The Importance of a Website in Growing Your Business Abroad: A Comprehensive Guide
Regardless if you’re living at home or abroad, if you have a business, you’ll need a website.
Your website is your digital hub.
A piece of digital real estate that is for your business and your business alone away from the social media carnival.
A place where you control your story and your message.
Benefits of Having a Website for Your Business Abroad
Being a business owner abroad is not that unusual these days. In fact, one of the benefits of being an expat business owner is that you probably have an interesting backstory.
Your website is an excellent place to tell this story. You can also translate your website to reach your local and/or global audience in a way that is harder or not possible with many social media platforms.
You’re often forced to pick one location setting which restricts your ability to effectively market to audiences in different geographies.
Key Features of an Effective Business Website
Five key aspects of a high-converting business website include:
Effective messaging that speaks to your ideal audience. Your ideal client needs to feel like they ‘belong there’ once they land on your website. Are you speaking to their aspirations and frustrations?
Clear, uncluttered navigation. A good rule of thumb is to have 5 or fewer items in your main navigation. Make it easy for website visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Resonant, professional imagery. Ideally, your website will utilize proprietary imagery taken by a professional photographer. If that’s not possible, select cohesive stock imagery that aligns with a theme and your brand.
Your website needs to be responsive, meaning it needs to work on mobile devices. This is non-negotiable.
Unambiguous calls to action. What action do you want your website visitor to take? Make sure you use consistent assertive language on your buttons to communicate this ‘Call Now’ ‘Find out More’ and ‘Start Today’ are some examples.
Best Practices for Optimizing Your Business Website for SEO
The first part of understanding SEO for your business abroad is understanding who your audience is. What language are they searching in? Where do they live?
If your audience is ‘the world’ on site SEO can be tricky, but not impossible. You will just have to get really good at targeting keywords you can rank for. A keyword ranking tool can help you with this.
There are also basic website SEO ‘hygiene’ best practices to follow.
Make sure your website loading time is speedy. Don’t upload giant images to your website, shoot for under 500k (max.) Try not to overload your site with too much custom code.
Use keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions for your pages, but make sure it’s compelling for humans to read or they won’t click!
Add alt tags and descriptions to your images so they show up in Google visual search results.
SEO continues to evolve especially as new generative AI content will start flooding the internet.
The more niche and target your business, the better. You will be able to target very specific long-tail keywords that will help your SEO.
You’ll also need to assess if you are targeting a local market or a global one.
If you’re targeting a local market in a non-local language (for example English language content in a Spanish-speaking country) search volume will be very low.
However, it may be that the tiny group of people searching for your offer in English will be the exact right clients.
This will be more of an art than a science and require a lot of experimentation and testing.
Strategies for Using Your Website to Build a Successful Business Abroad
Three good strategies for leveraging your website for your ex-pat business are:
Lean on your story
Starting a business abroad is a very unique experience. Use your About page to tell your story. Weave in experiences that highlight your expertise.
This will both build trust and curiosity as well as establish authority. Here’s an example of how I’ve used my about page to tell my expat story as well as talk about my work experience as a web designer.
Partner with and highlight complementary businesses
Finding other businesses that serve the same clients and customers can be a great way to gain traction in your business. There is a built-in camaraderie to business owners that are living abroad.
Whereas business owners native to your adopted country can open doors and expose you to a wider audience. Share and support these businesses on your website and on social media.
For example, I do spotlight posts for branding photographers and English-language copywriters in my adopted country of Germany. This serves two purposes: we can refer work to one another and I have a vetted list of partners to share with clients.
Incorporate business tools
Make sure you integrate tools that make running your business easier! Scheduling and appointment booking, e-commerce, and email marketing are just a handful of the tools that can and should be leveraged on your website.
DIY or Hire a Web Designer
If you are comfortable with technology you can absolutely DIY your own website. Just be careful to not turn it into a long drawn-out project that never ends.
You’ll also want to make sure you are picking the right platform. My advice is always to test it out first. Whether it’s WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, or another website tool, if you aren’t comfortable using it, you’ll never update your site.
Your website is a dynamic living, breathing digital entity. You will need to update it. Your business evolves and your website will need to evolve right along with it.
If you decide to hire a web designer, here are 10 questions you should ask her or him before working together:
What do you need from me?
What about my domain name?
What about SEO
Does this website design package include branding?
Do I need special photography
Do you do copy or photo editing?
Can you help me with my email set-up/scheduling/commerce set-up
What about legal pages?
Can I update the website myself when we’re done?
Are there any additional costs?
Conclusion
If you’re running a business abroad, your website will have some unique requirements like localized SEO and local data privacy requirements. You may also want to consider a multisite.
However, just as with a business you run in your home country, a website is a non-negotiable for a serious and legitimate enterprise. It’s the home of your brand,your digital hub, and can help market and run your business efficiently.
When done right a website confers legitimacy, showcases your expertise, communicates your brand to build trust, and helps automate business processes.
Meet Our Guest Blogger: Eleanor Mayrhofer
Eleanor Mayrhofer
In her 25-year design career, Eleanor has done everything from book compositing to designing mobile apps to methodology and agile process design for global creative teams. She’s worked on projects for clients such as Chronicle Books, Rizzolli, Vodafone, BMW, Audi, Bosch-Siemens Hausgerät, T-Online, and More.
She left corporate life in 2010 to start her own online eCommerce business selling printable stationery. Her work was noticed by Goop, Martha Stewart, The New York Times, and Pottery Barn Kids. For a few years, she’s been helping ex-pat business owners in Germany get their websites launched in a day.
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