Does the geographic location of your visitors make a difference in their behavior and purchasing habits? You better believe it does.

Many web analytics programs show you the countries and regions your visitors are located in - some programs (like Lyris HQ Web Analytics) go so far as to let you segment visitors according to geographic location in order to separately analyze their behavior. By performing such analysis, you can determine the countries that are most important to meeting your business goals. Perhaps some countries should be more carefully considered in your online marketing and web site design, while others should be eliminated from your advertising efforts.

Most PPC providers let you select the countries or regions where your ads will be displayed. Through your analysis, you might find that certain locations, for whatever reason, provide shorter than average time on site, or lower ROI. Once you've determined which locations are performing poorly, one solution is to exclude ads from those regions or countries. It may not be worth your time to get to the core of what's causing that campaign to underperform in that area. But you may decide to work to improve performance in those locations.

Language Differences

Suppose your site is written in English only. There are many countries where English is a commonly spoken second language. For visitors from those countries, there may be effectively no language barrier.

But if your site has lots of highly specialized language (technical, medical, etc.) or relies on American clichés and anecdotes to make its point, it's possible that it may be confusing to those who learned English as a second language. If there is a country or region that's not bringing enough qualified customers to your site, you could eliminate advertising in those locations - but you might consider either making the language of your web site more universal, or even translating your site to give those visitors the option of reading in their native language.

Style Expectations

The style of your web site might work well for certain audiences, but it's possible that it does not go over as well for other visitors. If you find you have a country or region that's performing poorly, take a look at other web sites in that location, preferably in your industry. You might find that there are things the other sites have in common that might point you in the direction of making your site conform more closely to visitor expectations.

You'll want to look at color schemes, navigation, the way images are used, and the overall tone. Also consider that different countries have varying levels of Internet access and speed, computer capability, browser and plug-in versions, and screen resolution, and make changes to your site and your campaigns accordingly.

Can You Deliver the Goods?

If you are advertising globally, you'll need to make sure that you can accommodate visitors from the parts of the world you intend to serve. By reviewing your web analytics data, you'll see what regions you need to be sure to accommodate. If you have an online store, do you accept the local currency for your most important locations? Does your online store work within the limitations of import/export laws? Does your privacy policy comply with local regulations? If you provide a toll-free number, make it easy for visitors to find your alternate number for those customers outside your toll-free calling area.

Time Zones

If your customers will need to contact you by phone, and you cannot provide 24 hour customer support, make sure that your site clearly lists your available hours in a manner that's easy for people outside your time zone to understand, and provide viable options, such as ("e-mail inquiries will be responded to within 24 hours" or "Telephone support is available between 7AM and 5PM Pacific Standard Time"). And if you have online events, such as live demos or live streaming video, be sure to list the times in several time zones, or allow users to select their time zone from a menu, so your web site can show event times in the user's local time. You can take it a step further by using a cookie to store the time zone, so visitors only have to set it once.

Analytics Helps Make Campaign Decisions

There are many ways you can improve your web site's ability to cater to an international audience. But remember: you don't necessarily have to. You could spend many hours (not to mention a ton of money) trying to make your site and campaigns perfect for each and every user—but that doesn't make sense. Use your analytics data to segment your visitors, letting you make logical choices about what countries or regions will best serve your goals, and then focus your efforts and your campaigns in those locations.

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