dozens of languages. In the European Union (EU) alone we have 28 countries and 24 officially recognized languages. It is therefore not surprising that corporations seeking to grow their exports and business in European markets face significant challenges. An online strategy, fit for purpose, is an essential element for success in Europe and that strategy has to focus on your specific targeted profiles who first have to easily find your website site (through the plethora of search engines) and then use it, knowing that today’s users demand localized, relevant content.

The term Nordics describes a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic, comprising 5 countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Much envied with regards to their wealth, open societies, technologies and, of course, well-being. Non-Nordics wonder how do they do it? How does a vast region with just 25 million people, speaking 4 languages, generate a GDP of $850Bn, making them amongst the richest countries in the world and ranking 6th in theEuropean Union (EU) after Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain and they all seem to be so happy?

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?

In 2014, Germany boasted over 51 million online consumers, only superseded by China, Japan and the USA.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.

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.

Many EU standards and policies that facilitate business and trade have been developed over the past years. However, the EU is yet to become a truly single market. Local small-medium sized companies face barriers when selling online, so do US exporters. Europe must embrace the digital revolution and open up digital opportunities for people and businesses. The European Commission believes that using the power of the EU's Digital Single Market will allow Europe to achieve this goal. This May, the European Commission introduced its detailed plans to create a Digital Single Market with the objective to combat its current online barriers in order to boost EU-wide cross-country e-commerce. This will help start-ups and small-medium sized companies to fully benefit from growth opportunities of the EU market. Subsequently, this will also allow US companies export more easily across the EU from a single central location. Country-specific regulation has been identified as the greatest barrier to a single, fully functional e-commerce market.  

If you want to be visible in your target export market online, you need to optimize your website for local search engines, such as google.de in Germany or google.fr in France. You might laugh that we call this global search engine giant local, but that is indeed the truth. Over 90% of searches in most European countries come from local Googles that show different search results. Remember, you cannot simply translate a well performing US keyword to Spanish or Dutch and expect to see the same results. Search trends, including keywords popularity and difficulty to rank, vary among markets.

How many languages can you speak sufficiently well to communicate with your fellow humans? Today's hyper-connected world enjoys approximately 6,500 languages, shared amongst >7 Bn people spread across >169 countries. So how do you feel now? Belittled? I do. Language, and communication between differing languages, is an issue that humankind has faced for a wee while now. Now, where did all these languages come from?