Most businesses realize that they are simply a click away from any corner of the globe. Well, actually two if you include the Yahoo! search a potential customer does to access your shopping cart. What most businesses, unfortunately, do not realize though, is that their shopping cart is struggling to make it to the checkout counter. Bill Dunlap, managing director of Global Reach, Inc. notes that "for every $2 million a site is doing in domestic sales, they're leaving another $1 million on the table in international sales if they're not making themselves easily available."

To paraphrase the above, let me draw on a quote from Willy Brandt. The former West German chancellor is reported to have once said: "If I'm selling to you, I speak your language. If I'm buying, dann muessen Sie Deutsch sprechen (then you must speak German)."

In economics this is referred to as opportunity cost -the cost of something in terms of an opportunity foregone. The opportunity cost of not speaking "German" is a whopping 50%! This simple truth is supported by statistics.

Donald A. DePalma reported in a study conducted for Forrester Research that "Visitors linger twice as long as they do at English-only URLs; business buyers are three times more likely to buy if addressed in their own language; and customer service costs drop when instructions are displayed in the user