Is bad English better than no English at all?

I’m really not sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result is the same: nobody finds your website.

I’m talking about the English content offered by many websites that have a different primary language. The internet’s great because it opens up your business to many more people, who speak many different languages. But it really doesn’t matter if all the other languages on your site are written beautifully if the one they’re reading is just not very, well, good.

Of course, this is great news for me because this is something I can help with – ironing out those grammatical lumps and bumps. But perhaps you need a bit of convincing as to why it’s so important, so here are three reasons (and for argument’s sake, I’m going to refer to English) for starters…

Help people to find you

If you want English speakers to find you, you need to provide words they’ll use in the search engines. It’s no good having an English version if everything’s spelt wrongly or grammatically incorrect. If you’re offering something that ‘is respectful with the medioambiente’* and your English speaker searches for ‘respects the environment’, your website isn’t going to come up in the search results.

Make them think you’re really very good…

Well-written copy makes a company look professional, credible and genuine, and builds trust with a site’s readers. Text littered with errors and spelling mistakes makes it look as if you can’t really be bothered to get it done properly. And if you have that attitude towards your own business, then perhaps you’ll act the same towards their project. That’s what they’ll be thinking.

…and make sure they keep reading about you!

Complicated English copy with lots of long words does NOT equal good copy. Saying ‘we are in compromise with the sustainable development from the deepest convinction’* will not make your visitor think, ‘Hey! This guy knows what he’s talking about’. It’s hard work to read that sentence; it needs reading and rereading to work out what’s actually being said (which, I think, is  ‘sustainable development is really important to us’).

There are probably lots more reasons (add them in the comments!) but I think these are more than good enough to start with. Y si necesitas ayuda con tus paginas inglesas, contáctame!

*Both from a real website. Really.

A local domain name is important

Nomensa reports that ‘the .co.uk domain name is now an essential part of a company’s brand presence in the UK’, according to research by Sedo (a global domain name marketplace, funnily enough).

I’m not that surprised, really. For many global companies, for example, a regional domain name is a key part of their localisation strategy.

Inspires trust and creates credibility

The Nomensa article goes on to say that ‘the research, undertaken at Internet World 2009 revealed that two thirds of respondents said the domain extension inspired trust and security in a website’s credentials. In addition, 45 per cent of respondents highlighted that .co.uk was their primary domain’.

You’ll notice that this website’s domain name is .co.uk too, which was a deliberate choice on my part. I freelance from Spain and I felt sure that a .es domain name would put some potential clients off, rightly or wrongly (well, wrongly in fact).

Also, I think (correct me if I’m wrong) but .co.uk sites rank more highly in an English-language search than .es, for example. This is important, because my target audience is still the UK market. Once I translate my site into Spanish, I’ll register it with a .es domain for the same reasons.

.com still popular though

‘What about .com?’, you’re asking (maybe). Apparently, it ‘remains the most popular domain extension overall, with 80 per cent of businesses using .com [as] their web address’.

Again, people perceive this in different ways too; for me, .com leads to the impression of a large company or a global organisation. So, even if .com had been available (it isn’t) for my site, I’d still have chosen .co.uk.