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The Promise of Overseas Visitors
October 30, 2006
In general, people don't optimize their website for non-USA traffic. It never crosses many people's mind. Why would it? Who else would be looking for your site, anyway?
Surprise, surprise - there is a good chance that your site has a substantial number of foreign visitors!
Just how substantial, though?
Well, I took a look at the Google Analytics account we have set up for the ROI Revolution site, and the Geo Location report said we had a total of 37,823 visitors for a certain time period. Of those 37,823 visitors, 11,045 where from outside of the United States. That is nearly 30% of the traffic coming to the site!
Doubtless you are wondering why this even matters.
The fact is that this is often a great potential market. So many people overlook overseas market that any effort you make to optimize for this audience will probably have a pretty decent impact.
Depending on your situation, it might be a good idea to offer multiple language versions of your website. At the very least offer international shipping options.
What have you tried in an effort to market to a specific geographically-oriented market?
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Posted by Meredith Smith at 2:32 PM
Permalink | Comments ( 4 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )
Filed under: Analytics
Tagged as: Analytics Basics
Comments
Stephane:
Due to your own experiences there in Quebec, you certainly understand how important it is to give some serious thought to how people from other areas will engage with your website!
Unfortunately, not everybody has the benefit of this type of experience. Here in the USA it tends to be much easier to slide into assuming all visitors to a website will be local.
But just as you point out, "notions like 'foreign' and 'overseas' don't make much sense anymore" because the internet is inherently global. Just as those websites you pointed out that assume you are in France lost your business, others are unwittingly losing business every day by not giving some thought to this matter.
- Meredith
October 31, 2006 8:49 AM
I am looking for tips on how to optimize a site for international visitors. What are few specifics that need to be done to accomplish this strategy?
November 26, 2006 11:26 AM
I would start by making sure your checkout form is compatible to global commerce, and not just USA.
One small example of this is that European credit cards normally have a "start date" in addition to the expiration date we are used to. You can hear about one person's trouble with this in the article "The London Eye Shopping Cart" by Robbin Steif over at LunaMetrics:
http://www.lunametrics.blogspot.com/
I find it a bit surprising there are still people who don't optimize with internationalization in mind. Unless you offer a very narrow and local content or service, I think international visitors should always be granted with respect. If you don't want or can't support international visitors (because of commercial or logistic constraints), that's fine, but let them know as soon as possible!
Here in Quebec we are very sensitive and accustomed to this reality: we speak french while being surrounded by english culture. How many times to we end up on sites offering a french version assuming we are in France? How many times do we end up on a site to be abruptly abandoned after many promising steps to finally reach the lethal questions: state and zip code. Sorry "canadian", you are "persona non grata".
Just for the sake of discussion, while you show 70% traffic from the US, my blog, with similar interests, shows radically different geographic spread. US account only for 30% of my traffic!
All things being equal, notions like "foreign" and "overseas" don't make much sense anymore... we're all a bit "foreign" and, well, we're certainly all "overseas" somehow!
Stephane
http://shamel.blogspot.com
October 30, 2006 5:21 PM