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NZ businesses rely on international trade. The trick is, being geographically remote from 95% of the world\'s spending population, we either have to go over there to sell or bring them out here to buy. Neither are particularly cashflow friendly options. Many businesses have developed web-marketing strategies to allow them to enter markets that previously would have been cost prohibitive, but not all have it actively working for them in the way it could be.

In particular one point seems to have evaded a lot of NZ businesses: not everyone looking for your product/service on-line can understand English! Right now some 51% of all web browsers are operating in a language

other than English . By 2005 this is expected to rise to 75% . If you want to market internationally you need to market in the language of your customer. And you need to be able to be found in the language of your customer.

This process is called web localisation. Localisation involves preparing your web marketing materials for a particular language market. There are seven steps to the process

Identify language group
Which language group(s) do you wish to target? Different products will have different appeal in different markets. A backpacker lodge may target German speakers, whereas a luxury B&B may focus on Japanese. Do your market research well.

B2B or B2C?
Many small business websites are focused on B2C; selling product or services direct to consumers. But don\'t ignore the potential B2B customer. Just as a student in Germany will use the web to research backpackers in NZ, so will German travel agents and consolidators. Create a prominent special zone (preferably that requires a log-in) on your website that will encourage B2B customers to contact you for wholesale rates access.

Keyword/keyphrase targeting
The main pitfalls are targeting keyphrases nobody ever searches for, keyphrases that are too general so are highly competitive, and keyphrases that just don\'t translate into your target language. You can research popular English keyphrases via Overture or Espotting amongst others, but unless you have the language skills available in-house you may need professional advice for foreign languages.

Translation and copy writing
How many hours do you spend trying to get just the right marketing copy? How many people do you bounce your ideas off? You should insist that at least two different translators (preferably with a third proofreader) work on your copy, that the translators are native speakers of that language, they are qualified, and that it is a word rate and not hourly.

Web Page building
Here is where you get your foreign language website created and loaded up. Go for maximum platform and browser compatibility. For example in NZ we use about 90% Windows OS, but in Japan it is approximately 30% Macintosh, so if you doing a Japanese site make sure it is Mac compatible. The same applies to different browser types (don\'t ignore Netscape etc.). Get your web developer to specify exactly what operating systems and browsers the website will work under.