It is often said that international business is burdened with the minefields of cross cultural communication. But they are not really minefields online. It's more like quicksand. Your international prospects or clients just disappear without a trace.
There has always been one major stumbling block in cross cultural communication:
Trust
Trust is something businesses strive to create with all of their clients. But if you base your trust building strategies on domestic clients and prospects you may well lose many international clients in the quicksand.
Trust is very important within domestic markets. It is critical in international markets.
* Trust
* Lack of trust
* Fluctuating trust
All three of these can be summed up as the number one difficulty you will have in doing business internationally. You must continuously strive to build trust in cross cultural communication. Your international business success depends on it.
Most cross cultural communications begin without trust, or a very superficial level of trust, or a trust totally dependent on some unidentifiable criteria you have little or no knowledge of or control over.
It is hard to build trust on quicksand.
Trust can disappear from any cross cultural communication within the batting of an eye.
This is why all of your international communication should be targeted primarily at creating the best environment for trust possible.
This is not always easy.
Building trust can be boiled down into two words: clarity and consistency. This makes it easier to work on.
Consistency
Consistency may seem intangible. You may not know how to create consistency in your communication. Or you may think you have all the consistency you need in your communication.
Consistency is all about the little things. It is fitting all of the little things into the same picture to make the picture look... consistent.
These little changes may seem small or insignificant to you. And yet these are probably the little things that will kill trust in your foreign visitors in a half a second, without you ever realizing what you are doing wrong.
Consistency In The Words You Use
International readers are ruthless. They may also not be as proficient in English as you would like. Or maybe in their part of the world they use a slightly different English vocabulary.
Here are three things you can do to create better consistency in the words you use:
1 - Use One Word Per Meaning.
Do not become creative and use two different words to refer to one thing. Don't do this mistakenly either.
If your international readers pick up two words for anything on your website and this leads to confusion, they will not take the time to figure out what it means.
Or, even worse, they might understand something totally different.
Example: report, guide, study - use only one word to refer to one document.
2 - Check To See If Everything On The Website Consistent.
This can be difficult to do by yourself. You might need to have a friend or someone outside of your business to help you look over your website.
A major problem here is a bad choice in photos.
If the photos you use do not clearly represent what you do, they may well be misleading.
Example: A company selling software for dispatch management has photos of vans on their front page, without any mention of software or specific indication of what they did.
Of course this creates bad conversions even with domestic prospects. But it is even worse for international visitors.
3 - Show You Want International Business.
This is something people often forget.
Yes, you can put something like "we appreciate requests from outside the United States" or "We only speak English, but please email us your questions and we will get back to you as soon as we can".
But if this is all you do and then continue to cater solely for your domestic markets, your international readers will notice big time. Your message will not be consistent.
* Remember to make all the necessary adjustments on your order form.
* Remember to provide a non-800 number so people abroad can call you.
Do you need to provide a glossary to help your international readers? A simple, clear explanation in English of industry terms is best - leave any translations to industry professionals.
Unless you are in one of the major cities, why not put up a little portion of your country map, highlighting where you are located? Not on such a small scale that only your neighbours will know where you are, and not the whole country with a tiny impersonal dot.
Follow up your online presence by greeting your international visitors appropriately and consistently throughout your website.
If you purposefully try to create this atmosphere of greeting your international visitors with tiny touches in the right amounts, your international visitors will feel this warmth and visit longer with you.
Ongoing Review
Sometimes we are just so close to our own product, our own company and so familiar with our own language, that we are not able to see anything lacking in consistency in our own communication.
So listen closely to any feedback you have. Pay special attention to any difficulties your foreign readers have with your website.
Ask yourself if you are actually communicating what you want to say?
Creating consistency is a mindset. It is like building a relationship with your international visitors in your own mind and transposing that into your communication.
As you get to know your international markets more, you will want to review your communication again.
It is just as like learning cross cultural communication in person, the more familiar you are with foreign cultures the more you will know what to say and how to say it.
With a little conscious attention you will be able to position your communication more consistently with what you want to say.
Your international readers will notice the difference with these little changes much more than your domestic readers.
You will lose the feeling of navigating on quicksand. You will be building relationships on more solid ground.
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