International Business and Technology Blog

Small business exporters around the globe are amongst the biggest beneficiaries of the newly established international digital connectivity. The recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report entitled “Digital Globalization: the new era of global flows” quantifies this for us as “used cross-border bandwidth has grown 45 times larger since 2005. It is projected to grow by another nine times in the next five years”. That’s worth reading twice. We enjoy the huge benefits of this every day, everywhere, unnoticed. That is until it stops functioning and then we get frustrated. Across the globe, wherever we are, we demand that every office and every home, café, car, train and now airplane is connected; even walking down the street we are all phoning, texting, buying, selling or just surfing the internet on smart  phones and mobile devices. Global digital connectivity is becoming ubiquitous and is changing every aspect of how we do business, not just nationally but internationally.

This blog’s goal is to give you an overview of European domain registration requirements for selected countries.

Can a non-EU company register European domains?

Even though the EU coordinates and standardizes many processes across the member states, requirements for domain registration are still managed by each country independently and often differ considerably.  Some countries will allow you to register domains without further requirements, while others will require you to provide various local details, e.g. address or corporate tax number, in which case you’ll need the help of a local partner. Some domain registrars provide local contact details for selected countries as part of their service too.

The importance of owning a domain for your export markets is twofold: Firstly, to protect and own your brand, secondly to improve your local search engine optimization. In this blog, we will take a closer look at both of these aspects, give you recommendations on the increasingly popular geographical domains, and provide you with basic information on what you need to register your international domains.

You might be working with a web agency that is very artistic and design oriented, focusing on developing your brand. Or you might be working with a web agency that is more results oriented, focusing on search engine optimization and driving visitors to the site. In the best case, your web agency can offer you both - unique custom design and a superior website performance. The best agencies specify website features based on your requirements and those of your website’s users. They create great online platforms, supporting and driving your sales in your home market. Market, which both you and your web agency know very well.

But what about your export markets? Does your local web agency have the right skillsets to create and market your international websites and thus grow your business equally successfully abroad?

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.

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.

Clients often ask us “What is a typical return on investment in country specific websites?” While the benefits of international online presence and online marketing are enormous, there is nothing like a “typical” return on investment. It all depends on how you define the return and what investment you make.

Watch out “Les Gafa” are about! So says the EU Commission. The French provided this useful acronym, which encompasses a lot more than those four leviathan companies, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. It is all about entrenched EU industries protecting their turf, tax revenues (who is collecting and who is not) and all this wrapped into privacy concerns, when helpful! It was a big month for Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, as she unveiled long awaited accusations against Google.