Session ID 71

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Session ID 71

• Web Site Design for International Users

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Table of contents

• 1. Why go global?
• 2. Web design international vs. U.S.
• 3. Ten most common problems
• 4. Best practices for global web design
• 5. Questions and answers

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Why go global?

• To offer the same quality of online experiences
  to customers worldwide, regardless of their
  country, language, cultural preferences, or legal
  requirements.

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Why go global?

• 2nd Internet revolution
• Over the past decade, U.S. organizations have
  built domestic web presence
  
• Business globalization is driving need for
  international web presence
  
• English speakers, U.S. users are a minority on
  the web

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Why go global?
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Why go global?

• Who is online audience?

• Customers international ethnic
• Branding
• Marketing
• Online commerce

• Partners suppliers international ethnic
• Development partners
• Enterprise Resource Planning
• Supply chain
• Market places exchanges

• Your employees international ethnic
• Human resources
• Operations
• Enterprise Information Portal (EIP)

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Why go global?

• Which markets?
• Think markets instead of countries
  (Switzerland, Canada)
  
• Prioritize markets not all at once
• 3 Ps
• Portability
• Politics
• People
• source e-Business Advisor

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Why go global?

• The 3 Ps in action
• source e-Business Advisor

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Web design international vs. U.S.

• Why cant they all just speak English?

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Web design international vs. U.S.

• While some things dont change...
• Design for lowest common denominator in browser,
  screen resolution
  
• Make key functions easy to find
• Develop templates
• Ensure that pages print legibly in black and
  white
  

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Web design international vs. U.S.

• ...there are important differences
• Terminal-to-user ratios
• Internet access and bandwidth
• Language issues
• Cultural considerations
• Technology adaptation
• Laws and regulations

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Web design international vs. U.S.
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Web design international vs. U.S.
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Web design international vs. U.S.
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Ten most common problems

• Build it and they will come

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Ten most common problems

• 10. Too personal
• Outside of U.S., keep business materials formal
• In Japan, dont address people by first name
  (typically, use last name followed by san)
  
• Welcome back, Frank doesnt work well in some
  parts of Switzerland
  

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Ten most common problems

• 9. Running afoul of local laws
• Not just regulated industries
• Privacy concerns, especially in Europe
• Trade rules cant sell Apple G4 to Cuba or Nazi
  paraphernalia on European sites
  
• Health laws U.S. Agriculture Dept. bans import
  of raw-milk cheeses

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Ten most common problems

• 9. Running afoul of local laws (contd) Cultural
  regulations
  
• In Quebec, Photographer Michael Calomiris found
  it is illegal to run a commercial web site in
  English. For that matter, one cant run a site in
  any other language unless the author also
  provides the same content in French. Now he faces
  a fine equivalent to US477, which doubles every
  time he receives another citation and refuses to
  comply.
• Source Wired News, June 8, 1999,www.wired.com/n
  ews/news/email/explode-infobeat/politics/story/200
  82.html

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Ten most common problems

• 8. Cumbersome site architecture
• File naming and organization
• Inconsistent naming of files and directories fr
  vs. french vs. fre
  
• Use international standards for
• country codes http//www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/i
  so3166ma/codlstp1/db_en.html
  
• language codeshttp//www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso
  639.htm

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Ten most common problems

• 7. U.S.-centric world view
• One size fits all approach
• Measurements metric system is standard
• Paper format most of world uses A4
• Dates international norm is yyyy-mm-dd
• Time most countries use 24-hour clock
• No internationalization translatable items are
  not separated from code

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Ten most common problems

• 6. Poor foreign-language support
• Not using character entities such as eacute
  instead of é
  
• ?or EUR?
• Support/dont support Unicode? Issues include
  mdash vs. vs. 151
  
• Forms cant handle double-byte data entry
• Email servers reject double-byte messages

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Ten most common problems

• 6. Poor foreign-language support (contd)
• Lack of hard spaces
• Unedited machine translations

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(No Transcript)
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Ten most common problems

• 5. Navigation in partially localized sites
• Translated link that pull up English text
• Mixing translated and English content
• Causes user confusion
• Solution translate contained sub-section

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Ten most common problems

• Two examples

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Ten most common problems

• 4. Assume one userone computer
• U.S. sites are multi-layered to optimize
  subdivision, classification, chunking of data
  
• U.S. designers encourage scanning as opposed to
  reading
  
• Doesnt work Japanese users often do not have
  always-on Internet access and prefer to print
  content for offline reading
  

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Ten most common problems

• 3. Poor international gateway
• Country vs. region vs. language
• Flags as language identifiers
• Hard-to-find international section
• No standard for top-level international sites
• yahoo.co.jp (but chinese.yahoo.com)
• siebel.com/japanese/
• autobytel-japan.com

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Ten most common problems
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Ten most common problems
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Ten most common problems
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Ten most common problems

• 2. U.S. look and feel
• Some icons dont travel well, e.g., shopping
  cart
  
• Colors in Japan, white is associated with
  funerals
  
• Text-embedded GIFs such as navigational menus
  (layered graphic files may not even be available)

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Ten most common problems

• 2. U.S. look and feel (contd)
• Everything but the kitchen sink

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Ten most common problems
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Ten most common problems

• 1. Pages too heavy
• Usually caused by too many graphics
• If you are going to create a heavy, slow site,
  you better make it worth the wait
  
• In some regions of the world, getting a 28.8K
  modem connection is a challenge

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Ten most common problems

• 1. Pages too heavy (contd)
• Beware of
• Vertical creep due to mergers or added product
  lines
  
• Unnecessary graphics (Lycos home page uses only
  4 graphics and loads in seconds)
  
• Unnecessary functionality, e.g., scripting to
  create graphics that move with cursor
  

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Best practices for global web design

• One size does not fit all...but there are proven
  strategies and tactics

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Best practices for global web design

• 1. Develop business case
• Why are we doing this and how do we expect this
  effort to benefit us? Dont proceed until you
  have a convincing answer to this question.
  
• Calculate return on investment
• In down markets, globalization projects without
  measurable ROI will be canceled!

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Best practices for global web design

• 1. Develop business case (contd)
• Clearly understand the rationale behind offering
  multiple languages to site visitors
  
• Generate international sales and develop new
  markets?
  
• Part of a global marketing and branding effort?
• How important is it to offer support to
  international users?

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Best practices for global web design

• 2. Define roles and responsibilities
• Build core team
• Leadership rest with one person
• Obtain management buy-in
• Involve in-country staff but beware the
  affiliate trap

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Best practices for global web design

• 3. Internationalize before you localize
• Separate code from content
• Layer Function
• Code The engine of the site
• UI The look and feel
• Content The information
• Applies to dynamic and static content, text
  graphics scripts

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Best practices for global web design

• 3. Internationalize (contd)
• Examples
• 1. files
• 2. Use background GIF position text on top of
  it
  
• 
  idth80"Text on Top
  
• 3. Character encoding for forms, drop-down lists
• charsetUTF-8"

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Best practices for global web design

• 4. Develop a design specification
• Localization kit and style guide
• Develop templates for regions, similar sites
• Define guidelines for the use of
• Character entities
• Guillemets ( )
• Hard spaces

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Best practices for global web design
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Best practices for global web design

• 5. Comprehensive market/language strategy
• Treat language viewed separate from market
  served, e.g., German native working in Spain
  
• British Airways example
• Market/language matrix
• Local content control
• Common look
• Unified gateway (domains link to /regional/)

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Best practices for global web design
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Best practices for global web design

• 6. Determine your localization strategy
• Start with easy markets, e.g., Ireland as
  stepping stone to France
  
• One language at a time
• Fine-tune strategy lessons learned will save you
  time and money

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Best practices for global web design

• 6. Localization strategy (contd)
• Workflow for content creation, translation,
  review, publishing
  
• Maintenance strategy regular or ad-hoc?
  automated or manual?
  
• Business rules

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Best practices for global web design

• 7. Select appropriate suppliers and partners
• Content management systems
• Globalization management systems
• Designer who understands target audience,
  culture
  
• Specialized localization vendor

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Best practices for global web design

• 8. Design for performance
• Aim for quick download time
• Dont use frames
• Dont use animation
• Dont use audio or video

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Best practices for global web design

• 9. Integrate online and traditional efforts
• Support, service
• Marketing, branding
• Sales, fulfillment
• Determine multilingual staffing requirements

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Best practices for global web design

• 10. Measure results
• Develop appropriate metrics for your
  organization
  
• Cost savings
• Revenue generation
• Customer satisfaction
• Ensure future funding!

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Best practices for global web design

• 11. Usability testing
• Dont assume that HQ staff knows needs,
  attitudes, experiences, and expectations of local
  users
  
• Validate your decisions with local knowledge
• Test, test, test!

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Questions and answers

• Andres HeubergerForeignExchange Translations,
  Inc.andresh_at_fxtrans.com401.454.0787
  
• www.MultilingualWebmaster.com
• www.fxtrans.com/resources/