Authored by: Bill Hartzer

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/hartzer/007005.html

A Snippet:

When you set up a web site and domain name, you are setting up a business—and by establishing a presence in the country using that country's native tongue is much more powerful than simply adding a few web pages to your existing web site.

The article focused on marketing to new countries that speak different languages.

What about marketing to people in America that speak only english, or only spanish? I'd be inclined to have a link on the english-only home page that says "en espanol". It would lead to pages hosted on the same account. The site I'm thinking about is not selling anything online, only trying to increase exposure for a construction company, where estimates are based on measurements that need to be taken by the company.

Okay, I have another question.
I run a business site (book seller) that markets to five countries, all of which speak english. However we have slight differences in the versions of books available in each country. Currently I have a .com, .co.uk, .co.nz, and I was unable to procure a Canadian domain. So I have the UK and NZ domains set to forward to the .com and once users are on the site and want to buy something, they go to a country choice page where they choose a tailored inventory order form. We print our books in the US and then ship them in bulk to the different markets for order fulfilment.

Our audience is entirely English speakers, and we're a small business with fulfilment overhead costs in each market, I don't think it makes sense to separate our site into three different hosting accounts. What do you say? The local address and phone appears on their packing slip.

Depend,

For example my site gets a lot of hits from France, so we would definitely had to make France version of site.

The Best is if we buy .fr domain and host, bu its not the most important,
If you get a lot of hits and business from UK, you should invest in your UK site, and make it more suitable for UK market, grow in income is probably guarantied.

This is an interesting article, especially as Mr Hartzer chose my locality as an example. There is a sequence to investing in a new language web presence, and although he covered many things, he perhaps needed to better illuminate the sequence or pathway better.

As well as a clear pathway it is certain that properly localising a web project in a different country requires real commitment (time and resources), it also requires the right people on the ground in that country. Correspondingly, it is the first article that I see on the subject that goes so far as to say "If at all possible, if your company employs local salespeople or marketing staff in that country then you might consider having them write or translate the copy on the web site they know the product and any important selling points and local "slang" that is important to include"

I think this is essential, but it is the lack of commitment to this that I have seen in many translated French to English web projects, that ultimately reduces to zero the returns on investment. Ultimately, if your target audience don't 'feel' you speak with an authentic voice in their language, you don't gain their trust - the first thing and most basic that has to be in place before an online payment takes place.

Nemanja - I would be surprised if you could purchase a '.fr' TLD as easily as you seem to think. The restrictions (like in other certain other countries mentioned) may include having an existing registered business here.