Reach out to customers in the international community. Now’s a perfect time to see if an Internationalized Domain Name is a right fit for them.

Many non-English languages use characters containing diacritics or non-Latin scripts. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) contain these non-ASCII characters. Characters range from a few special characters found in Italian and French to entire character sets found in Arabic and Chinese. IDNs let users register and use domain names consisting of their native language instead of relying solely on the standard ASCII format.

Examples of IDNs:

English: http:// idn.icann.org
Arabic: مثال.إختبار
Russian: пример.испытание

Viewing an IDN is possible in both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 browsers. And while most languages are preloaded into these browsers, there are instances when an additional download is required to view a specific language.

Please note that just because someone owns a domain name’s English version, they do not own its non-English counterpart. If you or your customers do business in other countries, it may be wise to register the equivalent domain(s) in native languages for those countries, making it easier for international customers to reach their business Web sites.

Top languages for IDN domain sales include Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish. Even your Western Language-based customers may be looking ahead to expanding their international business opportunities and would benefit from early registration of an Internationalized Domain Name.

Ready to get started? IDN lookups, where customers specify the language for conversion, are found under the Domain Names dropdown menu of your turnkey storefront.