Crafting your Business Website for International Success

In today's digital era, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business looking to grow or thrive internationally. Whether you've already expanded overseas, are looking for global contractors and team members, or selling products online, having a well-designed and optimised website not only enhances your brand's credibility across the borders, but also acts as a powerful marketing tool that will help you achieve your business goals.

In this article, the Wise Business team shares expert tips to enhance your online presence and help your business website stand out.

All you need to know when expanding overseas

Before taking a closer look at the main things you should consider when building a business online presence for international success, we've asked Harry Dodd, a Senior Technical SEO Specialist at Wise, what makes a successful business website. Harry highlights the importance of providing relevant content for your audience: "The top priority for any website is to give your users what they’re looking for. Whether it’s a software solution or a DIY question; work out the content type needed to best address their needs.''

Keep this in mind when considering the following four aspects that can influence your website discoverability and user experience.

SEO basics for small businesses

Being discoverable for clients and customers, whether you're just starting out your business or already looking to scale and potentially expand internationally should be your priority when thinking about your website's contents. Harry says there are a couple of things to consider when establishing a good business website and making it SEO (search engine optimization) friendly: ''Regarding SEO, you want your site to be discovered, indexed and ranked, so clients and customers can find you easily. Get those technical basics right so search engines can find your pages. Create content which satisfies what your users are searching for. This creates a stable base to build on for SEO success."

Maximise your business reach with social media

Let's take a closer look at what SEO means and what you should do when starting out to plan your content:

1. Keyword Research
Identifying relevant keywords that align with your business is crucial for optimising your website. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to identify popular search terms within your industry. Strategically incorporate these keywords in your website's content, meta tags, headings, and URLs to improve its visibility in search engine results.

Panna, the Senior Business SEO Specialist for the US market says: ''When doing keyword research, my top tip is to find one topic that is highly relevant to your business and to work through each keyword to build topic and authority on the subject. Make sure it's localised to your target audience.''

Localising your target audience is especially important if you're targeting different markets and locales. Similarly to getting paid in the currency that works best for your customers with your Wise Business account, your audience wants to know what is relevant to them, in the language they speak.

2. High-Quality Content
Creating high-quality, unique, and relevant content is key to attracting and retaining visitors. Regularly update your website with informative articles, blog posts, or tutorials that address your audience's needs. Panna says: ''When building the content, the main thing to keep in mind is being helpful to keep the reader in mind, what you help them achieve or learn with your content, not to just writing for the sake of Google to find your article.''

3. Page Loading Speed
Website speed plays a critical role in user experience and SEO. Slow-loading pages can frustrate visitors and negatively impact your search engine rankings. Optimise your website's performance by compressing images, reducing the use of unnecessary plugins, and leveraging caching techniques. Regularly test your website's speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and make necessary improvements.

4. Affordable Tools for SEO optimization
Explore free or affordable online SEO tools to enhance your business' online presence. Paola Faben Oliveira, the Business Senior SEO Specialist for the UK market at Wise says Google's dynamic duo - Google Analytics and Google Search Console will help you track your website traffic. ''You can track all sorts of things within your website whether that is the number of visits, where are your visitors from or how they navigate around your page, Google Analytics has you covered,'' Paola says.

Paola also explains that the Google Search Console has been her go-to tool for all SEO related insights and reports and can be incredibly useful for any business website. ''A business can track all the queries people use on Google to reach their website, if people are searching for their brand name and how many times their website has appeared on the Search Results Page, it's the best way to gather all of the data.''

An extra tip from Paola: ''If you want to take your digital strategy to another level and really invest in SEO, Ahrefs is a paid tool that can come in handy to help you develop and analyse a comprehensive SEO strategy.''

Mobile Responsiveness

With the rise in smartphone and tablet usage, having a mobile-responsive website is essential. According to daily blogging¹,the majority of organic search visits (63%) were from mobile devices. A mobile-friendly design ensures that your site adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes, providing an optimal browsing experience for all users. This feature not only improves user satisfaction but also boosts your search engine rankings which can lead to more sales and overall discoverability of your services.

How to improve mobile responsiveness:

• Responsive design: implement responsive design, ensuring that the website adapts to various screen sizes and devices, providing a consistent user experience.
• Optimise images: compress and optimise images to improve load times, using tools such as ImageOptim, Squoosh, or if using Wordpress plugins like WP Smush.

Our Wise page about expanding business overseas is a good example of a responsive website page. While we discuss everything you need to know when growing your business internationally and dealing with multiple currencies, we've made sure that it's accessible on mobile as well. In our example, the menu is easily clickable on the right hand side on mobile and images are adaptable to the size of smaller devices.

Grow your business online and internationally

Growing your international online presence is essential for further growth and potential expansion. A well-designed website can serve as a digital storefront, providing potential customers from around the world with information about products and services offered. A professional and well-functioning website also instils trust and credibility in the eyes of customers, which can lead to increased sales and brand loyalty.

Digital strategies such as SEO and social media engagement can help businesses target specific international audiences effectively, driving traffic and conversions. And once you've got your website live and you're ready to sell to customers around the world, the Wise Business account lets you pay, get paid and manage multiple currencies.

Smart Marketing Strategies for small businesses

Do business internationally with Wise Business:

• No monthly subscription international business account
• Multi-currency support: hold 40+ currencies, send payments to 160+ countries, and get local account details in multiple currencies
• Low cost currency exchange: mid-market exchange rate with transparent fees
• Batch payments: pay up to 1,000 recipients at a time in multiple currencies with one spreadsheet
• Multi-user access: manage user permissions and choose from any of the 5 roles to manage what your team members can view, access, and manage
• Business debit expense cards for you and your team: up to three digital cards per team member, and set spending limits according to your business needs
• Accounting integration: connect with Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and more.

1 https://dailyblogging.org/seo/what-percentage-of-search-is-mobile/