When making the transition from small, national business to slightly larger international enterprise, there are certain adjustments you will have to make to ensure your website visitors translate to paying customers. Perhaps you have identified an emerging market and are looking to tap into it, or perhaps you merely want to be ready to offer services to international clients. Whatever the situation, follow these easy steps and get your business ready to attract those all important international clients.

Broaden your Appeal

When thinking about which aspects of your business to pursue and which ones to scale back upon, take into account that to access the widest market your product or service should not be geo-specific. With the rise of cloud computing, accessing particular documents, plans and data sets from anywhere in the world has never been easier. Are you making the most out of this technology, could your business model be tweaked very slightly to encompass the demands of other countries and continents? When looking to maximize your appeal, be careful not to lose what is individual about your brand or service.  Your personality must still be accessible even in the wider world.

Improve Your Website

If your conversion rates are low, especially for foreign visitors, it could be that your website looks bad or is loading slowly. Maybe the vital information is not immediately accessible on the front page of the site, or maybe you haven’t added a good translating app for keeping those overseas visitors. Run tests from lots of different devices and see how the site looks on tablets, phones and other electronic devices. Bare in mind that the speed of internet connections varies across the globe; therefore, if you want to ensure people can globally reach your website, look into different web hosting companies that offer 99% or higher uptime and 24/7 support.

Update your social Media Strategy

Accessing international pages has never been easier, and there really is no excuse to have a poor social media presence. Make sure all of your pages are branded correctly and cohere with one another, as there is nothing more confusing for an audience than a lack of fluidity across platforms – this is especially true for international audiences. With a strong brand, making your social media accounts correlate shouldn’t be too difficult. Don’t be scared about sharing the same post across each platform, and if you do have a significant following from one country, think about making sure you have accounts that post news from that part of the world.

Think About Payment

If you get the traffic, and the customer wants to buy you then have to offer a realistic and simple way for them to pay. There are a number of issues to think about when offering debit or credit card payment to international customers. Firstly, what currency are you going to use? Is it good to opt for a multi-currency banking corporation or does this merely confuse matters? It is fair to say that most businesses that trade internationally now use a system like PayPal, it is straightforward and has international accountability. If something goes wrong, you know where to turn.