We can't wait for Brexit
Zunsport
Unsurprisingly, the Brexit matter remains unclear as to even the potential outcomes.
In all of this businesses have three options:
1. Do nothing (not recommended)
2. Pick a likely event and work with that (not recommended)
3. Do something
Here at Zunsport we decided upon Option 3 a long time ago and, as an e-commerce, retailer of our own manufactured goods we decided to get ahead of Liam Fox and drive our sales into markets that had shown potential but not quite delivered in either attention, engagement, or, ultimately, sales.
We took a view of the world based upon language rather than borders.
Whilst this is not perfect, it did give us the opportunity of addressing a much wider audience.
To do this we needed our website to be made adaptable to different languages, for the content to be understandable in different languages and for that content to be relevant to different languages.
So, all of these necessities set the programme and objectives for us.
Our website had grown organically since we started business in 2007 and was beginning to creak and groan with what we were already trying to achieve with it.
Our first step was then to build a new version of the site by setting the specification around what we wanted the site to be able to cope with and therefore, to make it capable of all the features we needed for our future growth plans and, to some extent future, proof it.
If anything this proofed to be the most difficult and detailed part of the programme and many hours were spent considering the options and making decisions about what were short-term interest and what were the important longer term aspirations that would take us along the path we wanted to travel.
The next stage was to have this new website available in, initially, French, German and American.
Google Translate was not going to work for us because we knew that we needed to communicate with our potential customers who were already within car enthusiast communities (some international and some very parochial).
Even American was not straightforward; they have trunks and fenders and hoods, and grille doesn’t translate either.
We had to learn to speak a new language – the language of our customers and what is more we had to accommodate their differences in buying behaviour.
To cut a long story broad we have concluded Phase One with the result that our sessions have trebled, our conversion rate has doubled and our sales revenue has quadrupled.
We are now about to go live with Spanish, which will open up wider markets in South America, Philippines, and the other Spanish colonies.
Through all of this programme we have been appreciative of the help and guidance and critical view of what we wanted to do by our friends in DTI and the Chamber.
They have made the journey somewhat easier and faster.
Are we going to wait for Brexit. No fear!
There is a world out there that wants British goods and customer service.
Not very much of it is going to come knocking, but it is there to go out and win.