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The grand bazaars of the Near East, the Venetian exchange houses of the Rialto, even the swanky boutiques of Sunset Boulevard have become afterthoughts in the mind of the modern American and European consumer in the wake of the new online marketplace. Many of the large multinationals, and many smaller regional merchants, have shifted a considerable amount of their marketing efforts online. However, something has been lost in the process.

The beauty of the local merchant was that he had an intimate understanding of not only the product he was selling, but also the local people he was selling to. The same should apply to ecommerce. The savvy online marketer needs to have a dialogue with the customer. And to do this you need to communicate in the customer’s native language. Since the lion’s share of online content is in English, Americans enjoy the luxury of an Internet that is accessible and engaging. The same does not apply to our friends across the pond though. Europeans tend to surf sites in their own language, which are usually national versions of international brands like Google and Lycos.

It is more effective to have separate sites for different languages (english-mysite.com, german-keyword.com, french-keyword.com); the most effective method of reaching a European browser is having a local top-level domain name like .fr for France. According to Jupiter research, when comparing two sites having similar content, similar number of pages and targeting similar keywords, the separate language sites get four times more traffic than sites with the structure mysite.com/targeted_language. If you are attracting an international audience and/or pursuing one, keep this important element in mind. Get to know your target audience and communicate with them on THEIR level in their native language.

Do as the old street merchants did, get to know your customer, be invested in learning what makes them tick. Survey your web visitors, call them, email them. Be the friendly neighborhood mega-corporation next door.