Once you’ve settled on your target countries, it’s likely that you’ll need to make some modifications to your product or service. What works well in your primary market may not sell well across borders. Ask yourself:

• Should we modify our product for international users?
• Are we offering full or partial service in all supported countries?

In a nutshell, what you’re selling needs to resonate with your new audience, and the best way to learn what does is through experimentation. You can make some informed guesses before launch at how you’ll want to position yourself (from looking at cultural preferences and the competitive landscape—what are others in your space selling and how are they positioning their services and products?), but the best insights into what’s best for your new market will come once you’ve had the chance to gather actual data and feedback.

There are things that you might want to modify for international users ahead of time, however, especially those aspects of your product that will make you less competitive. Factors to consider when adapting your product or service for foreign markets include:

• Product styles and configurations, like clothing sizes, electrical system compatibility, regulatory/labeling requirements, measurements, packaging
• Overall branding and brand name
• Tastes and preferences

Also, even though you’re serving overseas users, you might not want to offer full service everywhere just yet. For example, if you run a fashion ecommerce company, you might launch a limited version of your existing website and clothing line with core products and shipping/currency support, without localizing the in-depth online catalogues that you offer your primary market.

In order of increasing complexity, here’s an example list of the different degrees of access that you can grant different countries:

• International currency support
• Internationalized payment methods/billing addresses
• International shipping
• Standardized, global content
• Country-specific content

Read more about product selection in our Going Global report.

Read all of the tips in Gengo’s Going Global Countdown:

• #1: Choose your timing and timeline
• #2: Research and choose target markets
• #3: Define your offering and level of service
• #4: Build an internationally-minded team
• #5: Craft a working translation/localization strategy
• #6: Select the best translation tools and services
• #7: Internationalize properly
• #8: Translate cleanly
• #9: Check, double check, launch
• #10: Create a great global growth machine
• #11: Round it out with multilingual support
• #12: Kaizen! Optimize

Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform.

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