International Business and Technology Blog

The digital economy delivers. It lowers costs and barriers to markets, as well as providing access to an unprecedented number of customers (both business and consumer). The traditional routes to markets have eroded. Smart companies, notably web savvy businesses, have created and leveraged technologies to grow their online global sales, brands and businesses.

In any given “home market” there is a truism that the vast majority of your potential clients are located in, by definition, outside in those global markets. Sow the two together, online and global, and you have the driver that ensures B2B and B2C online global retail will represent >$10 trillion of transactions by 2020. And the #1 beneficiaries of the digital economy are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If you are a decision maker in an SME, please do read on, think through the sales opportunities and the potential value to your brand and business.

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.

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!

Many customers ask us: Why do you use ExpressionEngine? Can't you build a WordPress website for us?

WordPress is enjoying a huge popularity today, but it’s ExpressionEngine that gets web developers and designers really excited. ExpressionEngine is IBT Online’s Content Management System of preference, because it’s extremely robust, secure, easy to use, offers endless flexibility that is required to address customers’ most demanding requests, and thanks to the Transcribe add-on by EEHarbor, is great to manage multilingual content. You don’t have to limit your imagination and your requirements… be bold and give your company a tool to properly express and represent yourselves!

An Online Global presence means creating, building and delivering website localization and international online marketing to deliver sales, brand and business growth in far flung markets across the globe. Companies looking to go global often ask us, just like in Love Story, “where do I begin?”. The answer, as per the song, is with the “first hello”.

Most companies today have their core domestic website – for US companies it is generally the .com English language website. But to grow your sales, brands and businesses globally in today’s multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-lingual world, Online Global has become a business necessity. Check out some of these amazing stats about the top languages in the internet, as well as the growth and number of non-English websites and e/mcommerce platforms. You can’t compete anymore with a traditional English-only .com website.

Domain names, specifically internet Top Level Domains (TLDs), are increasingly an integral part of all business strategies and global brand development. Businesses spend many millions on domain names. There are many egregious valuations to demonstrate this phenomena including the amounts paid for: fund.com ($10M) , hotels.com ($11M), privatejet.com ($30M), insurance.com ($36M) and lasvegas.com ($90M). TLDs have a recognized quantifiable commercial value. Take fb.com ($8.5M) which was purchased by Facebook to redirect to facebook.com; iCloud.com ($6M) purchased by Apple for the same reason. And what about your company, your brands and your country code domain names?

In the past few months, Google has introduced two major changes to their Google Keyword Planner available via Google AdWords. The tool is frequently used by SEO (search engine optimization) experts not only for paid advertising, but also to research and analyze keywords for organic search. Google Keyword Planner provides estimates of average monthly searches of individual keywords. The tool can focus results on specific geographic areas, and is therefore very helpful in multilingual search engine optimization.

Today’s online world offers business globalization at an incomparable speed, cost, flexibility, scalability and profitability compared to all other routes to market. The international internet business model is a paradigm change, where successful globalization is achieved through localization. Cumulative online local successes, market by market, delivers global success, hence the “glocal” mantra. Successful corporates seeking to grow their businesses globally are leveraging this optimal online route, local market by local market, and gaining their global success on an unprecedented scale. Without borders, the internet offers companies across all sectors, opportunities to internationalize. There are some outstanding well published, even infamous, examples, including Amazon and Uber. However much glocalization is a no-brainer, getting it right is tough, demanding high levels of both online technical skill sets, coupled and with local market understanding. So let’s get you started on your glocal (global/local) program today.

Apple makes a lot of things look easy and intuitive. Their global online presence and marketing is a great example, we give them A++. Looks easy, but does your company get anywhere close? In our ongoing review of best practices for global online website presence and marketing, we dive into some of Apple's 100+ websites. Successful website and online marketing internationalization requires a range of skill sets and competences, made all the more complex by the inevitable geographic dispersion. Nevertheless there are companies that are extremely good at this, like Apple. In fact, Apple is so good that its online stores are the main driver for the >$200Billion net cash stockpile, most of that earned outside the US.

Ever attentive to the international ambitions of its members, the US National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) conducted a survey in June 2016 appropriately titled “Looking to Navigate Beyond US Borders?” 84 companies responded, providing results that re-inforce what those charged with navigating those challenges know: that there are two main routes to grow exports and international business, namely that of i) international trade shows and then ii) online marketing and social media.

International trade shows, the staple route to international markets since such events commenced (in France) some 120 years ago, remains the leader with 73%. But what is interesting is the rapid uptake of online marketing and social media. Off most navigators horizons just 5 years ago, online marketing now commands the attention and budget of 65% of the respondents. And watch that number and % figure continue to rise…