When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, the name the project was given said it all. It was and remains the world’s first truly global medium. And given the open architecture and non-centralized nature of the underlying Internet, it looks like it’s going to remain with us for some time to come. The party has only just begun.
Upon surfing the Web, one might be forgiven for thinking it is only for English speakers. Given the fact that all websites have access to a global audience, it is remarkable how few of them attempt to sell into this vast untapped market, especially considering the international nature of our underlying product – after all, “a blowjob is a blowjob in any language.”
By the same token, money talks – in every language. But translating your tours and galleries into several languages would be a Herculean and expensive task.
However, solutions now exist whereby the most important stage of the sales process – paying – can be integrated so that webmasters are communicating effectively with surfers in their own native languages, making them far more likely to become paying customers. A simple call to action in Spanish, for example, will do wonders to help convert a vast Hispanic market sitting right on your doorstep!
Given the credit card-centric nature of developed western markets, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that most of the world already owns one. Wrong. The majority of the world’s surfers do not have a credit card.
One thing that practically all surfers have access to, though, is a land line telephone or cell—and therein lies the solution to making money on a global scale.
In theory, the dialer was the solution to making money from the global village. In practice, the dialer is dead. Many surfers are simply too frightened to download third-party software onto their PCs.
Global phone billing (IVR) utilizes the same underlying billing principle as dialers, but with none of the headaches associated with them.
What surfer can resist? After having been sold in his own language, he is invited to call a premium (1-900) number from his regular phone line or cell. Once connected, he is greeted by a recording (again, in his native tongue) and then is issued a password that is needed to gain access to a website’s members’ area for a limited amount of time.
For the surfer, phone billing is quick, convenient, and, above all, anonymous. Furthermore, the “enjoy now, pay later” element afforded by phone billing lends itself to a spontaneous purchase.
Combine these two elements – geo-targeted calls to action in several languages and global phone billing capability – and you have yourself a new revenue stream overnight from surfers that were visiting your sites anyway.
Bottom Line: Global phone billing will increase yours.
Marc Jarrett is Business Development Manager for Password-By-Phone. He can be reached at [email protected].
