Do you often think of your website visitors as English-speaking and non-English speaking? Like they were two different audiences? Does the layout of your website appeal to both? What about the style and content of your multilingual website?
If you haven’t properly segmented your audiences, then you will need to read this guide. Here are some helpful words of advice and tactics for keeping all your visitors engaged, whether they speak English or not:
Distinguish Between New and Returning Website Visitors
While you may be tempted to think of your website visitors as English-speaking or non-English speaking, you should really break them into new and returning visitors. A “new visitor” is one who is visiting your website for the first time. New visitors typically organically land on your website via a search engine query, a social media post or through another site that linked to your website.
A “returning visitor” is one who took an interest in your site and is back for more. This kind of visitor may not have come to you via direct traffic — maybe he or she interacted with you online, and has come to trust your brand. Though they may come to you directly, returning visitors may also return to your website from a social media post or search query.
3 Engagement Pointers To Keep In Mind For New Visitors
Your goal is to create a good first impression so that the new visitor will explore your offering then come back in the future. Here are three tips for engaging them properly:
1. Keep It Simple
To enhance appeal, your website should be easy to navigate and have a pleasing layout. Keep your navigation menu clear. Divide pages into labeled subpages to help your users understand where they are going as they explore.
2. Properly Welcome Your New Visitors
Go all out and specially recognize your new website visitors. Offer an overlay or popup that displays a welcoming message as your website loads. If you do this right, not only is it an effective way to recognize new visitors, you may also receive their email addresses for future use.
3. Start Here
Offering a “101 Section” or “Start Here” page will help your new visitors understand your site better. Curating a “Best Of” section that lists your most popular posts also easily showcases your content to interested new users. These thoughtful gestures also prove to the user that you care about their interests, which builds trust.
3 Engagement Pointers To Keep In Mind For Returning Visitors
Building relationships with your returning visitors is vital to the sustainability of your business. This is how you create advocates of your brand. Here are three tips to boosting engagement with your returning foreign and non-foreign audiences:
1. Revive Content
When visitors return to your website, your site’s SEO is boosted. How do you liven up your content? It depends on your offering. If you are selling services or products, it helps to change up your user testimonials and frequently update your product line. If your users view you as an industry insider, then aim to break out the latest industry news topics first. If you pitch services, freshly update your blog so that users are regularly “fed” with fresh content.
2. Repackage
Consider repackaging your evergreen content with new online marketing tools. Evergreen content are posts that remain relevant for a long time. When you highlight your posts in a new way, you’re changing up your approach to your readership. This may pay off for you in the end.
3. Recycle
“Content-riffing,” that is, creating new content posts out of old ones, helps. Another recycling option is to tweak, edit and refresh your most popular posts so that readers will be compelled to read them again.
About Your Multilingual Customers
The interest to buy exciting new products or services online is alive and well all over the globe. No matter the language spoken or the particular culture of an online user, everyone loves to purchase products. When you have a multilingual website, and you offer a quality product or service, the foreign consumer will likely give your product pitch a chance. He or she will be pleased at the opportunity to be persuaded of your product’s value since it solves a problem or enhances their lifestyle. So don’t blow the opportunity you have to “woo” your foreign language visitors. Appeal to them with the right marketing message and you’ll be engaging them from the start.
You’re Smart to Have a Multilingual Site in the First Place
According to Internet World Stats, after English, the most widely used Internet languages are — in this order — Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, Malay, Russian, French, and German. Because each language segment represents millions of people on the Internet, having multilingual site that appeals to foreign audiences makes sense. You would automatically be getting a lot more traffic from foreign website visitors who are interested in your services. However, to efficiently handle this increased influx of visitors, it’s essential to implement the right database system that can seamlessly manage the data and deliver a smooth browsing experience.
Below you will see some cold hard numbers for how a Spanish school, a Forex broker and surf board shop saw their traffic numbers rise when they opted to cater to more foreign audiences.
As you can see, the jump in traffic, website ranking, domain and page authority is dramatic in all three cases. As the numbers show, profits increase when you make your website available in the language of the customer.
Because you will be attracting a lot of visitors to your multilingual website, it’s important to engage with them properly. Our tips for boosting engagement with your new and returning website visitors, whether foreign or not, should help you maximize conversions. When you generate quality localized content with new and returning visitors in mind, you communicate your brand message better. And that is always good for business. What are you waiting for? Get started on implementing this engagement tips today!