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Think Global Act Global: Writing for Your Online Market
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007

When you write web site content and design your pages, do you
truly act with your target audience in mind? Or do you think
global and act local?

I am amazed at the number of web sites I see that claim to
target a global market, yet design and write their content for a
regionally-specific audience. Not sure what I mean? Take the
site I saw yesterday, for example. I won't embarrass the site
owners by pointing to the specific domain, but let's just say
the site is based in the U.S. and sells high quality gold chains
throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

Now the owner of this site was complaining loudly in a webmaster
forum that his pay-per-click campaign was having no luck
converting sales from overseas visitors, particularly in the UK
and Australia. He had spent a long time developing and tweaking
a landing page for the campaign and he couldn't work out why
hardly anyone outside the U.S. was buying. I took a look at his
landing page and could see the problems straight away:

1) He used the American English spelling "jewelry" throughout
the page without considering that persons who use British
English spell it "jewellery".

2) He provided a toll-free phone number for persons in the U.S.
to call, but did not provide any contact phone number for
persons located outside the U.S.

3) He used the word "national" throughout the page, immediately
isolating anyone outside the U.S.

4) He promoted "free shipping throughout the U.S." but did not
specify shipping costs for persons outside the U.S.


The owner of this site had not even considered that persons
outside the U.S. might search for keywords in anything other
than American English. It didn't even occur to him that there
may be an alternative spelling of his main keyword and he didn't
think about the logistics for purchasers outside his country. No
wonder the page wasn't converting outside the U.S.! He had made
the classic mistake of isolating a large chunk of his audience
by sending everyone to a one-size-fits-some page.

What he should have done was to create a separate landing page
using British English spelling and shipping/contact information
applicable to persons overseas. He could then have set up a
unique PPC campaign targeting only UK/Australian searchers with
regional keywords and ads leading to the British English landing
page.

I see similar problems occur quite often in the online travel
industry where you not only have to deal with regional spelling
options, but also regional jargon. Think about the word
"accommodation". Apart from the fact the word is commonly
misspelled, it is used most often in the UK, Australia and New
Zealand to describe places to stay while traveling. In the U.S.,
the words "accommodations" and "lodging" are more commonly used.
Same goes for "holiday" and "vacation", with the latter being
more common in the U.S. The word "traveling" itself is spelled
"travelling" in British English! So you can imagine the
minefield of problems webmasters must face promoting their
travel sites online to a worldwide audience.

I don't mean to single out a particular country, but Americans
seem to find it especially difficult to step outside their
regional mindset. I am always receiving emails from the U.S.
with helpful suggestions for fixing my "spelling mistakes".

The funniest email exchange I ever had in relation to this was
from an American web designer. She had seen our Australian-based
web site (with a .com.au domain) and emailed me to tell me it
was "full of errors" and that if I wanted to present a
professional business to site visitors, I should correct them.
So condescending! I asked her to elaborate and she pointed me to
these words she felt were spelled incorrectly:

optimisation
counselling
organised
enrolment
colour
catalogue
favourite
centre

Resisting the urge to use a few offensive words I'm sure she
would recognize, I tactfully explained that our site was only
targeting the Australian market and that we use British English
spelling in Australia. Her response? Perhaps if we wanted to be
taken seriously by an international audience, we should consider
using the "more proper" American English. Flabbergasted, I
pointed out the fact that American English was a derivative of
British English and was not widely used outside her own country.
Wikipedia has more about the differences between the two here
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences).
And let’s not forget that although it is the most common
language used on the web, English is used by less than 30
percent (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) of the
world's total Internet users.

The point of this story is that you absolutely have to think
outside your market if you are going to advertise on the web. As
ignorant as she was, my email friend did make me realize that
many of her compatriots might also think our site was full of
errors. American English is more common on the web and I've
since learned to cater to that trend. I try to remember that in
all writing I do for the web now, whether it's in my daily blog,
the syndicated articles I write regularly or web page content.

Whenever you design or write for a web site that has an
international audience, make sure you address each market. It
pays to undertake detailed keyword research into your markets
you are targeting so you can capture the correct regional jargon
and spelling that people are searching for. Remember it's not
enough to think global, you've got to act global too.
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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