Are You Wasting Your Website’s International Traffic?
If I visit your website from Australia, is it any different from the website I see if I visit from The USA? Or from England?
That’s only half the question really. The real question is: Could your website perform better if it looked different to visitors from different countries?
A few larger sites understand that they can perform better by speaking differently to visitors from individual countries, and a few of the larger ad networks do too. If you hit the Amazon.com homepage from outside the USA, they ask you politely to visit your local site like this:
They’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. Usually, where Amazon leads others will follow, but it’s still incredibly rare that you see simple techniques like that used. The larger ad networks do it (for example, Google AdSense ads are different depending on where you’re viewing from). But this is such a simple technique that even very small sites can benefit.
Here are a few examples of how you could use this to improve your results:
You’re An Affiliate
The Problem: You get thousands of visitors from outside the USA, but your advertisers’ sites only sell products in the USA. Those thousands of visitors are never going to earn you any money.
The Solution: Check your visitors IP addresses. If a visitor is outside the USA, show them AdSense ads instead of your usual Affiliate ads. AdSense uses geolocation, so the ads can earn you money when others may not.
You’re A Service Provider
The Problem: Half your visitors come from the USA, but you only provide services in Australia
The Solution: Partner with a US service provider in the same market, arrange a deal where you’re compensated for passing traffic their way. An easier alternative would be to find a provider in the USA with an up-and-running affiliate program. Check visitors IP addresses and, whenever they’re from the USA, include a large call to action
You’re A News Website
The Problem: You publish an online news site to work alongside your UK magazine. You don’t display any ads on your site. 30% of your visitors are from outside the UK, and will never buy your magazine.
The Solution: Sign up with an international ad publisher. Whenever a visitor lands on the site from an IP address outside the UK, display the ads to them.
The BBC News have toyed with this idea for years. They’re funded by the public in the UK & do not display any advertising. Their problem is, well over half of their traffic is from outside the UK. It was announced recently that they will display ads to visitors from outside the UK shortly
You’re An E-Commerce Site
The Problem: You have websites all over the globe. The problem is, your USA website dominates the search rankings for all of your keywords & your English, German & French websites are losing out on traffic
The Solution: Grab the IP address of your visitors when they enter the site. If they’re outside the USA, inject a large call to action into the first page of their visit; point them straight toward their local site.
How About You?
If you’re looking for more info on the technical side of this, we spoke about how to find out & use your visitor’s geolocation data in an earlier article about fraud.
Do you treat international visitors differently right now? Are there any opportunities where it could work for you?
