To globalize your e-commerce business, you have to internationalize your Web site, then localize it for specific markets. As someone who is in the business of Web site localization, I want to make sure you understand what is meant by these terms and the two-step process they represent. The primary purpose of internationalizing your site is to allow it to be translated into different languages. This will prevent you from having to redesign it to handle the different formats and character sets that are standard to different geographical regions. If you want to internationalize your existing site, you have to retrofit it with localization in mind.
Localization is the process of adapting a product for use in specific markets and countries.
If you're still at the designing stage of the site, think of what you will need to do to launch it successfully in multiple languages. Pay close attention to possible functional, formatting, and linguistic ambiguities that could arise because of the way you initially designed your Web site. Remove these ambiguities to guarantee linguistic coherency across languages and localized sites. This will ensure that key conceptual vocabulary and vocabulary crucial to branding your site across languages and cultures is consistent. Any terms that can be standardized should be indexed.