When marketing your business, it’s best to cast as large of a net out as possible while trying to entice potential customers. Therefore, it’s essential to target as many demographics as possible. While some services may be more applicable with certain demographics than others (example: landscaping companies likely won’t find much success marketing to city-bound millennials), it doesn’t hurt to customize your site in a universally appealing fashion.
One way to do this is to add the Google Language Translator feature to your website. This allows site visitors to select which language they desire the site’s text to be displayed as. On WordPress, the Google Language Translator can be added to the site from the “Add Plugins” toolbar. The plugin was created by the user, Rob Myrick, and is completely free.
Once the plugin has been added and then activated, it can be accessed under the “settings” toolbar. From there, you can customize the plugin to exactly the way you desire it to function. Personally, I find it easiest for visitors when the “yes, show flag images” checkbox has been checked. This allows users to select their preferred language by clicking on that language’s country of origin’s flag.
Once you’ve clicked on this checkbox, the plugin will allow you to choose which languages your site’s visitors have the option of selecting. While you could select all 87 available languages, that maybe a tad overboard. Instead, select 7 of the United States’ most commonly-spoken foreign languages. This should include Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Traditional), Filipino, French, Korean, Vietnamese, Portuguese and German. However, depending on your business’ location, you may want to customize it to include languages that may be more common in your part of the country.
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