Get Fit for London 2012 with the recently launched Olympic Gold Website Package by Web-Translations.

The 2012 London Olympics represents a great sales opportunity. As mentioned in the Getting Fit for the Olympics blog post published last week not everyone is capitalising on this sales opportunity. Do you want to go for Gold in the 2012 London Olympics?

Last year the largest ever campaign by a national tourist board was launched by VisitBritain; the £100 million GREAT Britain You’re Invited campaign. Primarily fronted by five major global celebrities who agreed to film TV ads and help promote Britain overseas.

As VisitBritain’s Mark Di-Toro says, “Now is the time to wave the British flag”. Thanks to the GREAT campaign a global audience of billions will have their eyes firmly set on Britain like never before. Will you be profiting from this interest?

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Taking a bite from the Turkish delight will reap sweet rewards for online retailers

Turkish e-commerce transactions reached an impressive $12.3 billion in 2011, representing an increase of 57% on the previous year according to the Interbank Card Center. Combine this upsurge with the 12% per year e-commerce growth Forrester Research Inc (FORR) predicts for European growth over the next 5 years, and it becomes obvious that it’s time to pay attention to Turkey.

Impressive statistics but what’s going on?

Half the population of Turkey is under 30 years old. This young society has been quick to adopt technological innovations and they now spend more time online per week than the worldwide average. This tendency translates into a high responsiveness to social media – 89% of Turkish Internet users are on Facebook and they are the 11th most active country on Twitter.

95% of the Turkish population are expected to have a mobile phone in 2013, with global corporations such as Telecom Italia having already entered Turkey to take advantage of this.

Furthermore Turkey has a credit driven economy, with a 62% credit card penetration among consumers. All of this has led to a positive environment for the development of Turkish e-commerce.

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We’re combining our 3 lead web services to help your website launch in international markets with a bang.

All good things come in threes – that’s certainly true when it comes to launching your website in a new language and country. Follow these 3 key steps to start seeing results from your website:

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Yes, it’s a bit early to mention Christmas, I know, but savvy online retailers are already in the midst of preparing for the festive period.

Success stories such as Amazon and ASOS have shown that international sales can have a huge impact on an ecommerce business, so it’s hardly surprising that more retailers are jumping on this bandwagon and localising their websites to open up shop to international customers.

Before jumping in with both feet, however, there are a few things you can do to ensure your international online sales go smoothly ahead of the festive season: (more…)

Recent research conducted by Dr. Athanasopoulus, of Newcastle University has revealed that bilingual speakers, or those who have studied a foreign language to some extent, see the world differently to monoglots.  According to Dr Athanasopoulus, immersion in a foreign culture, including the use of another language, leads people to think in a completely different way: “There’s an inextricable link between language, culture and cognition”.

One example he provided, after conducting a study involving English and Japanese speakers, is that Japanese speakers tend to distinguish more between “light blue” and “dark blue” as there are two single Japanese words to describe these variations. He took into account the extent to which both languages are used, as well as the length of time spent in the countries in question, and used colours as an example due to the huge range of vocabulary that can be used in descriptions. He concluded that it is the extent to which a language is used, rather than the user’s proficiency that is most influential.

It was also discovered, by a study conducted in 2009 for a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, that speaking two languages improves a person’s ability to ignore distractions, and also to switch between two tasks.  This has been linked to the necessity of blocking out one language when speaking in the other.  There have also been supported suggestions that bilingualism can help reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

The importance of bilingualism in terms of business has been highlighted in various articles in journals and newspapers.  Immersion in another culture, as well as enhancing the distinction between various shades of colours, helps a person understand another culture, another language, and another way of life.  This can be of immeasurable significance in the business world, when working on an international scale. Relations between two companies from different countries are likely to be stronger if both parties have an understanding of the way in which the other conducts business.

As if you needed any more encouragement, as The Daily Telegraph comments, “we are all designed to acquire language, but we are built to learn and accommodate more than just one: monolinguals are effectively under utilizing abilities by not tapping that potential.”

A recent article in New Scientist reports on the imminent release of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from U.S. national control. ICANN is responsible for maintaining the various technical standards that make the Internet possible on a low level.

Under an Affirmation agreement with the U.S. department of commerce ICANN will not be coordinated by any specific government, allowing representatives from many countries to take part. The likely offshoot is that Internet standards will become more inclusive of Internet users outside America. For instance, the article reports that we might reasonably expect domain names to be available in Chinese and Arabic characters in little more than a year. They also report that current browsers cannot access domain names written in these scripts, which is quite right, but a reasonably small change I cannot see any major browser manufacturer delaying in releasing to their customers.

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