August - 2000 - issue > Cover

Although most news about online sales growth focus on the United States, the reality is that the Web has outgrown its North American centricity. Sure, the US still leads by a large margin in the total number of Internet domains, but the percentage of non-American Web users has increased dramatically from 44 percent of the total worldwide user base in 1998 to an estimated 66 percent today. Internet usage in the Asia/Pacific, European, and Latin American regions is already growing more rapidly than in the US.

This change in the Web’s visage will push companies around the planet to localize their online efforts to meet the needs of their newly global audiences. When firms talk about globalizing the Web or e-business, they are referring to their efforts to make the Web live up to its “World Wide” qualifier. They want to make their online value proposition and products more appealing to people outside their traditional trading areas – appealing enough, in fact, to induce populations in other nations’ markets to buy their goods or services.


Impact of the Web on India

What do these changes mean to India and its primarily English-language Web? Looking forward, there will be more Web surfers accessing the Web in a language other than English. Firms will use a variety of languages to compete for the international eyeballs seeking goods and services online. In this changing Internet climate, India will find the following four main opportunities:

A chance to become the regional Web superpower. Boasting the largest economy and population in south Asia, India can offer its goods, services and point of view to other countries in the region. Communications-endowed gateways like New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai can become “cyber Spartas,” city-states that tie the subcontinent to its online trading partners in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. To succeed, Indian sites must adapt language and business practices to meet the expectations of buyers in those markets.

The opportunity to serve other domestic language users. Although English is used for official and commercial purposes, Hindi is widely spoken across northern India; 30 percent of Indians prefer to use Hindi in their everyday communication. Overall, the subcontinent boasts two dozen languages with a million or more speakers. Experience in other online markets has shown that even bilingual speakers feel more comfortable making important decisions about purchases and investments in their natal language than in their school-learned English.

The chance to open the door to expatriates. The excellence of Indian higher education spawned a cadre of abroad-bound entrepreneurs and technology specialists. As the recent influx of expatriate investment has demonstrated, many of these émigrés still harbor a strong loyalty to their motherland. Indian retail, investment and content sites such as khoj.com can win and retain these expatriates as customers by appealing to their continuing allegiance and the cultural elements that form its foundation.

The opportunity to participate in global markets. On the consumer side, online buyers around the world must be convinced that their lives are incomplete without Indian products acquired from Indian sources like shopperstop.com. On the corporate side, global supply chains and business-to-business marketplaces will touch Indian producers of textiles, chemicals, steel and other products. As these markets enable the production and sale of more and more products, Indian companies must become vital links in these world-girding online value chains.


Think Globally, Interact Locally

How can Indian companies compete in these four venues? If past experience in the US and Europe is any indication, most companies will start their globalization efforts by simply translating their sites from English into the languages of their target markets. But such efforts typically fall far short of creating a compelling experience for consumers and business buyers. In ramping up new sites, businesses must carefully consider both consumers and business buyers.

Sites must appeal to each market’s buying behaviors, take buyers through the entire sales cycle, and complete the transaction by accepting payment in local currency and shipping the product using common carriers in that country. Even second-generation e-commerce sites around the world fail this complete-transaction test. The evidence is the large percentage of shopping carts abandoned by foreign visitors who cannot understand buying instructions, don’t have the right currency to buy, or can’t find a shipper who will deliver goods for a reasonable price – or at all.

As the Web becomes a basic technology in large companies and insinuates itself into more small- and medium-sized businesses around the world, the guarantee of English-speaking users will become null and void. Even the days of appealing to non-Indian technologists who speak English are numbered. Sooner or later, English-speaking procurement specialists and technocrats will find more obliging suppliers that will provide in-country, in-language customer service. Indian firms must make it equally easy to buy and be supported – whether the customer is from Calicut or California.

Transforming for Global Success

It’s not enough to simply translate a Web site originally intended for the Indian market. Ideally, globalized Indian sites will offer anyone in their global target markets the same quality of online experience that they offer to today’s anglophone visitor in Bangalore. This means not only translating the words, but the fundamental nature of the interactions, as well– things like business practices, cultural issues, legal requirements and transactions. It means adapting both the outer shell of an e-business and all of the corporate systems and processes that lie beyond the buyer’s sight. New sites must success on three levels, with the products, site content, and the foundation, or “behind the scenes” performance:

Products. Products that sell in India might not do so well outside the subcontinent. Firms must offer international customers only those products and services that can legally or practically be sold and delivered to those countries. Commerce sites must accept payment from customers with the credit cards or other financial vehicles commonly used in that market. Finally, global efforts must adhere to national privacy laws as personalization mechanisms automatically update data warehouse or customer information systems.

Content. Sites will directly translate some content like corporate boilerplate information, and import product photos from a centrally managed database. They will tailor or adapt content for corporate data like employment and revenue statistics. For example, rather than just list global sales figures for Malaysia, firms could list details of how much money they contribute annually to the Malaysian economy in the form of employment and purchases of raw materials. They will also create unique content for each country such as information about products sold only in Malaysia or news about the company from Malay publications.

Foundation. Beneath the HTML façade is where transactions are processed, orders are shipped, fraud is detected and privacy is protected. These major operations rely on an underlying foundation of database systems, transaction processors, application servers, content managers and analytical tools. To be successful, firms must probe these supporting systems for their ability to handle international customers. Otherwise, visitors will see operational and error messages in English techno-babble.


Planning and Support

Globalization will not happen overnight. Successful projects result from:

A high-level mandate. Executive management must drive the globalization effort based on well-defined, measurable objectives like worldwide brand recognition, increased revenue, or expanded market share. With goals and metrics in hand, management must drive the strategy throughout the company through resources, budget, incentives, and business plans.

Informed planning. E-business globalization demands a thorough country-by-country understanding of company goals and resources. Firms will complement this analysis with in-country expertise. Having resources on the ground in target countries will ensure a much smoother transformation of core business systems to support new non-Indian online audiences. Companies should involve established in-country resources that currently support offline business processes throughout the Web globalization planning and production phases.

Software automation. Many firms localize the Web by throwing bodies at the problem. Although this labor-intensive approach may work initially, it typically cannot scale beyond more than two or three sites. Even then, it’s likely that Web development and marketing teams will be able to keep the multiple sites synchronized using only manual processes. Successful firms will use a globalization server to manage the systematic re-use and transformation of digital assets across international sites; content management systems to handle storage and delivery; and personalization tools to tailor content to individual user expectations.


Global Branding

Delivering on the promise of e-business globalization will dovetail with the e-business goals of most companies. If done successfully, e-business globalization will mean more revenue and better customer retention. The Internet has turned local bookstores into international malls, and mail-order PC vendors into worldwide hardware suppliers. Web-based sales can extend the reach of Indian retailers far beyond the range of brick-and-mortar store clerks and traveling sales representatives.

A well-designed site can enhance customer loyalty, driving buyers to return to it rather than to its competitors. Successfully globalized online firms have found that consumers are much more likely to buy when addressed in their own language and when marketing pitches appeal to the buying motivators of their culture and society.

Another byproduct of successful globalization is the new concept of global branding. The Internet provides a powerful mechanism to extend and protect expensive corporate messaging and branding programs to broader audiences. For many small- to medium-sized companies in India and around the world, the Web is the only way that they can extend their brand and corporate goodwill beyond their local markets.


Dr. DePalma is vice president of corporate strategy at Idiom, Inc., a US-based software and services company whose WorldServer software and Global Readiness Assessment help companies adapt their e-businesses to meet the needs of international and ethnic users. Formerly, DePalma was a principal analyst at Forrester Research where he conducted trend-setting research on globalization, content management, digital marketing, and best practices for developing e-commerce sites.