#Founder of Global Reach, a methodology for companies to expand their Internet
presence through a multilingual website
Founder of Global Reach, Bill Dunlap specialized in international online
marketing and e-commerce among mainly American companies. Global Reach is a
methodology for companies to expand their Internet presence into a more
international framework. This includes translating a website into other
languages and actively promoting it, to increase local website traffic from
countries by a promotional campaign.
Bill Dunlap, an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) graduate, has made a
life of bringing high-tech products and services to the international markets.
When the microcomputer industry was in its early stages in the early 1980s, he
set up a company to export popular Apple and PC software to top European
markets. This led to a thorough familiarity with the European PC distribution
business, and he worked then as AST Research's first European sales manager.
Further opportunity brought him into Compaq Computer's newly established Paris
office, where he became Compaq's first sales manager in France. He continued
with Compaq afterwards at their European headquarters in Munich and managed
Scandinavian sales.
Since the mid-1980s, Bill Dunlap has developed the international marketing
consultancy Euro-Marketing Associates from Paris and San Francisco. In 1995,
Euro-Marketing Associates was restructured into a virtual consultancy called
Global Reach, a group of top online marketers throughout the world. The goal is
to promote clients' websites in each targeted country, thus attracting more
online traffic: more traffic, more sales.
*Interview of December 11, 1998
= How did using the Internet change your professional life?
Since 1981, when my professional life started, I've been involved with bringing
American companies to Europe. This is very much an issue of language, since the
products and their marketing have to be in the languages of Europe in order for
them to be visible here. Since the Web became popular in 1995 or so, I've turned
these activities to their online dimension, and have come to champion European
e-commerce among my fellow American compatriates. Most lately at Internet World
in New York, I spoke about European e-commerce and how to use a Website to
address the various markets in Europe.
= What is the purpose of the Global Reach program?
Promoting your Web site is at least as important as creating it, if not more
important. You should be prepared to spend at least as much time and money in
promoting your Web site as you did in creating it in the first place. With the
Global Reach program, you can have it promoted in countries where English is not
spoken, and achieve a wider audience... and more sales. There are many good
reasons for taking the online international market seriously. Global Reach is a
means for you to extend your Web site to many countries, speak to online
visitors in their own language and reach online markets there.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
There are so few people in the U.S. interested in communicating in many
languages -- most Americans are still under the delusion that the rest of the
world speaks English. However, here in Europe (I'm writing from France), the
countries are small enough so that an international perspective has been
necessary for centuries.
*Interview of July 23, 1999
= What practical suggestions do you have for the development of a multilingual
website?
After a website's home page is available in several languages, the next step is
the development of content in each language. A webmaster will notice which
languages draw more visitors (and sales) than others, and these are the places
to start in a multilingual Web promotion campaign. At the same time, it is
always good to increase the number of languages available on a website: just a
home page translated into other languages would do for a start, before it
becomes obvious that more should be done to develop a certain language branch on
a website.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
Working in tandem with hundreds of people, without any pressure. It's a great
life.
= And your worst experience?
Several times, I've published an online forum, in which several insulting
individuals started sending nasty mail to the forum. It went out to hundreds of
people, and then they started sending nasty mail back. It had a snowball effect,
and I remember waking up one morning with over 4,000 messages to download. What
a mess!