Online Language Preferences for US Hispanic Community

The online business community has grown expediently, over the past few years, bringing more and more consumers from all over the world online including the US Hispanic community. Recent studies from market research firms indicate the US Hispanic speaking community is one of the largest search groups online. This market is not only searching the web using the English language, but also using their native language (e.g. Spanish) to search.

While many consumers today write and speak in English even though it is not their native tongue, they often will choose to search the web using their language preference. Up until a few years ago, it was common for US businesses online to offer the online community the ability to search, read, and communicate in the English language only. However, time has changed and consumers shopping and buying habits are constantly changing as well. Such behaviors demand that online companies optimize their search availabilities as well as, translating their landing pages to offer convenience and a customer-centric approach in languages other than English.

Customer-Centric Approach as a Win-Win Solution

A customer-centric approach is a tool businesses can use to enhance the way their customers feel about them. Customers, of course, are human beings with purchase power and word-of-mouth marketing control. We all want to feel included, listened to, important, and valued as a customer and as a business. Many companies today are leaning more toward its direction and drawing a bigger crowd of perspective customers who feel good about shopping on their site.

Today, many companies have had their website programmers translate their existing site into Spanish as well as optimizing their url to capture the consumer looking for their services in Spanish. Some of these companies have also implemented other translations and optimization techniques to amplify their broad spectrum of offerings to the world. These implementations broaden a company’s horizons by expanding their target audience thus, bringing more customers and clients to them as well as helping to secure profitability.

Since the web is available for just about anyone to access, provided they have an internet connection, businesses are rethinking their marketing strategies in order to attract and engage consumers and businesses worldwide. By offering simple marketing techniques such as website translations and optimizing their urls to trigger searches in Spanish, it is a win-win solution for all involved. Businesses gain a larger customer base, which in turn can increase profitability, and consumers feel important, appreciated, and acknowledged as a Spanish-speaking consumer.

All consumers interested in conducting web searches to easily locate, buy, communicate, and learn about a business services have plenty of businesses to choose from estimated well into the billions. So, if all online businesses want to attract and retain more customers worldwide then, they will need to optimize their sites to bring in the masses worldwide and stay competitive among their fellow competition.

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US Hispanics, History and Growth of the Internet

There has been an incredibly fast evolution of the Internet from 1995 until the present time. As you can see in the graph below, Internet Users in the World has grown from 16 millions in Dec 2005 to 1,596 millions in Mar, 2009.

However, there’s an important distinction which is the language fabric composition of the Web content. What do we mean by this? Well, in the early ages of the Internet, almost everything was in English because most internet applications started in the United States. Therefore, in the early to mid 90s the search engines were in English as well. Anyone within the US or overseas conducting a Web search had to do it in English, there was no other option. As technology caught up around the world, the Web has become a multilingual platform and foreign Web growth has been astonishing. While in 1996, 75% of all Web searches were conducted in English, today English searches accounts for only 25%. Search engines and directories understood the importance of this non-English segment and today it is becoming easier and easier to find content in your mother tongue.

Reaching the entire spectrum of the US Hispanic community

As one article explains, U.S. Hispanic advertisers have historically lagged behind in moving their budgets online and therefore have provided less of an incentive for U.S. Hispanic publishers to post a wide variety of content online. However, this trend has shifted. Last year alone, the biggest Hispanic surge has been in internet media, up 36.3% in 2007 (according to the Hispanic Fact Pack 08). As a result, more Spanish-language sites/pages based in the U.S. are being optimized for search engines. US Hispanics will increasingly have more search options as Spanish Web content is being propagated over the Web. And since we know that people speaking the same language show an inclination to form their own online community no matter what country they happen to live in, it’s becoming almost imperative for many US businesses to make all or some of their Web content available in Spanish if they want to maximize their reach to the entire spectrum of the US Hispanic community.

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