We didn’t build BeyondTheBean’s WordPress website for their brand Sweetbird, but we’ve dipped in and helped them with various bits and pieces on it over the years so we were up to speed enough to jump in and turn this around super quickly for them.
The first part of the project was to understand exactly what they needed – which brand new products were being introduced especially for the US and so not available in the UK, which existing products wouldn’t be available in the US, and which would be available in both, and then propose how the existing code base could be altered quickly and efficiently to accommodate that. We also needed a solid plan around the user journey to ensure different visitors could discover what they needed to. It was decided we didn’t need to go as far as different spellings of words for a US audience – so not actually a multilingual website – but various aspects, such as accreditation badges, within existing pages needed to show or be hidden depending on who was viewing it.
We decided we didn’t want to hit all visitors with a pop up asking them where in the world they were visiting from, as this wouldn’t be great for regular visitors who were used to stopping by to pick up recipes and resources, and wouldn’t be great for Google (as SEO is nearly always a consideration in everything we do). So instead we take a guess, based on a visitor’s IP address, as to where they’re from in the world – but we flag to them what we’ve guessed, so they can correct the assumption with a simple drop down in the header of the website if we’ve gotten it wrong. Why might we get it wrong? Because we have to rely on 3rd parties telling us where an IP address is located, plus some Internet Service Providers can make people seem like they’re from somewhere other than they are. Also, as the saying goes, assumption makes an ass of you and me, so it’s always safer to let someone manually make a choice if they need to.
If you need to quickly cater for a new audience or launch a product overseas and need your website updated pronto, do get in touch.