Country-specific Business Portals for Internet Marketing

While global business portals are effective, country-specific ones are key to marketing success. In the current market, many companies are competing over platforms rather than products and country-specific portals are crucial for an overall successful business portal.

Country-specific business portals offer a sense of personalization and present more options for the customer. Moreover, they are made to abide by the regulations in a specific country. Country-specific business portals allow local and international businesses to sell their products at wholesale prices for local retailers.

Marketers and strategies can take advantage of this and advertise these portals as the go to area for buying localized products at great prices. Some factors that an organization must consider as part of their strategy for creating country-specific portals:

Content

Every country-specific portal must have it’s exclusive content that resonates the company’s mission but still aligns with local aspects. The content for a portal in the US won’t be the same as the one for India. Thus, content created for portals has to be separated into global, regional and local. This aids with content creation, promotion and presentation.

Translation

Many countries do not use English as their primary language and thus, content has to be translated to suit local languages. There are multiple considerations when it comes to deciding translation techniques. For example, there will be terms that must not be translated like brand names, these have to be specified to the translator before they begin work. Other indicators such as tone, message and specific translations have to be defined as well.

Workflows

When it comes to creating and translating content for multiple sites, organization’s can get in over their heads and lose sight of the main goal. The key to avoiding this is to have a detailed and adequate workflow strategy. This strategy decides everything from the content creators for each country, translators for the same and editors. A single translation workflow should have no more than 4 steps in the process.

Publishing

When there are numerous portals to track and schedule content for, a publishing strategy is important. A publishing strategy provides the content team with guidelines of what to publish where and when. A complete publishing strategy also creates an overall sense of unity among different content creation teams from various countries. Transparency and clarity are two other advantages of a well-defined publishing strategy.

Color schemes

Every color represents different things in every culture. For example, red stands for happiness in China but represents death in Egypt. These color differences have to be taken into consideration to win over customer favorability. Neutral colors and pastels are used to combat the need for too many changes in color schemes across portals. On a side note, for countries that have right to left text formats, the same needs to be accommodated into the portal.

Testing

Both the English version of the portal along with the other languages have to be thoroughly tested on multiple browsers before launch. Missing words, non-translatable words and random symbols can turn customers away and cause misunderstandings. Testing also needs to be done for search engines in different languages. A search bar that does not allow for searching in local languages makes the function mute across multiple portals.

Guides

To enhance user experience across multiple platforms, guides have to be published to explain every aspect of operation in multiple languages. A clear user experience strategy can help organizations create clear guides for customers to use their website smoothly. Brand guides, UI guides, style guides and policy guides can help customers have a seamless experience.

Metrics

Much like content, metrics must also be divided into local, regional and global. Some metrics like number of website visitors, most commonly viewed pages/ categories and more are universal. Local metrics related to offers and translations will have to be measured separately.

These are some of the basic factors that account for the creation and functioning of multiple portals across the globe. Companies that have to create multiple portals for different brands have even more work on their hands. Globibo Media can provide the solutions required to make multiple portal management a breeze in different countries.

To understand the workings of a country-specific business portal, let’s take a look at some of the key portals from around the world and Asia:

Alibaba

Alibaba is a global trade portal that enables global wholesale trade of products from different categories. Suppliers on Alibaba are from over 40 countries with buyers from 190+ countries. All of these buyers and sellers are available on their main site (Alibaba.com) but to make it more accessible for people around the globe, Alibaba also offers versions of their website, based on the country. The main advantage of this is that customers from a certain country can look at local suppliers first and then move on to global results.

Each of their sites has tools meant to optimize the experience for suppliers and buyers from that country. For example, their quotation feature allows buyers to post a buying request for products and get multiple quotes from suppliers within their country first before looking for international suppliers. This customization to meet local needs further develops customer trust and loyalty.

HC360

HC360 is the website for one of China’s leading e-commerce B2B portals. As part of the HC International Group, the portal offers different categories of products meant for wholesale sellers and buyers. The portal is only active in China, however, to promote sales, a number of value-added services have been introduced including marketing solutions for sellers and supplementary services for buyers.

Since it’s creation, the website has been solely focused on the Chinese market and the move has clearly paid off as local manufacturers have signed up in the thousands and buyer demand being on par. While they are yet to expand to international markets, a country-specific approach has lead them to prominent success.

HKTDC

Sourcing suppliers from Hong Kong and Mainland China, HKTDC is another country-specific portal that focuses on connecting wholesalers from China with buyers. Buyers can buy products by searching for specific sellers and products. Apart from this, HKTDC organizes numerous trade shows that small and medium sized businesses can use to connect with suppliers and promote/buy products.

Their online portal is a simple website that lists products by categories for buyers and users can check out their other services by clicking on the About Us section. The portal is available in numerous languages and is convenient for buyers and sellers of all sizes. For sellers that accept small quantity orders, they have a separate portal called HKTDC Small Orders.

Made-In-China

Made-In-China is the online portal for Chinese web solutions company, Focus Technology Co Ltd. Focus Technology aims to connect buyers with suppliers from China thus driving profit up for the Chinese market. The portal is simple and efficiently designed to attract customers with minimal text and good quality images.

Made-In-China is one of the most detailed sites on the Chinese wholesale market. The information on the site is clear and all the products are checked by Escrow and other inspection services before they are shipped. With the launch of their portal, Focus Technology became one of the top directories in China and has won many awards.

Trade Korea

Similar to the China’s various trade portals, Trade Korea is a great way for Korean suppliers and buyers can get in touch with global businesses to fulfill their demands. A unique feature for this portal is that they offer matching services to make sure that buyers are matched with the right sellers after putting in a business request.

To help businesses expand, the portal holds numerous online exhibitions every year for different sectors. These exhibitions allow businesses to see where they stand while buyers have a clear understanding of their choices and can logical decisions. The portal also features live trade statistics from Korea and allows sellers to create their own sites within the portal itself.

BuyKOREA

One of the most experienced wholesale marketplace portals is buyKOREA. Established as a marketplace for traders in 1962, their online portal is run by KOTRA and raised over a $1 trillion in 2011. The trading portal is home to all types of products suitable for various industries. All the products on the site are supplied by Korean manufacturers.

BuyKOREA offers an extensive array of features for buyers. To help businesses prosper and meet buyers from all over the world, the portal offers video meetings, allows online transactions and promises EMS shipping for select products. Their database is updated everyday and buyers from all around the world are welcome.

GobizKorea

GobizKorea is run by a government funded organization called Small and Medium Business Corporation (SBC) that aims to promote trading with Korean suppliers and manufacturers. In order to attract more buyers, they opened an online portal that features a wide array of products along with features like online exhibitions and guides.

SBC has created partnerships in many countries such as Indonesia, Phillipines and China. As they expanded offline, their online portal also did the same. Buyers from different countries are greeted with a version of the website that has a customized UI for that country. The sellers and manufacturers are still from Korea but the customization attracts more customers. Their continuous expansion has become rapid thanks to the online portal and all the sales it brings in.

Tradekey Japanese

One of Japan’s most prominent wholesale sites, Tradekey attracts millions of users every month. It is a global wholesale marketplace that has customized portals for every country it operates in, which is over 240 countries. Since it’s establishment in 2006, it has become a well-renowned name in the wholesale industry.

To help the thousands of companies that use it get their word out there, Tradekey has membership offerings that have different packages, aimed at integrating their additional services such as marketing, exposure, help from experts and more. Their customized UI and offerings in multiple countries have propelled their name to greater heights.

RusImpex

RusImpex is one of Russia’s national wholesale import/ export places. Buyers can post buying requests that manufacturers and suppliers can respond to. The site also has guides in relation to the functioning of the import/export industry in Russia. A live scroll bar of current jobs and recent developments make it easier for suppliers to understand current demand.

E-TradeAsia

e-TradeAsia is an online trading market AsiaNet Inc. It aims to keep buyers and traders informed about the latest happenings with a focus on Asian markets. China and Taiwan host their Asian offices. EtradeAsia has over 700 thousand users and almost a million products in its catalog.

Apart from encouraging trade and sales, the site also allows users to post company and business news to prompt more customers to make informed decisions. Buyers and sellers make deals on the site on a daily basis. Their parent organization, AsiaNet, can offer a list of other services that can help businesses expand globally.

While the trade portals mentioned online are great examples of country-specific targeting, they can also serve as examples for content management, marketing and customer service. The content on these portals is becoming more complex to manage as there are multiple formats and languages involved. Partnering with the right translation, creation and editing companies is the key to having successful portals. We can find them for you and ensure that competent results are achieved.

Globibo Media is experienced at creating web portals that benefit companies with multiple branches in different countries. We can help in the setup of different portals, along with the content creation and marketing for these portals. Multi-lingual support can also be provided across different regions. Our expert global teams have the knowledge required to not build competent strategies, but to put them into effect and make sure they stay on track. Achieving local, regional and global goals becomes easy when you have the right partner and that is us.

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