What an exporter’s website should look like — through the buyer’s eyes.

An exporter’s website is the first document a foreign buyer reads before speaking to the supplier; it should present the product, proof of production and the route to a quote in the buyer’s own language, at a separate address for each language and on pages that load fast. How the site looks is built on top of this skeleton, not in place of it.

When assessing an export website, the question to ask is not “how does our site look” but “what decision can a purchaser in Germany make from this site without knowing Turkish”. The buyer arrives from a search, a trade fair business card or a marketplace profile, with a short checklist in mind: what does this company make, can it produce to the specification I need, does it hold certification, and whom do I write to.

Building sites that answer this question is this studio’s work; the method is described on the B2B website page. The sections below, however, are independent of the method: a reading order every exporter can apply to their own site today.

What does a foreign buyer look at when they land on the site?

Our observation is this: a B2B buyer does not browse like a consumer, they scan. First they look for what the company makes and at what scale, then for the product that fits their need, then for that product’s technical values and certification, and last for the way to get in touch. When this order breaks down — product information on page three of a PDF, the certificate inside a gallery, contact limited to a phone number — the site may carry information, but it does not produce a decision. We covered the buyer’s first seconds in a separate article: how B2B buyers search for suppliers.

• Who — what the company makes, where and since when; in one sentence.
• What — product families and the field of application of each family.
• How — technical values, with their units, in a readable table.
• Proof — certificates, test reports, production declarations; together with who audited them.
• Where — which markets the company serves and under which delivery terms.
• To whom — where a request for a quote should be sent and with which information.

Which languages should the site be published in?

The number of languages is not a sign of prestige but a market decision. Every language you open means you will genuinely sell in that market and keep maintaining the text in that language; an unmaintained translation leaves a worse impression than never opening that language at all. We wrote separately about where machine translation is enough and where it is not: a foreign-language site with Google Translate.

The sites of the two textile exporters we manage are each live in seven languages, and their language choices reveal their markets. Fersan Tekstil publishes in Turkish, English, Italian, Russian, German, French and Spanish; Karcem in Turkish, English, German, Dutch, Russian, Italian and Arabic. The rule is the same on both sites: a page declares every language it exists in and does not declare a translation that does not exist. When we opened the fabric page of both sites on 23 September 2026, each declared seven languages and one default version.

Should each language have its own address?

Yes. Google recommends giving each language version a separate address instead of switching the page’s language based on browser settings or cookies, and it determines the page’s language from the visible text, not from a tag in the code. The practical consequence: a German page must be German from top to bottom, menu included. Putting a German menu on top of a Turkish product page does not produce a German page; nor does it appear as a German result in search.

Should product information sit in a PDF catalog or on the page?

The proper place for product information is the page. The PDF catalog is a habit of the print world and is still useful at trade fairs, but when it is the only source of information on the site it costs three things: it becomes hard to read on a phone, the search engine cannot show a single product inside it as a separate result, and when the catalog is updated the old file keeps circulating in emails. We compared the two routes criterion by criterion: product catalog: PDF or web page.

The distinction in the cases is instructive. When we looked on 23 September 2026, the fabric pages of both sites presented their products in a real HTML table — at Fersan with columns for weight, stretch and application, at Karcem with columns for composition, weight and typical use — and neither fabric page contained a single PDF link. The PDFs were on the certificate pages: there the document stands in its original form, as issued by the certifying body. The product becomes a page; the document stays a document.

How should certificates and quality declarations be shown?

On an export site, the line that carries the most trust is often the line given the least care: the certificate. A strip of logos lined up side by side does not tell the buyer which document covers which product, which facility and until what date. When the document’s name, scope, issuing body and the document itself sit in the same place, the buyer can carry out their own check.

Karcem builds this layer with a measurable statement: the site’s home page states its color tolerance as ΔE*ab ≤ 1 and says every batch is verified in an accredited laboratory. A numerical, verifiable declaration does more work than the adjective “high quality”, because the buyer can test it in their own laboratory.

How should quote requests be received?

In B2B, a sale begins not with a basket but with a request for a quote. The form should be short: product, approximate quantity, target market and contact details are enough for a first contact; the details are discussed in the first reply. As the number of required fields grows, the form turns into a pre-screening tool, and a buyer in a hurry — often the most valuable one — may abandon it halfway. Error messages should sit next to the field and be in the buyer’s language.

Does the buyer notice if the site is slow?

They do, because a B2B buyer often opens the site in a trade fair aisle, on a hotel connection or on their phone. Speed is not decoration but a question of access. In this site’s own measurement, the slowest main-content display time (LCP) experienced by real users is 420 milliseconds, and layout shift in the lab measurement is zero (23 September 2026). The measurements on the case pages are published with the same honesty, with their date and method; the goal is for the page to have loaded before the buyer even wonders what it is.

What happens to the old language pages?

What gets lost most often when a site is rebuilt is its old addresses. Another site was previously live on this domain, and in September 2026 Search Console’s list of non-indexed pages showed 70 “not found” addresses; the examples tested live were language folders left over from that old site, such as /ru/, /fr/ and /en/writing/. For an exporter rebuilding its site, the same thing costs more, because the old addresses sit in foreign buyers’ bookmarks and in links on other sites. Every old language page should be permanently redirected to its new counterpart; if there is no counterpart, it should be closed deliberately.

Does government support cover the website?

Partly, and only for certain statuses. Turkey’s Ministry of Trade lists a “website setup” item among its e-export supports, but according to the 2026 ceiling table, the promotion support that item belongs to is not available to a manufacturer with company status; it is used by consortia, retail e-commerce sites, B2B platforms and marketplaces. A reading of the official texts: e-export supports 2026. The programs of KOSGEB (Turkey’s SME development agency), on the other hand, show no separate item named website: KOSGEB website support. Support conditions may change; verify the current text with the relevant institution before applying.

Short checklist

• What the company makes — is it stated on the first screen, in one sentence and in every language?
• Does each language have its own address, and is the whole page in that language?
• Is product information on the page, in a table with units?
• Are certificates shown together with their scope, issuing body and the document itself?
• Can the quote form be sent with four or five fields?
• Does the site load fast on a phone and on a slow connection too — has it been measured?
• Have the old site’s language pages been redirected to their new counterparts?

None of the items on the list imposes a design style; each one asks whether a piece of information the buyer needs to make a decision is in its place. When the site’s visual language is built on top of this skeleton, it tells the buyer and the search engine the same thing.

For a site that presents your products to foreign buyers in their own language, B2B website builds and measures the path to product, certificate and quote in the target market’s language.