Category Archives: US Hispanic Market

Some companies have given up on Spanish for the US

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I’ve been revisiting a number of the websites that at one point were localized specifically for Spanish speakers in the US.

And now I’m finding dead links.

Home Depot had a site located at homedepotespanol.com and Lowe’s had one at www.lowes.com/spanish. Both of those sites are now gone. Both companies do maintain site specific to Mexico, which makes the absence of US Spanish websites even more curious.

UPDATE: Joe Kutchera noted that Lowe’s has NOT abandoned their Spanish site; but they did change URLs and failed to redirect the old address. The new address is http://es.lowes.com.

The pet food company Iams once hosted a localized site at www.iams.com/es_US. That links is now dead as well and I can’t find any replacement.

Visit WalgreensEspanol.com and you’ll see this message:

Which more or less says: Welcome to Walgreens; this site has been deactivated. Good luck with that.

Fortunately, there are still numerous websites out there that do offer Spanish for the US, such as FedEx and Holiday Inn.

I’m not suggesting that there is a larger trend of companies abandoning the US Spanish-speaking market. If anything, the trend points towards greater investment; I’ve spoken with numerous companies this year who are planning their initial US Spanish sites in 2012. And there are many websites out there that have for years supported Spanish for the US, ranging from FedEx to Holiday Inn.

Nevertheless, some companies appear to have abandoned their US Spanish efforts, at least on the web. And this is unfortunate, not just because of the wasted resources but for fact that they will no doubt be launching US Spanish sites again some day. Any company that is serious about the US consumer market simply cannot afford to ignore this audience.

And there is a lesson here as well. Although most companies that launch localized web sites rarely retreat, some do. To avoid this fate, it’s important to have clear, measurable goals for your localized sites. Don’t just do it because everyone else is doing it. Always assume that there is someone within your company who would love to slash your budget in favor of some other initiative (as there probably is someone). I often say that localization is a journey without end. But sometimes these journeys do end, at least temporarily.

Latino Link: Q&A with author Joe Kutchera

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Hispanics make up about 15% of the US population, or 45 million people. Not only is this group growing at a faster pace than the national average, but its spending power is poised to reach $1.3 billion by 2014.

With that in mind, Joe Kutchera’s new book — Latino Link: Building Brands Online with Hispanic Communities and Content — is very well timed. Joe built some of Time Warner’s leading web properties including CNNExpansion in Mexico and CNNMoney, ThisOldHouse.com, and Warner Bros. Online in the U.S.

His book contains a mix of case studies, data and trends, and expert interviews (including yours truly). Anyone who thinks targeting the Latino community is simply a matter of translation would be wise to read this book. You can download a sample chapter on social media from Joe’s web site. Joe will also be conducting a webinar on the book with Lionbridge later this month.

Here’s a brief Q&A with Joe…

What are the most common mistakes that marketers make when connecting to Latinos online?
One, when you decide to enter the Hispanic or Latin American markets, make a long-term commitment and stick with it. Don’t launch a web site and then exit after the first problem. For example, The Home Depot launched a site in Spanish for U.S. Hispanics and only four months later shut the site down because so many Latin Americans found the site and wanted to make purchases. In contrast, Best Buy found a similar situation but instead accepted international credit cards and encouraged Latin Americans to shop on its U.S. Hispanic site and pick up in-store when Latin Americans were on holiday in the United States.

Two, don’t just offer a straight translation, try to offer culturally customized content for your target Hispanic audience in addition to the translated content. This may include user-generated reviews, custom videos, or additional new sections of content. You will of course want to double check translations with native speakers.

Can marketers successfully launch pan-regional content sites with no or very little local fine tuning?
 Marketers that want to target wealthy Latin Americans could successfully launch a pan-regional site. Why? The wealthy of each country have far more in common with each other than they have in common with their fellow countrymen. They travel internationally. They speak English. They are well-educated (and many have studied abroad). They own fancy watches and cars. That demographic presents a unique opportunity for a successful pan-regional site in Latin America.

And what mass sites are popular pan-regionally? Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Terra, and a handful of other sites. Each of those features an extensive amount of local fine tuning and personalization. A website can only expand globally today by incorporating those tactics as online markets become much more sophisticated. Many localization features can be automated. In addition, most global sites now enable users to personalize how they experience a site by entering their own personal profile information. User generated content can compliment local editorial customization as well.

You write that Latinos cross virtual borders to find relevant and engaging content online. Who owns all the great content In Spanish online today?
As the saying goes, “content is king.” And content from one’s country of origin can act as a gigantic magnet, attracting consumers back to Mexico virtually. The major newspapers in Latin America (e.g. El Universal, El Tiempo, Clarin, etc) see anywhere from 10-40% of their visitors from the U.S. They own a good chunk of the quality content in Spanish online today.

If you love Mexican soccer teams, the best place to find the latest news about them may be from MedioTiempo.com in Mexico City, for example. Because both Hispanic and Latin American audiences tend to be younger, many of them blog or use Twitter, so you can find a lot of content on the social networks.

The reverse is also true. Many Latin Americans look to the U.S. for the latest technology and fashion trends for example. Therefore, they visit U.S. sites in English and Spanish to get that information.

In the final sections of your book, you look at two models for distribution on the Web: Facebook and Google.  What are the relative merits of each, and what can will come next?
This issue boils down to the following: do you want one global “.com” site like Facebook where users customize their online experience with their relationships and personal interests? Or does your company want to manage one country-specific website for each country you do business in? There are pluses and minuses for each. Latino Link outlines the technical recommendations. But underneath it all, it boils down to the web becoming more collectivistic and global and less country-oriented.

ENDNOTE: Latino or Hispanic — which term is correct?
It depends on whom you ask. Joe writes that it’s a matter of personal preference. The US government uses the term Hispanic, though many people use the term Latino. He uses the terms interchangeably, and I find that I do as well.

Link: Latino Link: Building Brands Online with Hispanic Communities and Content

US Hispanics love the Internet, but not localized web sites

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I came across an interesting presentation today via Carla Briceno. The survey, sponsored by AOL and conducted by Cheskin, was based on interviewing more than a thousand Hispanic households across the US about how they view and use the Internet.

First some data points. Looking ahead at the 2010 census:

  • 50 Million Hispanics will be living in the US
  • Nearly one in six US residents will be Hispanis
  • Los Angeles County is expected to be home to the largest Hispanic population in the US – exceeding that of Costa Rica

Two slides jumped out at me. The first slide noted:

Only 3% of respondents found Spanish language sites more trustworthy and useful than those in English, leaving an important percentage of the Hispanic segment feeling underserved.

Why? Because all too often localized Hispanic sites are simply literal translations of the English sites. And these web users want much more than literal translation. After all, most of them can migrate easily between English and Spanish sites.

So what exactly do they want from the Spanish sites?

The following slide sums it up:

You can download the survey here.

Google Adwords unavailable (in 17 languages)

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I tried to login to Google Adwords recently and was met with the following “temporarily unavailable” Web page:

Google Adwords in 17 languages

The page illustrates one of the many the challenges of managing a Web site that supports so many languages. Even something supposedly as simple as this temporary page is not quite so simple. There are a whopping 17 languages on this page — from Chinese to German to Japanese.

Google generally does a very good job of “guessing” the Web user’s language through a combination of geolocation and browser language detection — and then providing users with their matching language. But in this case Google simply slapped up a “one-size-fits-most” Web page — which is a lot of visual noise.

And even with 17 languages, the page comes up a bit short in serving all Adwords users — as Google Adwords supports more than 35 languages.

What’s the lesson here? That when it comes to Web globalization, no detail is too small — including those details such as error strings, 404 pages, and “temporarily unavailable” pages.