1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Cisco Systems
4. Philips
5. Samsung
6. Wikipedia
7. 3M
8. NIVEA
9. Symantec
10. Lenovo
11. Xbox
12. Autodesk
13. Gmail
14. Microsoft
15. Nokia
16. Intel
17. Caterpillar
18. Panasonic
19. HP
20. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
21. LG
22. Volvo Group
23. Hotels.com
24. SAP
25. Kodak

Google has emerged on top again, but just barely.
The big story this year is that Facebook and Google finished in a numerical tie. But because Google supports more languages (for now), it edged out as the winner.

Moving down the list, there are a number of familiar faces — companies like Cisco and Philips, Panasonic, and NIVEA. But there are some new faces as well. Samsung jumped up in the rankings due to improvements to global navigation and localization. Kodak, Symantec, and Autodesk are also new to the top 25.

Although these sites represent a wide range of industries, they all share a high degree of global consistency and impressive support for languages. They average 50 languages — which is more than twice the average for all 225 sites reviewed.

20+ languages is the new baseline
Even as we look across all 225 web sites, the number of languages continues to increase. Although the rate of language growth slowed over the past two years — due in large part to the global recession — growth continues. This year, the average number of languages increased to 22, up from 20 languages in 2008.

It wasn’t that long ago that any web site that supported 10 languages would have qualified as “global.” The new baseline is 20 or more languages, and climbing.

I will be posting additional findings in the days and weeks ahead. If you want to learn more, we’ve posted a brochure here.

My biggest concern is slow-loading Web pages. And, yes, I know the quality of the translation will leave plenty to be desired, but what I really like about the widget are the little RSS feed buttons. Just click the button and you can have translated feeds delivered to whatever feed reader you use.

What I don’t understand is the significance of the name “mloovi.” Am I missing something?

I’ve got about a hundred copies of this map remaining and I’m offering them for $3 each for orders of 25 or $2 each for orders of 50 (plus postage).

The map normally sells for $12 each, so this is a nice discount — and a great way to get your whole office a copy of this useful map.

Here are more details of the map:
http://bytelevel.com/map/map_of_WWW.html

Please note that this is a smaller version of the poster now being sold. It is designed to fit on a cubicle wall and displays 180 ccTLDs.

If you’re interested in purchasing, please contact me.

So now it’s time to take a deep breath and take a shot at predicting the future of Web globalization. The following predictions are based on current trends as well as gut feelings.

Predictions for the Year Ahead

1. The Weak Dollar Drives US Companies to Greatly Boost Web Globalization Spending
Okay, this was an easy call to make. The weak US dollar is helping companies weather a poor local economy by selling their goods abroad. And this year I’ve noticed a number of companies boosting their Web globalization budgets to expand into new markets or improve their current localized Web sites. All signs point to 2008 being a very busy year for translators and Web localization teams.

It’s also worth highlighting a few companies that invested in Web globalization while the dollar was still strong. It’s no sheer coincidence that some of the companies weathering the US downturn thanks to strong overseas sales are also some of the companies at the top of the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card:

• Google
• HP
• Cisco
• Xerox
• Caterpillar

While a great global Web site does not in itself ensure success, it is a major competitive differentiator as companies expand abroad. And those companies that embraced Web globalization early on are now reaping the rewards.

2. Internationalized Domains Names Become a �Surprise� Hit
I have long been a strong proponent of local-language domain names. Next year, ICANN will launch approved IDNs that the local markets will embrace. The media will report the surprising success these domains see in their respective countries. China in particular will report more than two million registrations in one month (probably in 2009).

The demand for local-language domains is there. Yes, there are plenty of details yet to be worked through at ICANN and there will no doubt be technical and political obstacles along the way — which will also be widely reported by the media. But next year will mark that point in time when the Internet begins to provide a true local-language end-to-end Internet experience for users around the world.

3. China Requires Companies to Register Chinese-Language Domains
China has been the most vocal proponent of IDNs. The government effectively argues that the Internet cannot be user friendly for its citizens until they can enter domain names in the native Chinese script. Now that IDNs are becoming a reality, I expect China to begin requiring companies that wish to do business in China to register IDNs.

China would probably initially require those companies that are licensed to host sites within China to register IDNs, but it may also go after companies that host outside of China as well. There is also a financial incentive for this requirement, as these registrations will benefit state-owned domain registries. Following in China’s steps, Russia will also require the registration of Cyrillic domains, and other countries may also follow.

From a usability perspective, we expect most companies to register IDNs for China and Russia (and elsewhere) regardless of any such regulations. But the regulations will be a wake-up call to those companies that have overlooked IDNs.

4. The .asia Domain Will Not Equal the Success of .eu
In one year, the .eu domain surpassed 2.5 million registrations. It would stand to reason that the forthcoming .asia domain, which represents a far larger population, would be even more popular.

I’m not so sure. I believe that .asia will be fortunate if it reaches 1 million registrations in its first year, and it may not exceed half a million. The reason for this is two-fold:

• No geographic boundary. While .eu refers to a group of clearly defined countries, what countries does .asia refer to exactly? I’m not sure, and neither is anyone I’ve asked.
• IDNs are better. China, Korea, Vietnam and others are going to embrace domains in their native language rather than the .asia domain.

The sunrise period for .asia began in November, and the DotAsia registry reports 15,000 applications, the majority of which have come from US corporations. This is hardly an overwhelming response and a sign that 2008 will be an underwhelming year for registrations.

5. Splash Global Gateways Become Ubiquitous
Early this year, during the course of research for the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card, I found that approximately 30% of the 200 Web sites reviewed made use of a splash (or landing page) global gateway, such as the one shown here:

That figure was a 20% increase from the year before and a sign of a trend that we do not see slowing. By the end of 2008, nearly half of all large multinationals will make use of splash global gateways.

6. Geolocation Gains Fans (and Enemies)
Geolocation is a “behind the scenes” way of guessing a Web user’s location by analyzing his or her IP address. It can be quite effective, and Google has used it for years. Amazon and Expedia also use it selectively, and more companies will follow suit next year.

However, I think we will also begin to see news reports of geolocation being used to keep people out of Web sites. For example, Amazon may offer a special discount on a book in one country and not the other, and it does not want users in the non-discounted country to know better. Using geolocation, users could be barred from seeing these discounts or products altogether, without being the wiser.

Geolocation could be used to create geographically gated communities on the Internet, something that goes against the spirit of the Internet but is also difficult to stop.

7. Multilingual Corporate Blogs Go Mainstream
While lawyers in companies around the globe fret over the legal implications of supporting employee blogs, more and more companies are taking the plunge, from Dell to Sun to Google. From a budgetary perspective, blogs offer the ideal way to bypass the cost-per-word limitation of translation while offering plenty of local content. Naturally, companies need good writers locally who can contribute relevant content, but these writers do exist, and forward-looking companies will put them to good use.

8. Wal-Mart Launches a Spanish Site for the US
While retailers like Lowe’s and Staples have launched Spanish-language Web sites for the US market, Wal-Mart has remained on the sidelines. This will change in 2008.

I witnessed a sign that Wal-Mart is headed in this direction during the week of Thanksgiving.

Wal-Mart ran a Web-based promotion that was bilingual, as shown here:

If you were to click through on any of these product links, you would be taken to English-language text. But I think this will change, probably by next Thanksgiving.

Looking Beyond 2008

9. Baidu and Yandex Enter the US to Challenge Google
If one the best forms of defense is a strong offense, I expect Chinese search engine leader Baidu and Russian search engine leader Yandex to attack Google on its home turf.

Yandex, shown here, continues to lead in Russia despite Google’s best efforts. And the success of both Yandex and Baidu hint that the search engine wars globally have only just begun.

10a. Google Becomes Your Company’s Internal Translator
Google Apps is a Web-based platform that businesses small and large rely on to support email and collaboration. At some point in the future, Google will provide business members with integrated access to Google Translate.

Google Translate will allow executives to have foreign-language emails translated in real-time into their native language. Web browsing can also be translated in real time for executives who want to learn more about foreign competition. All of this will be powered by Google’s in-house statistical machine translation (SMT) engine and it will be tailored to the company’s industry terminology.

The quality of this translation will by no means be perfect. But as Google’s engine gets to understand your business and as its global memory database grows, the quality of translations will improve. Google will allow companies to upload their own translation memories to further improve Google’s SMT engine.

10b. Google Becomes Your Company’s External Translator
Eventually, companies will become so comfortable with Google’s translation abilities that it will allow Google to be the company’s “front end” for specific types of Web content.

For example, a company may offer a public blog in English and will allow Google’s SMT engine to translate it for the world. Since this is content that the company may not have ever paid to have manually translated, it’s a nice proposition for both the company and consumers.

Naturally, there are a lot of “ifs” involved. Companies must upload their translation memories to provide the level of quality required, and the public must be satisfied with less-than-perfect translation quality.

But the ramifications of Google acting as a “multilingual interface” is significant. It could very well mean that we’ll see companies actually decrease their pure translation spending in the years ahead. But that does not mean they won’t be spending money on Web globalization. Their spending will probably increase, but it will be focused on content creators, editors, user advocates, and community managers.

What does this mean to vendors? It means that the time is now to begin thinking about how your company will thrive in a world where translation is not your core source of revenue.

What’s the reason for this sudden transformation of the industry?

I believe the changes are due to the simple fact that the translation agencies are no longer leading the industry. The technologists have taken over, and they have a different vision for the future.

By technologists, I’m referring to software vendors, such as Idiom and Language Weaver and Clay Tablet. I’m also referring to the buyers of translation services, buyers who have seen how technology can make their lives easier and want to see their vendors make full use of this technology — from hosted project management software to machine translation.

While linguists focus on the “art” of translation, technologists focus on the “science” of translation. And that’s why we’re seeing the rebirth of machine translation as statistical machine translation (SMT). SMT brings the power of brute force computing to translation, to a degree that the pioneers of machine translation could have only imagined forty years ago.

SMT is not by itself going to disrupt the translation industry. But SMT, along with early adopter clients (by way of the Translation Automation Users Society), and the efforts of Google, are likely to change this industry in ways we can’t fully grasp right now.

The Translation Automation Users Society (TAUS) conducted a brief survey recently of its member companies and interested observers. About 55% of the 200+ respondents were translation vendors, while 30% were buyers of translation services.

TAUS asked if the “per word” pricing model used by the industry was outdated, and 65% of respondents agreed that it was. However, there was no agreement as to what model should replace per-word pricing. Respondents were evenly split between per-word pricing, per-hour pricing, and capacity (annual service agreement) pricing.

What this says to me is that we are standing at an exciting point in the industry — where there is a clear need for a new direction but no clear direction in which to head. In other words, the industry is searching for leaders, which is why the technologists have had so much sway lately.

The TAUS survey also found that 68% of respondents were in favor of the sharing of translation memory data. Not surprisingly, TAUS is going to make the sharing of memories a priority in 2008, and technology will play a key role.

The most definitive finding from the survey was that 75% of respondents felt that translation agencies should take the lead in investing in translation automation. I have seen recent signs of agencies doing just that — but only after companies such as Idiom and Language Weaver paved the way.

I do not believe it will be agencies that take the lead in translation automation.

I think it will be Google that will do more than any other company to promote the next generation of translation.

Many tech pundits say Google is in the process of “becoming the Internet” by not only powering search but by hosting content and applications and facilitating financial transactions. Right now, the search engine is just a means to the end — your company’s Web site. But what if Google became both the means and the end?

That is, what if Google became the multilingual interface to your company’s Web site? It’s not going to happen tomorrow or next year or possibly even this decade. But I think it will happen, and when it does happen, the translation industry as we know it will be changed forever.

This map was designed to fit on a cubicle wall and include the major country code top level domains (ccTLDs) that a global Webmaster may encounter.

And although the map includes a whopping 180 ccTLDs, that is not all of them. To include all of them, I would have to develop a much-larger map, which is what I ended up doing.

And here it is, our newest and biggest map, shown below:

This map effectively includes all ccTLDs — 245 in all. Yes, there are more country codes than there are countries. That’s because you don’t have to be a country to have your own country code. The uninhabited Bouvet Island has a code: .bv. Even Antarctica has its own code: .aq.

This map also sizes the country codes based on the population of a given country or territory, which is why China and India feature so prominently. And this map also includes some key statistics regarding country populations and the most popular country codes based on registrations.

To learn more, go to www.bytelevel.com/map/ccTLD.html.

Our feature article is on established and emerging best practices in global navigation. We note improvements made recently by companies such as eBay and GE. And we include a checklist that you can use when developing your company’s global gateway strategy.

Here is what else is included in this issue:

• The Guide to Global Navigation: The best sites and best practices
• Global Domain Names Update: Of IDNs and ccTLDs
• Connecting the Global Dots: An interview with Clay Tablet
• Google’s Global Developments: From India to Apps
• Idiom WorldServer 9: Software highlights
• Globalization Briefs: Of Arrows and Web Localization
• Vendor News: Molecular, SDL, Lionbridge

If you’re interested in subscribing to Global by Design, please contact us.

Also, if you want the complete guide on global navigation best practices, check out The Art of the Global Gateway.

The shirt has proven so popular that we’re now offering customized versions of the shirt.

Let’s say you want to get your global Web or marketing or customer service teams to “think global,” we can develop a shirt that includes your company’s logo along with the slogan. We can also develop customized coffee mugs and other goodies.
If you’re interested, please contact me.

And if you want our “off the rack” version of the shirt, we offer them for sale here.

So what I’ve done is excerpted the top 100 Web sites from the report. Why didn’t I just include all 200? Frankly, I don’t want to call that much attention to those companies that rounded out the bottom of the list. It’s better to learn from the best global Web sites anyway.

You can download this mini-report here.

I hope you find it useful.

UPDATE: The 2008 Web Globalization Report Card is now available.

Although every Web site is global by nature, few Web sites support enough languages to be understood by the majority of the world’s Internet users.

But translation is just one aspect of a successful global Web site. As the practice of Web globalization has become mainstream, so too have a number of best practices.

In an effort to identify and understand these established and emerging best practices, in 2003, I began benchmarking the Web sites of hundreds of global companies and organizations. I tracked language use, navigation techniques, and global consistency, and interviewed hundreds of executives who manage these global Web sites. This information formed the basis for The Web Globalization Report Card of which the 2007 edition was recently published.

This article lists the top 10 Web sites from the report and explains some of the best practices that these Web sites have in common.

The Best Global Web Sites
Let’s get right to the top 10 Web sites for 2007:

Google has made itself at home at the top of this list for the past few years. The reason Google excels is not just due to its 115-language search interface. Google has also rapidly localized its many Web-based applications — from Blogger to Adwords — in up to 40 languages.

Wikipedia can lay claim to being the most global Web site on the Internet, offering content in more than 250 languages. Wikipedia proves that you don’t need to be a big corporation to create a wildly successful global Web site; you do, however, need a few thousand very motivated volunteers.

Cisco Systems and Philips both improved their global navigation over the past year, improving their scores. Microsoft recently added a Spanish site for the US market, bringing the number of languages it supports to 40. And American Express supports 29 languages, more than any other financial services company; within the past year, the company added localized sites for Romania and Slovenia.

Although the Web sites on the list reflect a wide range of industries and audience types, you will find they have a number things in common related to Web globalization.

What Makes a Great Global Web Site?
The grading criteria of the The Web Globalization Report Card can be distilled into four best practices:

1. Languages: To reach 80% of the world’s Internet users, you must support at least 10 languages. The best Web sites support many more.
2. Localization: Not only is depth of localized content essential to success, but so is the localization of elements such as search engines, promotions, icons, and photos.
3. Global Navigation: Users must be able to find their local Web sites even if they don’t speak English.
4. Global Consistency: Global design templates not only support the global brand, they are quite simply a lot easier to manage internally.

Languages: Not Standing Still
It wasn’t very long ago that you could call your Web site global when it supported FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish) and Japanese. But rising Internet penetration, the globalization of business, and higher user expectations have given rise to the 30+ language Web site.

While the demand for more languages is hardly surprising, the pace at which many companies are moving is impressive. In the just two years, the following companies have all increased the number of languages they support:

Languages Supported: 2005 to 2007

Based on the Report Card, the average number of languages supported by the 200 Web sites studied is 18 — a 23% increase from 2006. By this time next year the average could very well surpass 20 languages.

Localization: Giving Web Users What They Want
Web localization typically evolves in stages. First, the marketing folks have their way at creating localized Web sites. These mini-sites typically function like brochures — promoting the newest products and services and saying a bit about the company.

The danger with this approach is that the localized Web sites may create the impression that the entire Web sites have been translated, resulting in disappointed users. However, if Web sites are transparent about what they content they support and do not support — the sites have proven to be a positive step forward in Web localization.

Consider Intel’s localized site for France. While a great deal of content is available in French, some content remains in English. Instead of removing the links to the English content, Intel inserts icons to alert the user to English content:

This is a smart strategy because it gives the user a sense of control and also gives bi-lingual users access to all available information, instead of having to jump back and forth between the US and French Web sites.

Rarely do companies translate all of their content for all markets they serve — the costs are simply too high. The emergence of machine translation will certainly help companies fill in these content gaps, but this too will take time. Until then, a tiered approach to Web localization is the way most companies proceed.

A tiered approach to Web localization aligns resources with potential returns. Managing internal as well as external expectations. It also allows a company to get into a market quickly without risking too much upfront.

Provided the Web site does not create the impression that there is more content beneath the marketing facade, these sites can be successful. Companies may use them to test market demand, generate leads for the local sales team, or simply to appease the local sales offices.

Ultimately, companies will need to spend real money on translating lots of content and localizing the applications that consumers want. And this is where the real work begins.

For example, consider the localized room reservation engine at Starwood Hotels. Shown here, you can see a few details that must be addressed in the localization of this application — such as text expansion from English to German and date formats.

The localization of reservation engines, search engines, shopping carts, and order tracking engines are where the best localized sites distance themselves from the competition.

Truly Global Navigation
Localized Web sites are of little value if the Web user cannot find them. Many global companies find that more than half of the traffic to their .com sites originates from outside of their home market. The challenge then becomes one of directing these Web users to their local sites — something that is easier said than done.

A “select country” pull-down menu on the home page isn’t by itself good enough. Here are the major elements a company may employ to direct Web users to local Web sites:

• Country domain name (like .fr for France)
• The splash global gateway
• The permanent global gateway
• Language negotiation
• Geolocation

The splash global gateway and permanent global gateway are illustrated here.

The splash gateway is a valuable device for ensuring that first-time visitors select their locale before they have a chance to get lost. On each country site is a permanent gateway icon that links back to the splash page so Web users can change locale settings at any time.

Nearly 30% of the 200 Web sites studied now deploy splash global gateway pages to direct Web users to local content. At this rate of growth, I expect the number of Web sites using splash gateways to surpass 50% by the end of 2008. What’s the reason for this increase? For starters, a splash global gateway, properly executed, is an excellent navigation tool. Second, as more companies begin supporting 20+ or 30+ country Web sites, they find they cannot get by simply using a pull-down menu.

A splash global gateway is not for everyone. Google, for one, does not use one. However, it does use geolocation and language negotiation to detect the user’s language preference and location so it may seamlessly take the user to a specific localized site.

There is no one perfect global navigation strategy. In fact, as companies add more localized sites, their strategies and evolve as well. But here are three general best practices that all companies should follow:

1. Flags should not be used to indicate language.
2. Language and country names should be presented in their native language and script.
3. Companies should not show favoritism for any country over another.

Global Consistency: Web Designs that Travel
Companies often don’t enter Web globalization thinking that they’ll one day be supporting 100+ local Web sites. As a result, they often do not think about how to develop Web templates that can scale quickly to accommodate many localized sites while remaining easy to manage. It’s much easier to train your global Web team, and share ideas, if everyone is working with the same templates and on the same platform.

As shown here with Apple, a consistent global template allows the company to more efficiently deploy global promotions. Local offices aren’t required to resize images or redesign layouts. The elements need only be localized.

Global design templates are used by all Web sites in the top 10. In fact, nearly half of the Web sites studied for the Report Card either support consistent global templates or are on their way to doing so.

Global templates need not restrict local sites from offering their own content. The best global templates generally reflect less design, that is, fewer elements and minimal screen real estate.

To Become the Best, Study the Best
If there is one key takeaway from this article it is this: If you want to improve your company’s global Web site, look outside of your industry. Web globalization best practices may emerge from anywhere, so it’s always important to study those companies that have done a particularly good job of communicating with the world. From the splash gateway used by Caterpillar to the geolocation used by Google, by keeping an eye outside of your industry, you’ll be better prepared to stay ahead of the competitors within your industry.

Relevant Reports:

The 2007 Web Globalization Report Card

The Art of the Global Gateway

The Brazil Localization Report

The Russia Localization Report

Sun features a blog written by CEO Jonathan Schwartz. What makes this blog unique is that it is translated into 10 languages. It is the only blog that I’m aware of that is translated into so many languages.

Most blogs are more local by nature. That is, they’re written by people in a given country and consist of a fair amount of home-growth content — as opposed to simply translating everything churned out by HQ.

Here are two sites worth checking out: Dell’s Chinese-language blog and Deloitte’s country news feeds.

What I like about in-country blogs is how they give a voice to the local offices. They represent a form of real-time localization — something that merely translating the home page of a corporate Web site cannot accomplish. Naturally, there are plenty of risks associated with starting up in-country blogs — legal, for one — but these can be managed.

Finally, I’ve read a lot of rumors about FeedBurner and any number of companies seeking to buy the company. I use it and so do a growing number of corporations. But what I didn’t realize until writing this article was there is a feature that FeedBurner offers that appeals to companies managing global blogs. They are the localized “Clear Feed” pages. These user-friendly subscription pages save companies from having to translate “How to subscribe” pages on their own. A very nice touch!

Now, back to the newsletter. Here is the TOC for the May/June issue:

- The Best Global Web Sites: Web Globalization Report Card highlight
- Blogging in Tongues: Multilingual blogs and feeds
- TM Meets MT: Notes from the Idiom WorldSummit
- Google Translator Tool: A new Windows widget
- Globalization Briefs: PayPal, VistaPrint
- Vendor News: SDL. GPI, Translations.com
- Map of the World Wide Web

But there are other Web sites that deserve mention.

As part of the report, we grouped the 200 Web sites into 18 industry categories, from automotive to financial services to a small “video games” category.

Here are the best Web sites within each category:

IKEA and Volvo Cars have repeated at the top of their respective categories. Companies new to the top of their categories include Emirates, 3M, Hertz, and Starwood Hotels.

You can see which companies are included in this year’s report here. This has been a particularly exciting report to write because there are some very clear trends developing. There are also a few new entrants to the Top 10 list. Here’s who made the Top 10 list last year.

If you want advance notice of when the report publishes, please be sure to sign up for our free email newsletter: Web Globalization News.

The article is excerpted from our new Local by Design: Brazil Report.

Here’s what else is included in this issue of Global by Design:

Needless to say, the better execs get at demonstrating ROT, the more money they’ll get to spend on translation.
Most executives rely on metrics such as unique visitors, leads, qualified leads, and referrals to local dealer Web sites.

And here’s a new one that I think will help further the cause — the “Translating for Clicks” model.

It’s a simple model, based on the assumption that more Web content generally results in more search engine referrals. I’m talking about organic “free” search engine referrals rather than the paid referrals.

Since marketing teams now pay search engines like Google for referrals, we now have a basis for placing a value on organic search engine referrals driven by translated content. So if we add, say, 100 new pages of translated content, how many additional clicks are we going to get from search engines? And how much are these clicks worth in leads and/or sales generated?

I’ve floated the model past a number of Web services and marketing execs already and the response has been quite positive. The model is another way to unlock the hidden value of translated Web content.

UPDATE: If you do not subscribe to Global by Design and would like access to the model, we now offer it for sale as a Global Brief.

Baidu vs. Google: Round Two

The World According to Wikipedia

Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation

China and Japan: So Close But Yet So Far

McDonald’s Scores with “McRice Burger”

And although this entry is quite new, it’s been very active:

Statistical Machine Translation Gets Real: A Profile of Language Weaver

Our guest articles have also been very well read. Here are the top three:

Scaling a Great Wall: Top 5 Tips for Learning Chinese

Just How Literal Do You Want That Translation?

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Finally, in the completely unrelated category, the most popular entry is my post from Punta Tombo:

Greetings from Punta Tombo!

Must be all those cute penguin photos!

That time appears to be now.

Late last year, Cisco appointed Wim Elfink as the company’s (and America’s) first CGO. Wim will be based out of India and will manage the company’s new Globalization Center East. Wim was previously VP of Customer Advocacy, which is a clear sign that this position is as much about serving customers around the world as it is about development of global products and services.

Growing pains are to be expected, particularly as territory lines are redrawn between the CMO and CIO. But these are details. The big picture has been drawn, and it now includes a CGO.

The CGO is much more than a symbolic gesture. It is a sign of a company that understands that successful globalization begins at the top.

Cisco may the be the first to see the importance of a CGO; it certainly will not be the last.

PS: Here’s a recent AP article on Cisco’s CGO and what it will mean to other companies.

In this issue, we analyze Nike’s new global navigation architecture. Recently, Nike migrated from a country-oriented navigation to a language-oriented navigation, which would appear to be the wrong way to go. Most companies tend to migrate in precisely the opposite direction. Yet I think this move was a good move for Nike, although more changes will be required as Nike adds more localized Web sites. And there are still gaps in the current execution.

There is a larger issue at play here as well that I focus on in the article — the issue of balancing the need for brand Web sites to remain visually independent while still ensuring a consistent global navigation experience for users who may surf between these brand Web sites.

Other topics in this issue include an update on Internet Explorer 7 and whether or not companies should register the new .asia domain that is coming in 2007. We also look at the latest Web globalization moves at ING, Starbucks, E*TRADE, and Deloitte.

If you’re not yet a Global by Design subscriber, you can learn more here.

Earlier this year, we published the third edition of The Web Globalization Report Card, our annual benchmarking of many of the world’s leading corporate Web sites.

For 2006, we expanded our focus to include a number of government and non-profit Web sites, including Wikipedia. We suspected that Wikipedia would score well given its global reach, but we were quite surprised to find it scoring a 93 out of 100, second only to Google, which scored 97.

How did Wikipedia, with a budget of less than half a million dollars, develop a global Web site that scored better in our tests than a host of billion-dollar multinational corporations?

A global network of volunteers, for starters.

But the more we studied Wikipedia — and interviewed the interim executive director Brad Patrick — the more we realized that there were some valuable lessons here that any company could benefit from.
Leading with Language

The home page of Wikipedia is dominated by language links; the languages that support the largest number of articles are most prominent. Wikipedia uses Unicode as the default Web page encoding so that all languages may be displayed in their native script — essential to improving usability. Given the large number of scripts that Wikipedia supports, your browser may display some language names as a series of questions marks or empty boxes — a sign that your computer does not have the required font.

Language –in form of the two-digit language codes — also forms the foundation for the architecture of the Web site. As shown below, the URLs for the “apple” entry from the English and German Wikipedias vary only by language code:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

With a design that is utilitarian in nature, the content becomes king. And it is the content that makes Wikipedia so popular

According to Alexa (www.alexa.com), Wikipedia is the sixteenth most popular global Web site. But the site is even more popular in countries such as Germany and Canada. According to Alexa, here is Wikipedia’s popularity ranking within specific countries:

Country –> Rank
Argentina –> 19
Brazil –> 24
Canada –> 8
Egypt –> 64
France –> 11
Germany –> 6
India –> 16
Japan –> 18
Russia –> 39
US –> 9

There is a rough correlation between depth of content and popularity within a given market.
Q&A With Brad Patrick

Brad Patrick is the interim executive director and general counsel for Wikipedia. We recently spoke with Brad to better understand how Wikipedia works and where it is headed.

Q: Do your non-English Wikipedias consist of original content or content that has been translated from other languages?
A: Both. Our sites are hybrids of original and translated content. It depends upon people’ interests. For example, our Polish wiki features a great deal of original content because of a group of dedicated contributors.

Q: So the amount of content within each language is completely dictated by contributors?
A: Yes. You’re going to see different degrees of content by language. We are not going to orchestrate one size fits all. Even the press releases for the Wikipedia Foundation are handled this way. They are translated into languages according to the willingness of contributors to do so.

Q: What percentage of your traffic is directed toward English-language content?
A: Roughly 60%, and falling.

Q: What has been key to the success of Wikipedia?
A: You have to trust your community. We’re not telling this mass of people what to do. You have to listen to them. This is not a top-down effort but a collaborative effort.

Q: How is Wikipedia supported financially?
A: We have a very strong donor base. Periodically, we conduct fundraising drives; we raised $400,000 in four weeks last year. We are not a membership organization and do not have plans to become one. We are interested in developing institutional support.

Web Globalization Lessons from Wikipedia

What can a global Web services manager learn from Wikipedia? We have identified four attributes of Wikipedia that we believe have relevance even to large multinationals.

1. Keep Content Close to the User
If there is one takeaway from Wikipedia, it is in the power of letting go. Or, in corporate-speak, decentralization.

Because Wikipedia was built from the ground up to rely on its content contributors, it relinquished a high degree of control over content from the start. Content stays close to the user because it is written or translated by the very people who consume the content.

While we do not necessarily advocate turning over the content reins to your customers, we do believe that local employees and partners can and should play an active role in content creation and management. They are generally more in touch with current events in the subtleties of their countries and cultures.

As large companies strive to centralize tools and content, they need to do so gently and tactfully, so as not to dampen the enthusiasm of the local content creators, reviewers, and managers.

The people who create Wikipedia content are a passionate bunch. There are similarly passionate people within large corporations — and it is these types of people who can be ideal for taking a lead role at the local level. The key is in identifying them and giving them the room they need to flourish. It’s all about finding the right balance between chaos and control. Wikipedia seems to have found its balance, and companies can do the same thing.

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