Your new, exquisitely designed Web site just went live. You review the traffic logs and find that 20 percent of your traffic originates in places identified as co.jp, .ca, and .ch. You scour the report for insight into why some countries are at the top of the list. You wonder how traffic from and sales to visitors from that country would increase if you translated your site into Japanese, Canadian, or Swiss. Congratulations! You've just become an international e-marketing analyst.

Which country first?

For a start, that's the wrong question. As you already know, Canadian and Swiss aren't languages, but rather names for the denizens of Canada and Switzerland. Therein lies the problem. There are 246 Internet domains in the world, each representing a political entity such as Japan, Canada, and Switzerland.

Reality Check: Few online marketers recognize that it takes more than a border to make a market. From an Internet perspective, the political entity must combine with language and culture to create a distinct market.

Considerations:

• Japan is a homogeneous market where everyone speaks Japanese. Total: One market.
  
• Canada is a multicultural country where English and French are the official languages, thus comprising two distinct markets. Total: Provincial variation aside, these two linguistic markets, plus a growing population of Mandarin speakers in Vancouver and Toronto, mean that Canada actually comprises three markets.
  
• Switzerland has three major linguistic populations—French, German, and Italian—and a splinter group of Romansch speakers. Total: Three or four markets, depending on the commercial reach of Romansch.

1. Start with products that can be sold "as-is." Establish whether a given product has any appeal outside your traditional markets without being redeveloped, re-engineered, repackaged, or run through rigorous market or safety certification tests. Pick a few products that travel well and use those to establish a beachhead in new markets. Use this subset of your catalogue to determine trends, understand market needs, and begin to build your presence and brand in international markets.
   
2. Align products with market needs and opportunities. Are you carrying coal to Newcastle by selling U.S.-made triple crème Brie in France? Make sure you align your value proposition with the needs, expectations, and supply of the markets that you'd like to target. Unless your product has a strong differentiator -- for example, Brie handcrafted and sold by elderly French missionaries to support l’école française in New York -- find something else to sell.
   
3. Validate your choices with local knowledge. Don't assume that you know it all from your brick-and-mortar experience. Once you've identified a particular product or service that could do well in a given country, engage the services of your local staff or a consultant with local knowledge that can perform a sanity check on your decision. For example, an in-country advertising or public relations agency can validate or disprove your assumptions for that market.

1. National laws and regulations. Your site has to deal with laws that regulate how your product works, how you sell it, and the tariffs, taxes, privacy laws, and other minutiae that affect its sale in a given market. And those nits can be pretty arcane. Unfortunately, there's no international registry of all laws that could affect your plans for global domination. Informational sites maintained by the U.S. Department of Commerce (http://www. doc.gov), the Chamber of Commerce in your target countries, and the European Union (http://www.europa .eu.int) can give you some basic advice on getting started. Sites can provide some insight on the privacy laws in other countries.
   
2. International logistics. Remember: you've got to deliver goods to international customers and deal with post-sales service, including physical product returns. You can turn to software and service providers like Vastera and ClearCross for parts of the problem, or you can outsource large parts of the problem to traditional logistics outsourcers such as Fedex, TNT, or UPS.
   
3. Local business practices. Less obvious than national laws and tough logistics is the way of doing business in a given country. For example, the Korean chaebol and Japanese keiretsu (these are vertically integrated, expansive conglomerates) are few in number, but they control the means of distribution in those two countries. To compete effectively in Korea and Japan, you may have to align yourself with the most appropriate group.

1. Net access. Is there a large enough population online? Caution: Don't be misled by raw statistics. For example, Brazil might look like a less desirable market if you consider nothing but percentage of the population online. However, once you exclude rural areas and the rain forest, focusing instead on the densely populated cities along the Atlantic coast, Brazil becomes a much more attractive online market. Studies, such as "Risk E-Business: Seizing the Opportunity of Global E-Readiness" (http://www.mcconnellinternational.com), provide a road map for evaluating whether a market has the requisite infrastructure to support profitable e-commerce.
   
2. Buyer demographics. Do consumers online have enough disposable income to buy what you want to sell them? Figure 2 provides a starting point for your analysis of online consumer buying inclinations in several leading Internet markets. Remember that laws in each of your target markets will determine exactly how you can use the data you collect.
   
3. Means of payment. The ability to pay according to local terms and conditions is critical.
   
   Figure 2: PC and Internet shopping penetration

   	U.S.	Canada	Australia	UK	Italy	France
   Households with PCs	53%	56%	47%	41%	14%	26%
   Households that are online	34%	39%	22%	29%	5%	14%
   Households that have shopped online	17%	9%	5%	10%	1%	2%

• Consultants. Andersen Consulting and other global consultancies can provide some information. Analyst firms IDC, Gartner, Forrester, Jupiter, and others have each created a global opportunity index, but each firm offers different recommendations due to their differing methodologies. For example, IDC and Gartner concentrate on installed devices and Internet infrastructure, while Jupiter and Forrester rely on infrequently updated indices of variables.
  
• Informational sites. A few Web sites provide varying degrees of detail about different markets. A great starting point is the CIA's country index at http://www.cia.gov. Portals at vendor and globalization providers can be elpful, such as http://www.idiominc.com/worldwise, as are sites specializing in statistical overviews, such as http://www.nua.ie, http://www.cyberatlas.com, and http://www.e-marketer.com.
  

• Online firms Boo.com and Boxman.com undertook heavily funded international expansion efforts -- before they bothered to establish sustainable value propositions in their domestic markets. Lacking clarity, they were unable to distinguish their offerings in any market -- so buyers never came.
  
• Bertelsmann and Travelocity undertook international expansion based on their strong brands and well-defined value propositions. Bertelsmann is entering multiple new markets (http://www.BOL.com) on the strength of its online skills and its on-the-ground expertise developed through decades of managing book clubs. Travelocity is moving into key markets where its hospitality industry offerings do travel well (http://www.travelocity.com and http://www.travelocity.de). Both firms' attention to portability, national politics, and the needs of the buying population promise success in their new markets.