French language sites (1.Viewing)

[notify]MapleDots[/notify] and [notify]aactive[/notify] or any other ecommerce guys, as well as all of the francophones:

I'm looking at renewals of some french language type domains, and I'm just curious about your opinions.

1. Do those of you with ecommerce sites have a french language version and if so, do you have a separate domain? or a FR/EN button? Or English only?

2. How much business do you think you gain or lose by having/not having a French language version?

3. For the francophones, what are your thoughts when visiting a site that is only in English? Annoying? When online shopping, do you normally gravitate to sites that are in French or at least have a french language option?

I have the ability to add any language to my site in seconds, that feature is built into a lot of e-commerce sites so having multiple language domains does not come into play for me.

If I do implement it the domain would look like this.... domain.ca/ca or domain.ca/fr


All that said I had so much fraud on my site in the last 3 years that the credit card charge backs were getting out of hand. 90% of all my fraud came from Quebec and I dreaded getting an order from there because I had to call before shipping to verify and the thieves got more and more brazen. I gave the police the end delivery address and they said they do not have the time to allocate.

After thousands of dollars lost I decided to stop shipping to Quebec but then some legitimate customers got upset so I switched to e-transfer exclusively for payment and that worked. I now save $35,000 in yearly processing fees and about $10,000 in fraud and I can sell to Quebec with no fear of fraud.

I have not had a single case of fraud since switching to e-transfer and am happily selling to Quebec and not one customer has ever complained about the lack of french on the site.

So for me, I try to keep it as simple as possible, no second language and no second language domain, the market is just too small and even if I did it for me the fraud from Quebec is insane and I would never target that province on purpose.

French-speaking Ontarian, but do have lots of French-only friends living in Quebec. While I don't think you would lose any sales by having an English only website because an overwhelming majority of francophones are bilingual or at least know enough English to get by, but you would probably make the experience a little easier for them

It all depends on numbers I guess. If you already have a store up and running, you could always take a look at your orders or feedback to see if it's worth the extra effort

If I catch rlm's question properly he is probably looking at his french domains and considering what to renew.


I will just add this...

I have freewifi.ca which I purchased with wifigratis.ca and I tried to give the french version away on two different forums with no takers.

So I was basically not able to give away the domain and it ended up expiring so to me that shows there is very little demand for french .ca's. It is a tiny niche that I avoid because the chance of a return on such a small market is pretty slim.

For our e-commerce sites, which are n English, our sales from Quebec have always been very low. This has been consistent from the start. As Maple Leaf said, the fraud has been higher in Quebec than in any other province. Our experience has not been as bad as MapleDots with fraud, but still enough not to market to that province.

Wow, very interesting to know and thank you for sharing your experience and the great question [notify]rlm[/notify]

I owned several French domains which I eventually dropped as they were not making any income or generating any inquiries. Only to find them getting picked up in TBR and heading for an auction and then getting dropped after a few years, again.

And even the offers received on domains like Bonjour. ca are not anywhere close to what they are valued at or even considering a conversation. Wishing Brent Oxley the very best to may be move the .COM to the right buyer, which can create value for what I have.