If you are a British based business with a sales website, you really can dodge all the doom and gloom of the recession, by actively advertising and retailing your merchandise to other countries. Think about it for a minute: Britain has around sixty million individuals, whereas the European Economic Area has well over 300 million individuals. On top of that, the UK £ is very low against the Euro and many of the other European Currencies.

Now, many of you will have already switched off mentally because “we can’t do languages”, well for a start, if you choose your goods and aim for countries carefully, that needn’t be a difficulty at all.

The most popular 1st language in Europe is German, followed by French, then English. However, the overwhelmingly dominant second language is English, and many searchers in smaller countries search in English, because they feel there’ll be smaller choice in their own language.

Pick your merchandise and aim for countries carefully and you can very quickly double your online retail sales.

On 1 of my websites I sell High Performance Car Wiper Blades, including a selection of Silicone Wiper Blades which are extremely good in intese environments. Wiper Blades are fairly light, robust and simple to post, and it costs no extra to post them anywhere in Europe when compared to posting them to a British address.

So, having selected a product, I now applied my mind to choosing countries where I could easily extend my activities into, and also which countries would be most expected to recognise my products’ qualities and benefits.

On both of those reasons I focused on the Nordic region and the Netherlands. In all those countries they receive a harsh winter, so the Silicone Wiper Blades excellent Cold weather performance is looked on as a great benefit. On top of that, people in these countries customarily have a great understanding of English, and are very able and confident of searching and purchasing from an English Website.

As a result of testing the water in English Language, we’re now producing specific pages for each of the Scandinavian languages and Dutch. We’ll also look at pages aimed at French, German and Italian for the Alpine Regions of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. All of the currencies used by these countries are presently very strong compared to the British £, and with British Value Added Tax being down to only 15%; it makes us very appealing in these markets.

Certainly, as sales in one country climb, we’ll have to consider listing for Value Added Tax in that country, however the beauty of the process is that you only need to do that once you’ve got the client base established. Having said that, you may well find, (as we have done), that a local Dealer will come forward to be your importer. This then gives you occasion to apply yourself to opening up the subsequent market.