This question came to my mind when I read this article on CircleID. While the article deals with privacy issues, it got me thinking about websites and how they could be customized to reach your scattered target audience on the globe.

It is a fundamental yet challenging question that an entrepreneur, a start-up or any established company needs to ask before building their website.

“Where is my target audience and how can I build a website customized to their specific needs?”

Even if your website is right there on the ‘WWW’, you want it to cater to specific needs of its users which differ geographically, lingually and across different time-zones.

For example, do you have a .US domain name for your company which has specific services for your audience in the United States? In the long run, country-specific domain names could help you make the most of your different websites:

• Manage your sales promotions better as per different time-zones
• Have multilingual websites for different regions
• Branding that appeals to that specific geography

In this way, you can start thinking ‘glocally’, thus optimizing the user experience and getting more sales. To get you started, here are the different things you could do with your website to make it more ‘glocal’:

Get those country-specific Domain names:

Getting a .CO.IN, a .US or a .UK may not sound a useful investment but in the long run this will only work to your advantage. If you scout around looking for these names after having established a business and looking to expand to different countries, the chances are that some domainer (people who invest in domain names for a living) already bought that domain name and is going to extract some moolah from you because you desperately need it. You may argue that you have copyrights and trademarks over that name and legally can own that domain name but think again - do you really want to go down the litigation path and book those extra expenses on your income statement? Rather, as most other businesses who fall into this trap, you will end up with a bitter taste in your mouth and pay up the domainer.

On the other hand, if you have them registered already, the overall expenses to your company would be minimal but when you grow it will give you the marketing versatility that it deserves which I’ve described further below…

Multilingual Content is King:

“Most of my customers understand and speak English, why should I bother making a Spanish/Hindi/Arabic website?” Because as someone has wisely said

“Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they’ll say, ‘God, he said exactly what I was thinking.’ And when they begin to respect you, they’ll follow you to the death.” - Lee Iacocca (the reason why I’m in business and management is him! :-) )

With multi-lingual websites, you are creating a local brand image for your product. There is no price-tag attached to such an effort which makes your customer feel like home. What’s more, it’s more likely that your competition doesn’t already do this; raise the bar and set a benchmark!

Register a .CN domain name - Hire a content-writer from China and let him work on the content for your website which is appealing to the Chinese population.

Google.com is not the only major search engine:

There is Google.co.in, Google.cn, Google.co.uk. If you are going to optimize your website for various search engines or run a Google Adwords campaign, you might as well do it well! Optimization results and the Google Ad campaigns vary from one domain name to another. For example, below are results from Google.com and Google.co.in for the keyword ‘Paintball’.

So, if you are going to build a different website on a .CN, you might as well pitch this website on Google.CN with a specific ad campaign for your chinese customers.

‘Dollar’ is not a universal language

This is an important element for any e-commerce website. Although, you may be able to accept payment in US dollars through payment gateways, you would like your Chinese customers to know how many Yuan it takes to buy your designer shoes. This is a fairly simple task which can also be automated with some quick programming to replicate your pricing from your .COM website.You can also compare and compete with local websites better by listing your prices in the local currency

Geotargeting your customers

Geotargeting your customers is a great way to divert your traffic from your .COM website to your country-specific website. Geotargeting will identify the client’s IP address and compare it with a database to determine where he is trying to access your website from, depending on his or her location, a relevant regional website is served. For example, when you type in Google.com from India, the browser automatically takes you to Google.com.

A website which is closer to your customer - literally

Technically, this is known as geography-specific hosting where your servers are located closer to your customer. This means that your Asian users are served by a server which is based anywhere in Asia. Such a hosting architecture is quite complex and may be used by companies who have an equally stronger market outside their home country. If your customers are complaining about your website not loading fast and most of them are from outside your home country, it’s likely that you need a server which is closer to their region. Keep in mind though that this is only necessary if your website is media rich and your customer spends a lot of his time on it - such as using a application on your website or simply watching videos.

Getting it all together and going to the next level

It might seem like a lot of work, but getting a head-start is fairly easy -

1. Review your web analytics data or review your market data to find out the second-most important country for your business
2. Get your web-infrastructure services for that in place
3. Build the website

You can repeat the process as you go along before you capture the global market!!  ;-)

If all this seems relevant to your business at this point in time, you can set long-term objectives for country-specific websites too, somewhat like below:

• Multilingual support in the form of multilingual knowledge-bases, customer support and live chat
• Build Strategic partnerships with drop-shippers, merchants and affiliates in different countries for your electronic storefront
• Enable time-zone specific sales promotions for your different websites and display them in the local currency
• Most of all, get more sales through heavy online ad campaigns that actually work and set yourself apart in various regional marketplaces on local search engines and portals

{Domains Mafia offers a variety of country-specific domain names and are often available at great prices, to start, sign up here or simply mail me}