As worldwide business-to-consumer ecommerce sales are poised to explode to $1.35 trillion by 2018 and exported ecommerce is estimated to surge to $130 billion by 2020, are businesses around the globe preparing to take full advantage? Not according to an Oban Digital Internationalization study mounted in partnership with Digital Doughnut.
While 67% of business executives responding to the survey claim that internationalization is a key part of their growth strategy, only 20% of businesses have all of their current online communications adapted for local culture or language, a key driver of sales success.
“A quiet revolution is taking place in international trade without government policy direction or much public fanfare: the rise of cross-border online trade as individuals and businesses of all sizes engage in trade by selling goods and services online,” says Dr. Kati Suominen, Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Lowering the costs for companies to trade across borders, ecommerce holds extraordinary potential for expanding global trade, promoting small business exports and entrepreneurship in the United States and around the world, and boosting export diversification and international development.”
These trends are acknowledged by the 41% of respondents who said that at least some of their communications are customized for international consumption and yet almost 30% of businesses recognize that they simply ‘did not do enough of it’, when it comes to internationalizing their business communications.
“Businesses need to optimize their digital presence in every local market to assure that they reflect local language, cultural norms and online habits, ” says Greig Holbrook, the Founder and Managing Director of Oban Digital. “For example, preferred social platforms and search engine optimization are dramatically different around the world. There is no one-size fits all solution.”
Other findings of interest from the study:
• The three most common barriers to internationalization are cost, the additional overhead added to the communications process, and the business having other priorities
• Only 11% of businesses see internationalization as being too risky or complicated, or something they don’t need
• Translation and localization services are the most in-demand internationalization requirement
• The responsibility for internationalization sits firmly in the corporate headquarters, with 46% of companies locating it entirely in their corporate HQ, and 33% having some regional representation
The Oban Digital Internationalization study results were collected from 204 senior business executives around the globe in October and November, 2014 in conjunction with Digital Doughnut.