A gateway to international business development
Helping SMEs to grow both locally and internationally through unique websites and targeted online marketing.
Over 25 years’ experience of successfully building businesses in the UK, France and across Europe. Bilingual French/English, Stirling has managed, bought, sold, acquired, merged, restructured and turned around businesses in the UK, France, and Europe and Germany, started and developed four companies and two business units from scratch and completed a number of successful assignments as an Interim Manager.Plus a spell in between as a professional musician and bandleader.
The internet has given small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to enter the global market in a way that was never before possible. They are able to sell their goods and services and build their brand directly through their website to customers all over the world with minimal effort.
That being said, internationalising and localising your website is an essential step to take if you want to be noticed by overseas customers.
A multilingual website is one of the most cost-effective ways of starting to build your brand in foreign markets.
e.g. Broad desired outcomes
e.g. Specific and measurable outcomes for those goals
e.g. How the goals and objectives will be achieved
e.g. Specific actions that you will take to achieve your objectives
The process of building your website to support multiple languages
The technical best practice principle is the same as those for a building, e.g. the foundations need to be installed and configured correctly according to the required use and future flexibility.
Adapting your design and content to be relevant to local markets.
The actual process of translating, keeping brand consistency whilst allowing for cultural differences and sensitivities, e.g. colours, taglines, logos, personality, tone of voice, local customs, images.
Historically, multilingual websites required vast budgets, since they were custom coded by in-house developers or large agencies, with high build and modification costs attached. This is no longer the case.
Proprietary pay-as-you-go systems, such as Wix, do have some languages capability but are not designed with localisation in mind. Plus all content and language specifics cannot be easily transferred if you leave.
Open source systems such as WordPress have dedicated plugin extensions specifically created for streamlining translation workflows, multi-language web design and multilingual SEO.
Ideas that appeal in the UK may not work elsewhere
How does trading cross-border affect your products
Advertising and marketing can be restricted in some countries. For example Germany restricts the value of promotional offers due to anti-competition rules
You may already have a well-established brand – including name, trademarks, logos and more – but you should check if these translate well into a new market.
There are international cultural clusters (e.g. Scandinavia, Northern Europe Southern Europe, Central/Eastern Europe, South America, etc, so you can invest in more than one market at a time.
Take into account the market’s culture, business practices and customer preferences, which can influence design, content selection, and translation.
Translations should take into account the need to fit the format and design, some will take up more space than others. Translating from English into languages such as Spanish or French can result in 20-25% expansion, while German may expand as much as 35%.
Consider web font compatibilities with minimal spacing.
Use translators that understand how to use local selling expressions. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush doesn’t translate very well in French).
Transcreation is the merger of two words: translation and creation. It’s an intricate form of translating that preserves the original intent, context, emotion, and tone.
The DIT Internationalisation Fund is open to SME businesses that have significant potential to grow international sales.
Eligible projects will have a minimum project value of £2000 and maximum £18,000 with up to 50% grant funding available.
The funding can be used by a business to support:
The company must be a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) with up to 250 employees
• No more than 25% of the business is owned by an enterprise that is not an SME
• Annual turnover does not exceed €50 million or annual balance sheet does not exceed €43 million
