eCommerce Becoming a Worldwide Phenomenon

If you have an online store, you have 429 million potential customers worldwide. That's the number of people that Nielsen/NetRatings found with Internet access in 27 countries around the world in its First Quarter 2001 Global Internet Trends report. The same study showed that although the U.S. and Canada still account for the largest proportion—41 percent—of the world's Internet access, penetration in Europe and Asia is growing quickly.

"Every company that markets through a website is technically global," said Phillip Horvath, Director of Customer Experience at Vista, the Chase Merchant Services eWEBuilder partner for small business site building and hosting. "Thanks to new eWEBuilder features that support foreign languages, businesses of all sizes can reach millions more customers and create international cyber communities.

Even without foreign language capability, your site has the potential to reach users in the United Kingdom, New Zealand or Scandinavian countries where English is widely spoken. Appealing to all customers in your markets is key to a successful online business.

Some Chase Merchant Services customers are already using eWEBuilder to globally promote products that are international in flavor. For example, simplyfrenchgifts.com is a site that features a French-language department and product links to market French antiques and imports worldwide. A Costa Rican import site, tejana.com, includes links to Costa Rican and Central American sites on its homepage, and easternpearl.net markets mounted exotic butterflies and insects from Southeast Asia.

Generate International Sales

Forrester Research predicts that 50 percent of all online revenue will be generated outside the US by 2004. The Chase Merchant Services eWEBuilder program can help your online business target that opportunity with these features:

• Support for site navigation in foreign languages for buttons, text links, department and product names
  
  
• Links to related international sites and maps
  
  
• Customer options for choosing shipping destinations outside the United States and global shipping companies
  
  
• Support for targeted e-mail and e-newsletters that can be composed in foreign languages
  
  
• Support for international chat rooms and bulletin boards in multiple languages
  
  
• Support of marketing vehicles such as polls, surveys and online forms in multiple languages
  
  
• Voice streams and audio clips in foreign languages—used by saldemar.com, which markets Portuguese gourmet food

"These services are a wonderful opportunity for small merchants to reach out to customers around the world without the expense usually associated with international business," concluded Horvath.

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