Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

72 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
A Future Consideration for Your Web Site
As the Internet shrinks the world, it is useful to keep in mind that the
world speaks more languages than English. Although English predominates
across the Web, a b-to-b company marketing internationally needs
to consider the implications of creating its Web site in different languages.
According to Jupiter Media Metrix (www.jmm.com), within
just a few years, two thirds of the world’s online audience will be non-
English-speaking. Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) supports this
with its own prediction that 50% of all online sales will be made outside
the United States by 2004. Forrester says moving toward multilingual
Web sites will be an inevitable necessity.
Don’t overlook this trend if you anticipate doing serious business in
non-English-speaking countries. A June 2000 survey of over 150,000
European Internet users across 15 countries by Pro Active indicated
that 65% of the respondents preferred sites in their own language. In
fact, it seems that Europeans prefer online companies that use their own
country’s suffix as opposed to .com.
At some point, if you have any interest at all in broadening your
business beyond the United States, you will likely need to build mirror
sites that accommodate both the languages and cultural differences of
other nations. Already, leading global b-to-b marketers are recognizing
this important need. Take a look at the FedEx Web site (www.fedex.com)
to see how a truly global company solves the problem. FedEx customizes
its Web site for every country in which it delivers packages. Each
country page is written in the appropriate language, carries appropriate
photography of people native to that country, and lists the delivery and
rate information specific to that country.
The Best B-to-B Web Sites
You could probably make the assumption that the best b-to-b Web sites are
also the b-to-b Web sites making the best use of Internet marketing. Of
course, it depends on the criteria used to select the best sites. One of the
more useful lists is “The Net Marketing 200,” which can be found at
www.btobonline.com, the Web site of BtoB magazine, published by Advertising
Age. The September 2000 listing identified the best sites in 15 categories.
See Figure 2.2 for the IBM home page. The top rated sites were