Category Archives: Web Globalization

Learning from the world’s leading travel websites

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I wrote an article for UX Magazine (based on my research for Lionbridge) that highlights global best practices in the travel industry.

Travelers want websites that travel with them
In the travel industry, your customers are mobile. If you greet them with a “select country” pull-down menu, they might wonder if you’re asking for their home country, departing country, or destination country. Which means you need to invest a great deal of planning into your global gateway.

More important, you need to offer users a consistent language experience across any device they may be using. It’s a mystery to me why a company will localize its website into 30 languages and only localize its mobile app into five or six languages (I’ve seen many instances of this).The irony here is that mobile apps, if developed properly, can be localized more cost effectively than websites.

The linguistic “syncing” of websites, mobile sites, and apps is a hot topic among many of the companies I’ve spoken with this year — across all industries. Given the rise of Internet usage on mobile devices, it’s fair to say that all Internet users want websites that travel with them.

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.

ADP’s global gateway combines globe and flag icons

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Payroll services company ADP demonstrates that you don’t necessarily have to choose between using a flag icon or using a globe icon on your global gateway.

As shown below, the company uses both:

And here is the Brazil home page:

I don’t typically recommend using both a globe icon and a map icon. I believe a globe icon alone is sufficient.

But if you have to choose between using neither or both, choose both.

For more on global gateways, check out the book.

Global gateway notes: Guidewire, Google, Locaria

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One of the many things I love about global gateways is that I never stop discovering new ones.

Here are notes on a few gateways I’ve stumbled across over the past few weeks.

Let’s begin with a gateway that exhibits a classic rookie mistake:

I’m sure you spotted it right away — flags should never be used to indicate language.

Companies that use flags in this manner tend to be companies that are just getting started with web localization. In some cases, these flags come packaged as widgets (usually combined with a Google Translate backend).  I’ve come to believe that this is just one of these practices that companies have to grow out of.  And most do, over time.

 

Guidewire

Guidewire’s gateway wisely does not use flags. And it is also perfectly positioned in the upper righthand corner of the web site.

But when you click on the pull-down menu, you see an inconsistently displayed list of languages.


Notice how French and German are in their native languages, but Japanese and Chinese are not.

I’ve noticed a number of global gateways in which the Asian scripts are not presented in their native scripts. Years ago, this was because the web team didn’t want to specify Unicode on the home page. Today, however, I view this largely as an oversight. Interestingly, the Guidewire China web site features a globe icon next to its gateway. Looking ahead, I’d love to see this icon added to the .com site as well.

 

Google Plus

Speaking of globe icons, I discovered this icon at the bottom of the Google Plus home page:


As for the menu itself, the languages are natively presented, which is always nice to see:

But pull-down menus are not all that pleasant to scroll through when they’re long, and this one is indeed quite long. Interestingly, Google already has an alternative to the pull-down menu in place on YouTube (here’s an excerpt from the language menu):

Instead of a pull-down menu, YouTube uses an overlay, which bypasses the scrolling issue. I’ve been told that Google is working hard to merge these disparate global gateways into a seamless and user-friendly whole. Perhaps we’ll see progress by the end of this year.

 

Locaria

Translation agencies should be expected to provide user-friendly multilingual navigation. And while this approach by Locaria isn’t the most scalable, it’s visually engaging and, fun to toy with. I imagine it’s a great device for making potential clients aware of all the languages the company supports.

Have you encountered any must-see gateways lately? If so, let me know!