Moving abroad is a whirlwind of paperwork, culture shock and excitement. For expats or people who wish to expand their business overseas, there are new considerations that come into a well-designed website. It goes above and beyond installing a translator plug-in and hoping for the best. Whether you’re building a community hub or a whole new website from scratch, the user experience (UX) needs to be as seamless as possible.
Here are some of the best practices to use to implement a seamless international website.
Structure Your Architecture (ccTLDs vs. Subdirectories)
Before the first pixel is drawn, you need to decide how your URLs will look to the user. This is not only an SEO opportunity, but it must be correct for locals to understand and be encouraged to click through.
SEO considerations just include what the page is and, if by chance, that includes a keyword such as an immigration page being labelled as ‘spouse visa’ and so forth. But also, when it comes to ranking well in different territories, you need to include the website location.
The placement of the U.S. would depend on whether it’s a standalone website or a subdirectory of a website you currently have. Here is a URL structure to consider.
- ccTLD – brand.US
- Subdirectory – brand.com/US
- Subdomain – US.brand.com
Prioritise Global Gateway Visibility
Don’t hide your own language of region selection in the footer like an afterthought. Users who land on the ‘wrong’ version of your site should be able to pivot instantly or be redirected manually to the version that is suited to their territory and their local language.
You can have manual switchers available on the website that change the language if they click a specific country for their needs; however, from the initial click-through process, this can cause bounce rates if it’s not a pop-up to change the location of the website and is not automatically redirected to a subdomain.
It’s important that if you are going to use this way to avoid flags to represent language, as a UK flag is also the same language that can be used for the USA, Canada and Australia, therefore aim to use global icons.
A good and recent example of this is Urban Outfitters, the fashion website, when you click on their organic search results, 9 times out of 10, it takes users in the UK to their EU website, which can prevent checkout, purchases and overall further interactions.
Design For Text Expansion
Language isn’t one size fits all, and when you translate German to English or vice versa. There are just some words and phrases that simply don’t translate correctly or at all in some languages, which is why hiring content writers to draft unique content that adheres to the target language but also reads extremely well and within the tone you want to portray to that territory.
With different languages come different cultures, which in turn will impact the way your content reflects and attracts that specific target audience. Hiring a content writer ensures that your content reflects exactly what you need it to, which will help with indexing and ranking in those territories, but also will encourage users to enquire/purchase instead of bouncing off the website.
Imagery
Visuals can sometimes speak louder than words, and are especially important for user experience. A photo or representation that doesn’t reflect the territory that you are in can, in certain scenarios, deter users from choosing your brand amongst the others. Like in all human nature, you tend to choose what feels and looks familiar; therefore, you want to blend in and enter the market without standing out like a sore thumb.
Therefore, as you would do with the content, reflect the same energy and effort into the imagery.
Functional Elements
A smooth process often comes down to how seamless a checkout or contact page can be. If a user can’t enter their phone number due to not enough digits, asks for a zip code instead of a postcode, then it’s likely that you will have lost their purchase amongst every other customer attempting to purchase.
Make address fields flexible, if possible, on each subdomain, and have the checkout process look entirely different and like others in their territory. Idealling this would be the perfect solution and prevent issues of this kind.
You also want to ensure that current and units are displayed locally, which prevents price confusion and builds trustin purchasing through the website.
Lastly, but not least, date formats in different countries, such as the US and the UK, use different date formats, which can cause a lot of confusion and, in some cases, prevent a checkout if they think they are not getting their product or service for weeks or months.
Final Thoughts
Overall, for help consider outsourcing content, development and tools that can help you establish keywords that perform well in a specific location, for example, an immigration attorney in London would be better suited for the US and an immigration lawyer in London for the UK.