Both consumers and business buyers demand a local language. We found that non-English speaking or consumers with limited English proficiency are 4.8 times more likely to buy products offered and documented in their own languages.

In 2006 and 2008, my colleagues and I at Common Sense Advisory conducted two large-scale international surveys to understand language preference on the Web and for software products.

The first survey polled 2,430 consumers in eight countries where English is not the primary language, asking them about their attitudes and behaviors toward English-language websites. The second questioned over 350 business buyers, also in eight non-Anglophone countries, about their preferences for buying products that had been localized for their markets.

What we found shouldn’t surprise you. Both consumers and business buyers demand a local language. We found that non-English speaking or consumers with limited English proficiency are 4.8 times more likely to buy products offered and documented in their own languages. Even among English-speaking respondents, 65.5% said they favored local-language products. Most consumers told us they would pay a higher price for a localized product.

Let’s review the things that should be at the top of your list for a global website:

Aim for technical perfection. Your site should work flawlessly for foreign visitors. At a basic infrastructural level, it should include the ability to display all the characters in a language and respond to errors with messages in the user’s language. Your translated content should appear without blemishes in all major browsers.

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