Whether from mobiles or PC shoppers from around the globe are looking for product deals and services. That is leading many merchants to push their online stores into international territory. But, says one expert, launching a store is the easy part - making that store accessible and easy to navigate for an international consumer is quite different.

By Kristina Knight

BizReport - March 7, 2012

"Nu Skin used our technology to automate much of the work flow," said Tim Coughlin, Vice President, Translations.com. "Generally speaking, when you're talking about localization management systems, that class of product is what we have in our application suite. [The tools] hook in to the client's content repository, ecommerce platforms, file systems, etc., and initiate the translation of that content. The translated content is then transported to their portal for distribution."

Depending on the size of the site and the amount of content, translations can take a few days to a month or more. The goal at Translations is include quality assurance in the translation so that clients can be certain their brand message, tone and style remain consistent across the web.

"What we do with clients is ensure the most important branded terminology - tag lines, ad slogans, campaign content, etc., - are treated with very special care," said Coughlin. "Those bits of content have terms that need consistent, localized translation. Our first step is to create a glossary of those special terms and then give our multi-cultural team access to begin translating."

Before going 'global', however, Coughlin cautions businesses to look at all the logistics - from payment options to shipping to return policies because when customers buy product from a US or UK based company for use in China or even Australia there can be logistical challenges.