Offering this to your customers could transform your business

Years ago, I studied a second language and years later it came in handy when I wanted to expand my business.

Throughout high school, the only language classes offered were German, French, and Spanish.

At the time, learning a second language only seemed like a requirement to check off to graduate and put on college applications, but I never imagined how it would impact my little business down the line.

After high school, years went by and all my French skills went right out the window. Plus, I moved from Michigan to Colorado and realized I should have chosen Spanish, but live and learn.

Recently, my copywriting business went through a slow period until a potential client reached out and asked if I could translate their website from French to English so they could reach more customers around the world. Such a thing had never dawned on me, but I immediately said yes.

It was challenging and required me to Google Translate a lot of words I had forgotten. From there, more translating work trickled in and thanks to endless language learning blogs and apps, I’ve slowly been able to add Spanish to the list.

This experiment was fascinating, so I passed on the concept to all of my past clients: to hire someone fluent in another language to translate the basic pages of your website to expand your business. Only a few went through with the idea, but two of my clients more than tripled their current business revenue by simply creating this option.

Of course, Google offers the ability to translate a website from one language to another, but it can be a little off and that could easily send potential customers away from your site.

Why does this matter? While indexing the entire internet is tough, more and more research is coming out with the conclusion that English might not be the most popular language online. Chinese might be the new dominant language online.

For any business owner, this is a huge opportunity. Being able to offer your product or content to millions of additional people is no small matter and anyone looking to grow their company over the next few years should consider creating this alternative for customers.

Of course, big sites like Amazon can do this easily, and already have, but smaller businesses can do this as well.

A business could start by keeping it simple and translating their home page, about page, and products page. Any business could branch out and start advertising on Facebook in different countries in different languages.

Even if your business is growing, creating content in another language gives you the ability to grow in the next few years as more and more people across the world gain access to the internet.

Recent research estimates about 40% of the world’s population are online. Depending on how fast countries develop, infrastructure is built, and the internet is able to spread, millions of people across the globe will have the potential to see your website.