Category Archives: Reports

The Top 25 Global Web Sites of 2011

Posted on by

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card. This year, we reviewed 250 web sites across 25 industries. The web sites represent nearly half of the Fortune 100 and nearly all of the Interbrand Global 100.

Out of these 250 sites, here are the top 25 overall:

Google, which has held the number one spot for years, was unseated by Facebook this year. Facebook’s recent innovations (multilingual social plugins, improved global gateway, multilingual user profiles) gave it the edge. (I’ve devoted a separate report to Facebook’s innovations.)

Companies like 3M, Cisco, Philips, and NIVEA have become regular faces in the top 25. But there are some new faces as well. There are five companies new this year to the top 25: Volkswagen, Adobe, Shell, Skype, and DHL.

Although these 25 web sites represent a wide range of industries, they all share a high degree of global consistency and impressive support for languages. They average 58 languages — which is more than twice the average for all 250 sites reviewed.

The average number of languages supported by  all 250 web sites is 23, up from 22 last year. As the visual below illustrates, language growth over the years has been amazing. Seven years ago, I was thrilled to find a web site with more than 20 languages. Today, 20 languages is below average.

Language is just one element of web globalization, but it is the most visible element. When a company adds a language, it is making its global expansion plans known. If you want to know where your competitors are betting on growth, spend some time looking at their local web sites. More than twenty companies added four or more languages over the past 12 months.

Fast-growing languages on the Internet include Hungarian, Turkish, Indonesian, and Russian. Here is where Russian stands today — now found on nearly 8 of 10 web sites:

In the Report Card, languages account for 25% of a web site’s score. We also evaluate a web site’s depth and breadth of local content, the effectiveness of the global gateway, and overall global consistency. Beginning in 2010, we have also begun tracking how companies promote local social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter around the world. Our goal was not only to highlight the leaders in language but to identify those web sites and services that were globally “well rounded” as well as innovative.

The top 25 web sites are not perfect. The Report Card details many ways these sites could be improved (including Facebook and Google). That said, the executives who manage these web sites and services deserve a great deal of credit. As someone who has worked as both a consultant and an employee at companies such as these, I know how challenging it can be to get the funding to add languages and staff and to educate various teams on the many complexities of web globalization. While it may be the company names that appear on the top 25 list, it is the hundreds of passionate and bright people who got them there.

Congratulations!

Is Apple giving up on flags?

Posted on by

Apple has been using flags as part of its global gateway for many years.

In 2006, Apple’s global gateway was positioned in the footer and featured a different flag for each country web site:

Today, Apple has done away with the pull-down menu, but not the globe. Look to the right of the footer of Apple.com and you’ll see this:

But Apple recently moved away from using flags on its online store, perhaps a sign of things to come, shown below:

The flags have been replaced with plain text links.

I’m not saying that Apple is wrong for using flags. Apple does not make the mistake of using flags to indicate language. Flags are only used to indicate countries and regions.

But flags do not scale well.

Flags worked better when Apple supported fewer than 20 localized site. But Apple is clearly in scale mode, adding stores in countries around the world. Plain text links add less overhead (in bytes) than images and, more important, are easier for people to scan than a blur of flags that mostly share the same basic colors.

Consider the page below, also from Apple. I don’t believe this sea of colors amounts to any sort of usability gain. In fact, if you look closely you’ll see some faux flags created for “Other Asia” and “Latin America.”

I don’t hate flags. Really, I don’t.

But as I write in The Art of the Global Gateway, flags have many inherent limitations — from geopolitical to practical. And because flags do not scale well I think that Apple will eventually (largely) give them up.

Calling all translation agencies (or language service providers)

Posted on by

We are kicking off production of an updated edition of the popular Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies.

We want to include agencies representing a wide range of specialities and sizes.

If you’d like to participate, send an email with the subject line “Savvy Client’s Guide” to reports@bytelevel.com.

When will the “age gateway” retire?

Posted on by

Smashing Magazine has an entertaining piece on the Unusable and Superficial World of Beer and Alcohol Websites.

The “age gateway” was a topic I wrote about a year ago and I’m glad to see others chime in on the sheer futility and stupidity of the device.

I mean, really, does this little gateway really keep out the underage?

coors-gateway

Or does it simply load up a database with millions of people born on 1/1/>21 years?

I don’t believe there was any Supreme Court ruling that mandated age gateways, was there?

No. I think it was lawyers at one or two large breweries that got this thing started. And the rest of the alcohol producers just followed along. Better to be safe than sorry right?

That is, until one of the breweries removes the gateway — or vastly simplifies it — and doesn’t get sued.

And, more important, get significantly higher numbers of repeat visitors.

I’m already seeing signs of alcohol producers simplifying the gateway. As the Smashing Magazine article notes, there is the age gateway of Christiania Vodka which simply asks Are you over 21 years of age?

Users click Yes or No.

Simple.

And sure to be copied by others.

The lesson here is to be careful what “standard” design elements and gateways you choose to replicate on your site. There are design standards of course, such as the ubiquitous shopping cart icon, which we can safely assume that consumers are well accustomed to using. But not all design elements should be replicated. Just because the major breweries all require users to painstakingly enter their dates of birth does not mean this is a best practice.

I predict that a year from now we’ll see a dramatic shift towards the more user-friendly Yes/No model demonstrated by Christiania Vodka.

Best practices sometimes emerge from the fringes. I’ve seen similar trends in web globalization. Google, for example, was the first company to openly solicit volunteers to help it localize its web site — way back in 2002. Today, it’s safe to say that translation crowdsourcing has gone mainstream.

The 2010 Web Globalization Report Card is now in development. It will be interesting to see what new trends — both good and bad — have emerged and are still emerging.