T-Index: which languages offer the best online sales potential?

Rome 02/05/2011. T-Index 2011 is a ranking of the languages used by the people that will most likely buy from a website or its advertisers. It combines the Internet population and its estimated GDP per capita, which makes it a valuable tool for website owners, marketing managers and bloggers to determine the markets which will provide the most likely ROI when translating their website.

You can find the full study at: http://www.translated.net/en/languages-that-matter

 Data for 2011 shows Simplified Chinese rise to 11.3% due to an increase in the GDP per capita of its Internet population. English still tops the ranking with 34.8%, covering more than 465 million Internet users around the world, with an average GDP per capita of $40,221. Korean has ousted Italian from the top 10 - its GDP per capita of Internet population rose, whilst the Italian one fell.

New features added with the update now make T-Index even more versatile: T-Index values can now be sorted according to geographic region and country. The new ranking by geographic region is useful when "cultural nearness" is an important factor to take into consideration when expanding internationally. When choosing between different potential target markets, the filter by country helps identify the best combinations of market and language in which to invest to reach out to new customers online.

Translating a website into the top three languages ranked by T-Index (English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese) unlocks 50% of online global purchasing power, while the top ten languages alone capture 82% of the worldwide web audience.