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You’ve got a great idea, now how can you make your business grow rapidly? The fact is that most products and services are easily exportable, and the easiest way to do that is over the web. For a small amount of money you can translate and optimize microsites for foreign markets, and develop those which show a good return. But many organizations are missing out on this golden opportunity, because even in this digital age, they refuse to go multilingual. Yet research by the Common Sense Advisory Panel found that 85% of internet users need information in their own language before making a purchase, so wouldn’t it make sense to appeal to these users? Why go multilingual? English simply isn’t the linga franca of the web anymore. With over half of all Google searches now made in a foreign language, English is rapidly losing its online market share. The statistics speak for themselves: between 2000 and 2008, foreign language use on the internet rose by epic proportions. Arabic alone grew by a massive 2064%, while in comparison; English use grew by just 206%. There’s a whole new world of potential to be had on the foreign language internet. And savvy businesses that recognize this potential can reap huge benefits, from increased web hits to an impressive ROI. Optimize this! Anyone with a website will know the importance of SEO, and just how difficult it is to gain that coveted number one spot on search engines. With lots of competition and keyword saturation in the English language internet, trying to increase your ranking can be frustrating, time-consuming and expensive. But optimizing your foreign language website is far easier. Less content on the foreign language internet also means less competition. Believe it or not, simply by appealing to customers in their mother tongue you can climb the rankings of Google far quicker than you could in English. And with 35% of all clicks (according to Chitika Research) going to the site in pole position, that means more hits for you. To export or not to export? Of course new startups and fledgling businesses might not even be considering exporting abroad, but appealing to foreign language speakers in a domestic market is just as important. In the US alone, the Hispanic online community is rapidly growing, and is estimated to represent 11% of the total US online market. The US census has placed total US-Hispanic spending power in 2011 at a massive $1.2trillion. Best Buy took advantage of this spending power and launched a Spanish-language website, with content optimized and localised for a Hispanic audience, with impressive results. Their reports showed that users of the Spanish website both browsed twice as long and crucially, spent double that of English-speaking users. It’s a matter of cost Right now, many entrepreneurs are going to be thinking, “how much is all this going to cost me?” but the truth is that while some may charge a small fortune for their services, translating and localizing a microsite can cost as little as $300. Even purchasing a country code Top Level Domain (eg. mystartup.fr for France or mystartup.de for Germany) can be relatively inexpensive, and will instantly give you priority in that country’s search engine rankings. Research by the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) found that for every $1 invested in localization, a massive $25 was returned. There are big bucks in e-commerce right now – in 2010, the US saw $165.4 billion in online sales, up 14.9% from the previous year, according to Internet Retailer. What next? For the foreign language internet, the only way is up. Anyone already thinking of dipping a toe into exporting waters will have probably come across the so-called BRIC countries – that is the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and China, which are among the largest and fastest-growing markets in the world. Technology has made the internet more accessible for people within these markets, and they’re just as eager to shop online. Just this year, UK-based fashion outlet, Asos.com translated and localized their websites in three countries: France, Germany and the US. The result was a 142% increase of international sales, with orders from abroad now accounting for over half of their total sales! So what are you waiting for? By embracing the multilingual web, you can ensure you and your customers will be on the same page, whatever language they speak. Christian Arno is the MD of global translations agency Lingo24, which was started from his parents’ bedroom when he was 22. Read more about Christian here .