By the Microsoft Office Live Small Business team

If your business is bilingual, or even multilingual, your Web site must speak to all of your customers. Fortunately, Microsoft Office Live Small Business provides options that make it easy to reach and manage your customers in multiple languages.

This article introduces your options for creating a bilingual Web site and tells you how you can use the tools in Office Live Small Business to connect with your customers in any language.

In this article

 Reach customers in more than one language

 Support multiple languages on one site

 Create and link sites for each language

 Connecting with customers in the language they need

Reach customers in more than one language

If you visit Web sites that support multiple languages, you have probably seen two types of sites—those that offer content in multiple languages on adjacent pages (or on the same page), and those that offer the option to click to change the language for the entire site. When you think about which multilingual approach is best for you, consider the following options and decide which one best describes your online business:

• Create adjacent pages on the same site   If you are considering a multilingual site for the first time but are unsure of whether your customer base requires multiple-language support, one easy way to start is to create duplicate pages in different languages on the same Web site. When you take this approach, you can track the popularity of the pages in each language to help you determine the value of multiple-language support for your online business.

• Include multilingual content on the same page   If you know that your customer base primarily speaks the same language, but some customers would benefit from information in a second language, use the Page Editor tools in Office Live Small Business to create and organize multilingual content on individual pages.

• Create separate sites for each language   If you know that your online business warrants full support in two or more languages, you can create separate sites for each language and link between them to offer a fully customized experience for site visitors in each language.

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Support multiple languages on one site

To support multiple languages on a single Web site using Office Live Small Business, you can either create separate versions of each page that you want to appear in two or more languages, or you can lay out an individual page to accommodate content in multiple languages.

• To create separate versions of the same page in different languages, just create two Web pages and add the content as needed. Then, modify the Web site navigation to either group all pages of one language together or have each page followed by its alternate-language version. For example, for an English-French Web site, you may have your English home page immediately followed by the French home page. For help reordering pages and organizing the navigation bar for your Web site, see Change your Web site navigation.

• To provide bilingual content on a single page, you can change the way that page titles appear in your navigation bar to show titles in both languages. For example, for an English-French home page, you may want a page title that reads "Home/Accueil." You can also use the Page Editor tools in Office Live Small Business to organize your page when you want to show duplicate content in multiple languages. For example, consider placing product or event information side by side in two languages, using the page layout options in Page Editor, as shown here. Or, insert a table when you need even more flexible page layout options.



 Note:   For information about how to change page titles, see Change the page title. For information about how to manage page layout and create tables, see Lay out a better Web page.

If you create separate pages for different languages, you can use the reports available in Office Live Small Business to track the effectiveness of your different pages. Reports can help you determine which pages are most successful both to help you focus your online efforts and to determine if you need to provide more dynamic support (such as complete, separate sites) for each language. To learn about working with reports in Office Live Small Business, see Use reports.

 Note:   If your Web site domain name is specific to a particular language, you may want to consider registering secondary domain names in the additional languages you support, to help drive more traffic to your Web site. For example, if your domain name is www.wideworldimporters.com, and you want to provide support for customers in French, create an additional domain name using the French terms that describe your business. You can then use both domain names as needed in your marketing efforts to help drive both English-speaking and French-speaking visitors to your site. For information about creating and using additional domains, see Purchase a domain name and Change your primary domain.

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Create and link sites for each language

If you want to have complete Web sites in each language that you support, you can just create an Office Live Small Business account for each site.

You can design and manage a complete, separate Web site in each of your Office Live Small Business accounts. Additionally, each account provides a separate set of online marketing tools, such as Reports and Contact Manager. So you automatically know which language to use when you communicate with specific customers, because the customer information is stored in the account for the appropriate language site.

For example, when visitors to your site submit a Contact Us form or subscribe to your e-mail newsletter, their contact information can be added automatically to Contact Manager. If you have separate Office Live Small Business accounts for each of your language-specific Web sites, you have separate Contact Manager databases for each language. So, you automatically know which language to use for sending the customer information.

Additionally, because each account has its own set of reports, you can easily track the relative progress of your sites in each language to help you target and plan your ongoing multilingual efforts.

 Note:   Creating separate Web sites for different languages can affect search engine optimization (how prominently your site appears in search engine results) because you are splitting your audience across multiple sites. For information about several ways in which you can help improve search engine results, see Optimize your Web site for better ranking in search engine results.

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Connecting with customers in the language they need

After you create separate Web pages or sites in each language that you want to support, you can easily link between those pages or sites so that customers can move to the language version they need with a single click.

For example, if you support both English and French sites, add the words "English" and "French" in the upper-right corner of each page on both sites (or each version of like pages on the same site), and create a hyperlink to link the text to the appropriate language pages.

Alternatively, many multilingual Web sites use images instead of text for the language hyperlinks, such as flags that represent each supported language. For help using images as hyperlinks, see Using pictures on your Web site.

Regardless of which approach you take for creating a multilingual Web site, remember that your Web site is the center of your online business. Make use of the tools available to you—such as Site Designer, Contact Manager, and Reports—to help you get the most from all of your online efforts.

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