International growth without complexity: insights from Webwinkel Vakdagen

Share

During the Webwinkel Vakdagen, Niels Arts and Emiel Wessels of NFC World gave a lecture on international growth and how to make it manageable. The session attracted some 80 visitors and showed how webshops organize international growth structurally.

International growth is rapidly becoming complex

Many webshops start with an additional language or a new market. In the beginning this remains manageable. Teams work with one structure and implement changes quickly. As soon as more markets are added, that picture changes. Content gets out of sync per market. Teams implement updates in multiple places. Structure starts to vary by language. What starts as an extension grows into extra management that takes more and more time.

Why organizations get stuck

Many organizations set up internationalization as a project. They add a language, translate their content and then continue with daily operations. This works as long as the number of markets remains limited. Once the organization grows, this model runs aground.

Teams remain dependent on manual translations and loose tools. As a result, they have to make every change again per market. This slows down the process and makes it difficult to keep an overview.

From manual work to a central workflow

Emiel explained how they have adapted this way of working at NFC World. Initially, they carried out international expansions manually. That took a lot of time and led to errors.

They then opted for a central workflow via Clonable. They now manage content, translations and structure from one source. Teams make updates only once and all markets stay in sync. New countries go live faster. At the same time, management is decreasing. This approach ultimately saved about 1,500 hours.

International websites as one system

The most important shift is not in technology, but in how you organize international growth. Instead of managing each market separately, you work from one system in which all websites come together. From a central source you keep control over content and structure. At the same time, you keep room for local differences. This keeps international growth manageable, even when the number of markets increases.

Do you want to know why international growth often gets stuck in practice? We will soon show you where it goes wrong and which choices play a role in this.