Should You Translate Your English Website to Spanish?

 Should you speak-e Engleeeesh, or Espanol?
I recently received the following question from a reader:

Hi,

I've been working on automotive consumer websites and have debated for many years against the ROI for duplicating a consumer website in Spanish.
Your opinion would be awesome:
1.  The development spend to fully duplicate the English version of the site is about 20%.  How many hispanic are spanish only... of the 45M in the U.S., maybe 10M?  That's 20% spend for 3% audience?  Am I right?  It's not worth it.
2.  If my website is national (i.e. covering the U.S.) what Spanish should I write my pages in?  Columbian, Mexican, Spanish, other?

 
Why I'm So Feliz You Asked:
1) Yes...to fully duplicate the English version of the site...20% cost...bien, ok that works.
Sure...Maybe 10M Hispanics in the U.S. speak Spanish only (count the illegal immigrants though and that number gets mucho mas grande). 

However
Think about it...yes...10 million Hispanics is about 3% of the U.S. audience...but OF the U.S. Hispanic population...it is about 22-23%.  That's significant - and think about the amount of future Hispanics online - say in 5-10 years...(Whooo-wee, muchos hispanos more in futuro) and then think about Latin Americans who come to the U.S. to shop for cars (Lots of them do...I personally go way back with tons...really! No joke) - they could browse your product pre-travel.  So if your company is making a general significant spend on Hispanic advertising...22-23% potential just U.S. audience Hispanic hit would be well worth it. (Just do it...)

ADDITIONALLY
and this is key...think about brand extensions for your English line. (who isn't trying to make more dinero?)

I recently met with a major flower retailer. Think one of the major national chains. Sales in the millions.

They recently launched a Spanish language version of their website in '08.  Guess what?  Sure...it was a bit slow in the beginning, and sales were...eh...snooze...siesta...zzzz

However
Get this: after a few months, they saw their advertising coupon codes from Spanish language media...were actually being used on their English site - their flagship.  Thus winning brand recognition for them, and appreciation from customers who were bilingual, used Spanish media, however were comfortable doing business in English...and so still bringing the Spanish language codes with them. (BING BING BING, we have a winner.)

Neat huh?

Depending
On your automotive product - it could be worth the spend.
(of course...there are many more questions to be asked on this question including...your target market, current Hispanic consumers for the product, potential consumers, those online, those who eat tacos...er.. well tacos has nothing to do with it, but they sure are good! etc.)
But my initial reaction with no more information - would be spend.

 IF
#2) Your website is national - focused in the U.S.  I'd avoid Spain Spanish and focus on Mexican or Central American Spanish (they are pretty similar) and as mentioned you will probably get overflow consumers from those areas. 

And there you have it folks.

-La Marketer