About this Author
John Yunker is founder of Byte Level Research and author of the widely acclaimed book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies and editor of Global By Design. He has covered the emerging field of Web globalization for half a decade and has published a wide range of reports dedicated to best practices in Web localization and internationalization.
About this blog
Going Global focuses on the risks and rewards of expanding into new geographic and cultural markets, from Web globalization to international marketing to global usability.
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November 24, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I was happy to see a press release from comScore Networks illustrating in raw numbers what many Webmasters have been telling me privately over the years -- that more than half of their Web traffic is coming from outside of the US.
The comScore study found that "14 of the top 25 U.S. Web properties attract more traffic from people outside the U.S. than from within."
What comScore did was look at total traffic numbers for these Web sites and then split out US-only visitors to get at the percentage of non-US visitors.
Which sites have the most non-US visitors?
Google and Wikipedia
Roughly 80% of their visitors live outside the US, a percentage that will only increase in the years ahead.
This trend is a major reason why multinationals have been investing heavily in Web localization. That's where all the growth is.
And it's not sheer coincidence that the top two ranked global Web sites in our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card also happen to be Google and Wikepedia. These two properties came out on top because they have done the most to attract a global audience. Both Google and Wikipedia support more than a hundred languages and offer a wealth of localized content within those languages.
Will companies like Nike and Starbucks one day support more than a hundred languages on their Web sites?
Possibly.
Forty languages?
Absolutely. It's just a matter of time -- and a matter of numbers.
I'll leave you with a parting quote from comScore:
“As Internet usage outside the U.S. has grown rapidly from a small base, the U.S. share of the world’s online population has fallen from 65 percent to less than 25 percent in the last 10 years,” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe. “The fact that more than three-quarters of the traffic to Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft is now coming from outside of the U.S. is indicative of what a truly global medium the Internet has become.”
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November 14, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
While J.K. Rowling may have the most global of author Web sites, you don't have to be a billionaire author to develop one these days.
Here's an excerpt from theMiami Herald on one author's adventures in Web globalization:
Publicity departments are too small and stretched too thin,'' author Joseph Finder (High Crimes, Company Man, Paranoia) said in a telephone interview from his Boston office.
...
''I paid for my website [josephfinder.com], hired someone to design it and someone else to run it. It's impossible to gauge, but I see more and more response from reviewers, journalists and booksellers, and readers communicate with me, too,'' he said. ``Everyone likes to get inside information and have a connection.''
Making that connection also includes putting up special websites in countries where his books sell especially well, such as the Netherlands.
The Web globalization market for new and established authors could make a nice niche for some enterprising translation agency...
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November 7, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Jupiter Research and Akamai have published a free report that reminds retailers that a fast-loading Web site still matters.
Says the Tekrati article, "Four seconds is the maximum length of time an average online shopper will wait for a Web page to load before potentially abandoning a retail site."
A slow-loading site is second only to high prices in turning away potential shoppers.
A fast-loading Web site is as much a part of a company's brand as the products it sells.
This issue is even more of an issue for companies that support Web sites in countries that don't have widespread broadband penetration. Should a company use the same bandwidth-hungry Web site in Brazil, with less than 10% broadband penetration, that it uses within the US?
This is a question every company must ask as it goes global.
A company's Web localization strategy must take into account the Internet connection speed of the target users. And it also must take into account that Google is successful in many markets outside the US, which means that users around the world have come to expect lightweight, fast-loading Web sites.
For the 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, we "weighed" the home pages of 300 global Web sites. While this does not take into account whether or not that company relies on a partner like Akamai to accelerate Web content delivery, it does shed light on which companies have done the most on their end to keep their Web sites fast-loading. So here are the top 10:
1 Google (www.google.com)
2 Kijiji (www.kijiji.com)
3 Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue (www.jonesday.com)
4 PayPal www.paypal.com)
5 Wyeth (www.wyeth.com)
6 Manpower (www.manpower.com)
7 AT&T (www.att.com0
8 ST Microelectronics (www.st.com)
9 John Deere (www.deere.com)
10 National (www.national.com)
Google came in at just 13 kilobytes. Most Web sites average around 175 kilobytes. A few of the sites we measured, we won't name names, came in at more than a megabyte each.
So if you want to provide a fast-loading Web site, keep it under 150 kilobytes to keep it ahead of the pack. These top 10 Web sites all came in under 100 kilobytes.
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September 13, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Global superstars, like global companies, are realizing that it's not enough to launch an English-only Web site. If you want to truly speak to the world you need a multilingual Web site.
Take Beyoncé.
Even though her songs are in English her Web site has been localized, to varying degree, for eight countries.
This site is clearly a work in progress. Flags are used for navigation and the French and Italian flags don't work yet. And why they used "Holland" instead of "Netherlands" seems a bit odd -- perhaps it was a spacing decision.The local sites do not use a global design template, which would have made for an easier rollout of the new album promotional elements.
Still, there are some nice touches. For instance, the Japanese site features an interview using Japanese subtitles. And if you visit the German site you'll find a link to iTunes Germany to purchase songs.
Beyoncé Germany
Now, because this is a link to the German iTunes store, you'll need a German user account to make a purchase. For those of us in the US, we're going to see this little error message if we select the link...
Why can't iTunes sell songs across borders? Because the record industry won't allow it. Although Beyoncé is ahead of most of her peers in Web globalization, there are still some limits to how far you can go.
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August 29, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
So said Disney president Bob Iger in his earnings call last month. Here’s the text…
“In fiscal 2007, we will launch a wholly redesigned Disney.com that will capitalize on the unique strength of the Disney brand and content. This is in addition to our robust entertainment offerings from our other vertical sites, ESPN 360 and ABC.com. So across our entire portfolio, we will emphasize entertainment, commerce and community. We also will continue to invest in our core Disney-branded content for television and other platforms around the world. We see increased development of high-quality branded content to markets outside the United States as an important long-term brand and profit-building opportunity for us. Creative and brand strength, the application of technology and globalization are the central elements of our strategy.”
The question is: Will Disney redesign with Web globalization in mind? The redesign stage is the ideal time for a company to craft a Web site that can scale to accomodate multiple locales and languages.
Disney has performed poorly in our annual Web Globalization Report Card. In 2006, the Disney.com site ranked 274 out of 300. Disney property ESPN faired even worse at 284. So there is plenty of room for improvement across the board.
The most important improvement Disney can make is to employ a global design template that all countries can work within. This template should be largely text based, to provide for fast-loading Web pages. That’s not to say that Disney can’t use lots of rich media; just that the global template should be optimized for speed. Currently, there are loads of text embedded within visuals for little reason other than because the designer wanted to display a specific font.
Global navigation should also be improved so that no matter where users land on the site, or what language they speak, they can easily find their way to where they want to go.
This is the time for Disney to improve its global Web strategy. I’ll keep an eye on the site and report back in 2007…
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August 28, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Perhaps I'm a curmudgeon, but I don't want to give up my old Yahoo! Web site for the "new and improved" Yahoo! that is coming -- whether I like it or not -- on September 1st.
Every day they remind me that the new site is coming, that my old site is being "retired." Makes me feel like I'm being retired.
I'm not trying to be difficult. I've tried the new site. I just don't think it's much better. I don't like having the navbar on the left side of the page. I used to be able to click on Yahoo! Sports with my eyes closed; now I have to fumble down an endless list of icons.
However, despite what I think about the new design, I do have to give Yahoo! credit for taking this design global quickly. While most companies may take up to a year to roll out a new design across all country sites, Yahoo! is off to a blistering start.
Here is the new design in Brazil...
And Korea...
China has sorta migrated over to the new design...
At least Japan is still old school.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before Yahoo! Japan meets its redesign.
As for me, I'm not giving in easily. I've got a few days left of Yahoo 1.0 and I'm going to refuse every day to opt in to the new design. No, I'm holding out until the end.
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July 25, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
eBay, despite doing business in more than 20 countries, still earns the bulk of its revenues from US sellers, folks who have been increasingly unhappy about steadily increasing listing fees. When eBay North America president Bill Cobb confirmed recently that eBay wasn't charging transaction fees to sellers in China, sellers in the US were none too pleased.
Om Malik has a good take on the situation, one that underscores the transparency of Web globalization and the importance of treating all markets equally.
Of course, no company treats all markets exactly the same. Bigger markets get more attention. And eBay needs to grow quickly in China. While eBay's marketplace revenues in the US dipped this last quarter, international revenues more than made up for the slack. eBay is playing catch-up in China and believes that it needs to lower the barriers to sellers in a market that is extremely price resistant.
So does this mean eBay must start charging sellers in China exactly what it charges sellers in the US?
Not necessarily. Every market is different and will require a different strategy. And emerging markets will generally get subsidized by developed markets.
While any fee increase is going to anger sellers, I wonder if eBay could have mitigated the damage somewhat by helping US sellers understand what it was trying to accomplish in China -- and what it is up against in this market.
I think the larger issue here is lack of cultural communication. On absolute terms, US sellers and Chinese sellers are not being treated equally. But most sellers in China can't expect to see the revenues that sellers in the US are currently seeing. And there is a cultural resistance in China to conducting transactions online. Americans don't seem to have much of an issue with online transactions; but not so in China. And competition in this market is ruthless. How can eBay succeed if competitors aren't charging transaction fees?
The issue isn't about eBay stealing from one market to subsidize another market, but about localizing strategy (and pricing) for each market.
What if eBay doesn't succeed in China? Will sellers in the US ultimately suffer from fewer potential buyers? Or, will sellers in the US benefit from fewer competitors?
The major lesson I take from this is that if you can't treat every country equally, at least do a darn good job of educating every country as to your reasons why.
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June 29, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has chosen "Egypt as its first outpost in the Arab world because it is the most populous country in the region, with 78 million people and 5.2 million Internet users. Google estimates 50 million people in the region will be online by 2009."
But there is still a lack of content in Arabic on the Internet. Google says that less than 1% of all Internet content is in English.
But I am seeing content growth as far as multinationals are concerned. In our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, 46 of the 300 companies analyzed offered some degree of Web content in Arabic, roughly 16%. While this is low, it's up from the 10% we found in 2005.
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June 22, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Wikipedia came in second in our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card for a number of reasons. Not only does it offer content in more than 100 languages, it does a good job of managing content expectations.
It does not hide how much content it offers in each language. In fact, it tells you upfront how many articles it offers, such as 168,000+ articles in Swedish and 143,000+ articles in Português.
As shown below, Wikipedia groups all languages by the amount of content supported by each. It's the long tail in action.
How many corporate Web sites are transparent about how much content they offer in each language? Would users benefit from knowing that a site offers 50,000 Web pages in English but only 500 pages in Russian?
Successful Web globalization is all about managing expectations. Users can be very forgiving about sites that aren't fully localized -- but they can be equally dismissive of sites that create the impression that they offer more localized content than they actually do.
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June 21, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
A pull-down menu is not the ideal solution for global gateways. For starters, it doesn't scale well. If you offer ten or fewer country Web sites, a pull-down menu might work okay, but anything beyond that and you're asking a number of users to do a bit of scrolling.
The scrolling issue becomes particularly apparent when a menu includes 100+ countries. which is often the case on "select your country" input forms. Sorted alphabetically, countries like the US and UK are going to fall near the bottom of this list. Which is why some organizations bump these countries to the top of the list. This is an unfortunate solution, as it tells the rest of the world that a specific country is more important than the others.
I recently visited a non-profit organization in the UK and had to select my country. Sure enough, the UK was at the top of the list while I had to do a bit of scrolling to find my country.
So what's the alternative? Geolocation is one approach -- in which you guesstimate the user's country -- an approach that is roughly 95% successful. You can also present a pop-up map with countries grouped by region so the user can quickly select his or her country.
If you must use a pull-down menu, just don't play favorites.
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Posted by John Yunker
According to TechCrunch, MySpace could launch a half-dozen non-English Web sites as early as this summer. Says the blog, "MySpace co-founder and chief executive Chris DeWolfe was quoted by the Financial Times yesterday and said that the first localized, non-English versions of MySpace will be available this summer. The company has designated 11 countries to target, naming specifically only France, German, China and India."
Here's the current MySpace global gateway:
It will be interesting to see how MySpace's gateway evolves to handle the additional sites.
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June 15, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Google News has added Arabic to its portfolio of 35 localized sites. This site takes a language-specific approach to the news rather than country-specific approach.
It's getting a little crowded at the bottom of each News page...
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June 3, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I'm off to Chicago shortly to attend/speak at the Internet Retailer Conference. This is a sizable event -- I'm told there are more than 2,100 participants (I think it has officially sold out). And Web globalization in the retail sector is a hot topic this year; a number of sessions are devoted to the topic.
I've also just published a handy guide on Web globalization for retailers. You can read more here.
If you're going to be at the conference, please let me know!
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Posted by John Yunker
According to Silicon India Google CE Eric Schmidt says India will become the world's biggest Internet market in 5 to 10 years. Says the article, "Schmidt's other futurist view is that Hindi, not Hispanic, could become one of the world's three Internet languages, in conjunction with English and Chinese."
Given that Hindi was represented on just a handful of the 300 global Web sites we reviewed for the 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, that's a pretty bold statement. Statistically, it makes sense. But the Global 1000 have yet to embrace Hindi on the Web in a big way.
Chinese (Simplified) is a different story. It is now the ranked 5th on our list of most-popular languages, up from 7th last year.
Here are the top five (after English):
1. German
2. French
3. Japanese
4. Spanish
5. Chinese
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April 21, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
If you're looking for further evidence that Web globalization drives revenue growth, look at the latest earnings numbers for a company that relies exclusively on the Internet for revenues.
Google just announced that Q1 revenues "from outside of the United States contributed 42% of total revenues, compared to 38% in the fourth quarter of 2005 and 39% in the first quarter of 2005. Foreign exchange rates had an immaterial impact on sequential international revenue growth. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the first quarter of 2005 through the first quarter of 2006, our international revenues would have been $65 million higher."
When will Google's non-US earnings surpass the 50% mark? I thought last year that 2006 would be the year, but it looks like the US market continues to grow at a rapid clip as well. So now it's looking like 2007. It's really not a question of if non-US revenues will surpass US revenues, but when.
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April 11, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I got an email last week from Chris Wood, one of the authors of "Bilingual Software Standards and Guidelines in Wales." I realize that this may not sound like the most exciting read, but I recommend downloading a copy (hey, it's free!).
I'm reading it now and have found that it includes good advice for anyone involved in Web or software globalization. Most of the concepts carry over to any bilingual application.
And there were some interesting little nuggets about Welsh that I wasn't aware of. For example, here is the appropriate way to alpha sort the following three words:
- label
- lori
- llefrith
The third word appears like it should be bumped up a notch, but the "ll" is actually one character: a diagraph. Digraph letters that occur in the Welsh alphabet include: ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th. When sorting, the "ll" falls after "l."
It's often assumed that languages that use the same basic letters all sort the same way. Not so. You'll find these little quirks in a host of Latin-based languages.
You can download the guide here
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April 10, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I should have seen this one coming. According to Bret Fausett's blog, the .eu domain is being registered by individuals hoping to capitalize on Web users who leave off the "d" when typing in their favorite college URL.
For example, the UCLA.eu domain is not owned by UCLA. The same goes for Vandy and Texas. And someone in the Netherlands grabbed the domain for my undergrad alma mater: missouri.eu. Why didn't I think of that?
Now, I have to believe that people will still find their way to their university Web sites, despite the efforts of those who have registered the .eu domains.
By the way, the folks at Harvard were on the ball and locked up their domain.
If you want to check out your school, visit whois.eu.
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April 7, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I'm not surprised to see the feeding frenzy over .eu. This article reports that more than half a million domains were registered within the first hour of sales. According to the article, "EU Commissioner Viviane Reding said the Commission hopes the new ".eu" name will one day rival the ".com" name."
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April 6, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
When it comes to Web globalization, localizing your search engine is one of those projects that generally gets pushed down the to-do list, because it's, well, a minor nightmare to accomplish. Unless you've got a search appliance that self-optimizes itself to all the nuances of how users in different cultures and countries search (is there one?) then you've got a lot of manual work ahead of you.
But according to this Forrester study companies should be putting the work in. The study "determined that European consumers new to a site most often go straight to site search, and if they don’t find what they want immediately, an average 13% of consumers will go to another site – more than that in southern European counties."
So, step one is to make sure your global design template has a search window clearly displayed-- ideally in the upper right corner (next to the global gateway).
Next, you can focus on optimizing the engine for the many ways users search on your products in that market. The UK is a classic example. A few years back I visited Lands' End UK and entered British terms like knickers, trainers, and jumpers just to see what came up. Nothing did.
So I just visited again today and "trainers" brought up some snow boots -- not exactly a match I'd say. And jumpers brought up shoes, not sweaters.
Hey, this stuff ain't easy, I know. I'm not trying to pick on Lands' End. Hopefully the Forrester report will trigger more companies to invest in this area.
April 19th UPDATE: I've just been told that the Lands' End search engine was at one point localized for the UK but there was a glitch recently. I'll report back when the engine is back up again...
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March 31, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Adwords is Google's revenue engine. Advertisers pay to be included on Google's search engine results page as well as on targeted Web sites that host Google ads, ranging from personal blogs to local and topical news sites. When the user clicks on the Google ad, the advertiser pays. And when that ad is hosted on someone else's Web site, Google splits the revenue with that Web site owner. The program is called Adsense.
I used Adsense a year ago on my site and the revenue wasn't much to get excited about. I didn't like the sidebar clutter so I took them down after a month or so. But where $10 to $25/day isn't much money to a small business it is a lot of money to a small business in an emerging market.
Which is what this USA Today article is about. Says the article: "Thanks to Adsense, a blogger in New Delhi can earn the same 5 cents for an ad-click as a blogger in Detroit. For many Adsense users in the developing world, that opportunity has become perhaps the most unintentional — and most successful — development program to spring from the online revolution."
The article does note that fraud is a constant and looming issue, but still you gotta love the local success stories. Here's one in particular:
Deepesh Agarwal, who runs a small cybercafe in Rajasthan state, India, draws about 90% of his income, or $1,500 a month, from his Adsense earnings. It is a princely sum in a state where the average income is just $300 a year.
"Adsense has changed my life," Mr. Agarwal says. "I can afford things that I was not able to before. I am planning to buy a new car. I can save for my future."
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March 9, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
According to China Stock Blog, MySpace appears close to going global. Says the blog...
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris DeWolfe, speaking at an Internet conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, said its big plan for the year is to expand in Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
“We need to prove ourselves internationally,” DeWolfe said before investors at the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet & Telecom Conference. MySpace, based in Santa Monica, has already taken off in the United Kingdom, he continued, and it is “taking a hard look at China.”
As a general rule, a company just dipping its toes into the Web globalization waters is wise to start off a bit more slowly, perhaps with a Spanish-language Web site. Spanish doesn't pose the character set challenges of a language such as Chinese, which makes for a less-steep learning curve. But the lure of China is great and time is a wasting for a company wanting to grow BIG fast.
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March 3, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I've shopped online from overseas retailers on and off (mostly off) for about two years now. While the larger companies provide currency in US dollars, the smaller companies do not. Which leads me to currency exchange Web sites such as XE.com to figure out what I'm really paying.
But I am fortunate because I shop in US dollars. If my native currency was, say, the Tanzanian Shilling, shopping online globally would be more of a daily annoyance.
Enter MyOrbital. com, a company that offers real-time currency exchange across pretty much any currency you can think of. According to the founder, Jaco Vermeulen, "MyOrbital automatically converts the entire merchant site to the user's customized settings. It opened to public use in mid December 2005 and the initial solution is currency conversion supplemented with 3rd party global delivery solutions for orders originating from the USA or UK (more countries coming soon)."
So I gave it a trial run. You first have to go to the MyOrbital site and click through some legalese and then you can select a Web site like Amazon. As you see below, there is a little MyOrbital header that follows you through the Amazon Web site and the pricing has been changed to Tanzanian Shillings.
It's a pretty nifty application. But keep in mind that it won't actually translate the company's Web site for you -- all it does is convert currency.
Now how does MyOrbital make money? From referrals. If you buy something from Amazon, MyOrbital gets a small referral fee.
Now, I must admit that I'm never comfortable adding another layer between me and a merchant -- though Jaco assures me that they use SSL and everything is perfectly secure. The company is also working on a less-obtrusive plug-in for Firefox and Explorer, which I think would help alleviate my paranoia.
Then again, it doesn't really matter what I think because I'm not the target market.
This is an interesting application and business model. And I've heard of studies that say that when a Web user is presented with his or her currency the odds of that sale being closed go way up. I am always glad to see barriers to global ecommerce falling, be it currency, delivery, payment, or language.
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February 24, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
A few years ago I spoke with an executive at a Fortune 500 company who confidently explained why his company wasn't translating its Web site: "The world will all be speaking English soon enough," he told me.
His Web site has since been translated.
So perhaps the world won't all be speaking English anytime soon. But it's safe to say that English is becoming the lingua franca of the world. It’s the most popular second language being taught in Europe and much of Asia. But the thing to keep in mind is this: Even if the world does all one day speak English, for most of the world, English will still be their second language.
This is an important point. It’s one thing to expect the world to learn new languages; it's another thing to expect the world to give up their native languages.
Which is why I was excited to see The British Council publishing a book on the future of English by a guy who has been writing about this issue for many years. His name is David Graddol and the book is called Next English.
The book is free and you can download a copy here. I'm still working my way through, but here are some items that jumped out at me:
-> A massive increase in the number of people learning English has already begun, and is likely to reach a peak of around 2 billion in the next 10–15 years -- nearly a third of the world's population.
-> Monolingual English speakers face a bleak economic future, and the barriers preventing them from learning other languages are rising rapidly.
-> The competitive advantage which English has historically provided its acquirers (personally, organisationally, and nationally) will ebb away as English becomes a near-universal basic skill. The need to maintain the advantage by moving beyond English will be felt more acutely.
Here's the link.
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February 23, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
Internet Retailer features an article on QuikDrop. The company is going to offer sellers free translation of auction listings in up to eight languages. According to the article, the company is does "about 15,000 auctions a week" with 40% of their bidders based outside the US.
I contacted QuikDrop co-founder Jack Reynoalds and he says that the seller will not pay for this service; QuikDrop is footing the bill. "We make money by drawing in foreign bidders to our eBay auctions. This drives up the final selling price of our eBay item," says Jack.
So how is QuikDrop going to cover the translation costs and still turn a profit?
Answer: Machine translation.
QuikDrop has a deal with MT vendor, Systran, using an API to manage translations via Internet.
Although machine translation isn't exactly known for the highest quality translation, Jack stresses that "selling into international markets on eBay is all about credibility. People are afraid that when they pay for the item, the eBay seller will not ship and they will have no legal recourse. MT for our auctions shows the international eBay community that we take their business seriously. All of our eBay auctions have pictures next to the text to assist the bidder in understanding the item."
You can view a translated listing yourself here by selecting this eBay auction.
It's a pretty nifty interface. I can't vouch for the quality of the translation (or the product), but I do like the presentation.
Jack says that translation is increasingly becoming a necessity: "eBay is growing internationally faster than it is domestically. Long term, all eBay sellers are going to have to use MT to stay competitive..."
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February 21, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
The folks at the Pew Global Attitudes Project have produced a report that further illustrates the dramatic growth in Internet usage around the world -- particularly in emerging markets. You can download a copy of the report here
According to the report, "in each of the 13 countries for which historical comparisons can be made, more people now use computers at home, school or work than in 2002. The rise is dramatic in Turkey, Russia, India and Poland, where the number of those who say they use a computer at least occasionally has risen by 13 percent to 16 percent."
The key takeaway is that the developed markets may still have room for growth, but they're nearing the ceiling. Emerging markets are where there is plenty of headroom -- and plenty of challenges. And if I were a translator of Turkish and Polish, I'd be pretty happy with these numbers.
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February 20, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I'm pleased to see the beta version of Microsoft Commerce Server 2006 listing "globalization support" as one of their top three features. This is another indication that software developers are responding to customer demand for products that support global ecommerce and Web globalization.
Specifically, the Commerce Service promises "multilingual and multicurrency support to enable customers to create a global presence."
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February 8, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
If you want to succeed in Europe, it probably should. According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, 30% of the Dutch population made an online purchase in 2005. This is a bit higher than the UK and Germany and much higher than the 20% average for the EU.
And how does the US do in comparison? I couldn't find an apples-to-apples statistic, but according to Jupiter Research, Americans spent $81 billion online last year and by 2010 nearly half of all retail sales will be influenced by the Internet -- either directly or as a research tool.
As for Dutch, last year I surveyed the Web sites of 200 major multinational companies. Only 75 of the companies offered Dutch support, compared to 171 sites supporting French. So there's a lot of room for improvement here -- and lots of opportunity.
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February 6, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
While Amazon has done little on the Web globalization front over the past year, Borders has been slowly but steadily expanding its retail presence outside the US. it currently has 54 locations in the UK, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore. It also has three stores in Puerto Rico.
On Friday, Borders announced a deal that would take it into the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This is a joint venture with the Al Maya Group.
According to the press release, "The first of what is expected to be multiple Borders stores in the United Arab Emirates will be located in Dubai at Deira City Centre, the premier shopping center in the GCC. The Borders stores will offer a vast array of book titles in English and Arabic. Borders will provide training and marketing support to Al Maya. The store will be operated by Al Maya consistent with the Borders brand experience."
Currently, Borders uses Amazon to sell books online. I have to wonder what the marketing folks at Borders are thinking as they expand into a market that Amazon does not support linguistically. That's not to say Amazon can't support Arabic, but the company hasn't added a language since 2004, when it launched support for French in Canada and purchased Chinese bookseller Joyo.
Borders had a down year sales-wise domestically; internationally is where the growth is right now. Last year Borders CEO Greg Josefowicz said he was looking betting big on intl. growth and this is one step in that direction. India is the other big step Borders plans to take; Amazon is creeping in that direction as well.
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January 31, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
I want to mention two Web globalization conferences that I'll be speaking at in the first half of 2006. If your company is investing in Web globalization (and if it isn't it probably should be) these events are worth a look...
Managing Global Websites & eCommerce
March 28-29, 2006
San Francisco, CA
http://www.localizationinstitute.com/
The IQPC 2006 Web Globalization Conference
May 22-24, 2006
San Diego, CA
www.iqpc.com/na-805-10
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January 30, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
According to Paid Content, Yahoo! has launched: Yahoo7, which is a joint venture between the Seven Network (TV) and Yahoo Australia and New Zealand, to take on Australia's popular portal ninemsn (another TV/Web partnership).
Yahoo7 will replace Yahoo's Australia/New Zealand portal. Yahoo7 is clearly aimed at Australia -- and uses the .au domain -- but Yahoo! still refers to it as a pan-Oz/New Zealand portal, as shown here in this excerpt from Yahoo's global gateway.
I find it interesting that Yahoo! groups two countries that often view themselves as rivals (particularly in sports) into one portal. It would be similar to grouping the US and Canada together. Sure, there are similarities, but there are just as many differences.
Here's an article on the launch from ZDNet.
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January 2, 2006
Posted by John Yunker
China has been making a lot of noise lately about wanting "root" control over the Internet. That's clearly not going to happen anytime soon, nor should it happen. But what if China simply decided one day to create a "Chinese Internet" as an alternative to the pesky Internet that it can't control?
This is what naming expert Naseem Javed suggets might happen in this essay. Here's an excerpt:
For now, English is the big mama of the business language on the global scene, but on the spoken side, Chinese is the big papa. In a few years, as every second person in China gets a business portal, they will become dominating e-commerce players dwarfing the West. China would need its own independent control of how it will play the access game, decide on local languages, suffixes and come up with its own registration and trademark dispute policies rather than wait for annual memos from ICANN.
I have a hard time believing that China would try to create its own version of the Internet. It certainly has the power to create some sort of cultural/geographic intranet but I can't see it replacing the Internet that more than 100 million Chinese already use daily. Besides, China is doing a pretty good job of filtering/monitoring/censoring the Internet as it is.
But Naseem does raise a very important point -- for Chinese speakers, the Internet is far from user-friendly. The major obstacle is the URL, which is still limited to ASCII (Latin) characters. The folks at ICANN and IETF are working to upgrade the DNS to Unicode, but this will take time. There is a workaround in use that allows Web users to input Chinese characters as a URL which is then transformed into ASCII characters behind the scenes (known as "Punycode") but I'm not sure how widely used this system currently is.
Until the Internet is truly global, that is, until it fully supports Unicode, I suspect we'll have many more countries and Web users unhappy with its usability. That's understandable.
Will these countries set out to create a parallel Internet universe? I doubt it. But, then again, China is now out to create its own technological version of a 3G cellular network, so anything is possible...
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December 27, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
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December 26, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
2006 is a few days away and I can't resist looking into my crystal ball to see what the year holds for all of us in the Web globalization industry.
But before reading my take on the year ahead, let's see how I did on my 2005 predictions:
2005 Predictions Scorecard
Web Globalization Goes Mainstream - Correct
While Web globalization isn't exactly front page news of The Wall Street Journal, it is now viewed as a key component for growth in the years ahead. We have China and Tom Friedman to thank for this.
Amazon Adds Spanish for the US - Incorrect
Apple Launches iTunes Korea - Incorrect
These two predictions were a bit optimistic in regards to timing. While I still believe both will happen, it appears that licensing (in the case of iTunes) and budget (in the case of Amazon) remain roadblocks.
The Global Gateway Finds the "Sweet Spot" - Correct
I’m particularly pleased to see so many Web sites positioning or re-positioning their global gateways in the upper right corner of the Web page. This was the year that many, many companies began to invest in understanding how users around the world find their localized Web sites. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but 2005 was a good year.
I got two out of four predictions correct -– a .500 batting average. I can live with that.
So, with this batting average in mind, here are my predictions for the year ahead...
2006 Predictions
eBay Launches eBay Japan
eBay ceded Japan to Yahoo! years ago but it can’t ignore this massive ecommerce market forever. Now that eBay is sinking $100 million into China it cannot afford to overlook the potential cross-border transaction revenues between China and Japan. Looking back, eBay probably should not have given up on Japan, but that's water under the bridge. It needs to get back there and I think 2006 will be the year it does so.
Chinese Becomes Number One Translated Language
This is an easy one. Chinese was already one of the hottest languages in the translation industry this year. But next year it will get hotter. I recently asked my newsletter subscribers about this and a whopping 87% agreed -- Chinese is the "it" language in 2006 (and beyond).
,EU used to host Corporate European Web Sites
With more than 100,000 pre-registrations, the new .eu domain is sure to make registrars a nice profit. But will it be a practical domain for businesses? I think so. In fact, we believe that by the end of this year a number of multinationals will begin hosting their European Web sites at this address. Few multinationals offer localized Web sites for every EU country, so this domain provides a nice way to "fill in the gaps" so to speak. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but it's a nice workaround.
The Large CMS Vendors Discover Globalization Workflow
I have long wondered why the large content management vendors like Documentum and Interwoven have resisted building globalization workflow into their products, instead choosing to partner with other vendors, such as SDL and Translations.com. The reason for this is that for years globalization workflow was not as critical to selling the CMS product. However, this will change in 2006 as the big CMS players notice that smaller players like Clay Tablet, Vasont, and Hot Banana are winning clients based on globalization workflow features.
Corporate America Discovers Machine Translation
I don’t expect 2005 to be the year that hundreds of CIOs run out and buy, say, Language Weaver's statistical machine translation (SMT) software. But I think a handful of forward-thinking executives will take the plunge and I believe they will see a positive return on their investments. Despite all the inherent baggage that MT carries (some of it deserved), the demand for MT will continue to push innovation and increase quality, particularly along industry verticals. I believe SMT is going to be just the ticket for a number of large multinationals. As more multinationals viewed translated content as a competitive advantage rather than a chore, MT will be taken more seriously. Translators are in no danger of losing their day jobs, but I do believe that their jobs will change in the years ahead -- and in a very good way.
Lionbridge Acquires Another Translation Company
Lionbridge has expanded production facilities overseas and will be doing well cash-flow wise next year. Now all it will need is more business, some of which it will get through acquisition. Organic business development takes time and Lionbridge needs to maintain a rapid growth curve. I honestly don't know what agency Lionbridge will acquire but I do believe at least one services acquisition is forthcoming. So who will Lionbridge acquire? Companies that look like good targets to me include Welocalize, Simultrans, McElroy, Luz, Translations.com, ForeignExchange, and VistaTEC. The rumor mill points toward Welocalize; I'm not sure Smith Yewell is ready to cash out just yet, but you never know. I'd like to see the Translations.com acquisition because it would place Lionbridge firmly in the Web globalization space, but the price might be too steep at this point.
I got some emails about my initial posting regarding Lionbridge's debt, which is sizable. But I do think the company will have a very good first half of 2006.
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Full Disclosure: I do not have a financial stake in any globalization services or software firm. You can read Byte Level's policy here.
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December 8, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
It is only just the "sunrise" period for registering the new .EU domain and already it looks to be doing well. This article claims more than 80,000 registrations in the first two hours. It sounds like many of these are folks trying to squat on names like "sex.ue" and so on.
The sunrise period is a pre-registration period for companies that already own trademarks in the EU (which includes US-based mulinationals). The doors won't be fully open to .EU registration until April of 2006.
I've been following the evolution of .EU for over a year and I think it makes a lot of sense for companies that are doing business in Europe to have one. Few companies that I have studied have posted localized Web sites for all 20+ EU countries. Having this domain provides a more country-neutral address for targeting those countries for which you don't yet have a country Web site developed. That's not to say that domains like .FR, .IT, and .DE still won't be important -- but I think .EU will help fill in the gaps. And the registrars will be more than happy to sell you one.
Will we one day see .EU replace .DE and so on? I doubt it. Europeans still identify themselves by country, just as Americans identify themselves by state. Ironically, most Americans (and even non-Americans) tend to view .COM as a US domain, which it is not.
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December 1, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
According to Internet Retailer Reebok has just launched a Web site for the US Hispanic market: Barrio Rbk.
I'm clearly not in the target demographic as the site just annoyed the heck out of me. Why is it that shoe manufacturers see the need to cram as much Flash AV into every Web site they develop? Ironically, the Reebok store -- the place where you actually bring in a few dollars -- is still in English only. Nevertheless, I'm always glad to see another company embracing the 40+ million market in their own backyard.
On a separate note, I took a look at Reebok's global gateway at www.reebok.com. This has to be the first gateway I've seen to use gothic lettering; pretty nifty.
The links for Japan, China, and Korea should be in the local language. The last I heard Flash now supports Unicode, so it's not a technical limitation. I suspect Reebok left these links in Latin characters to prevent the appearance of "broken" links to Web users who don't have the necessry fonts installed to display Japanese, Chinese, or Korean scripts.
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November 28, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
The domain name system (DNS) was built by geeks for geeks. It was never intended to be all that user friendly -- and, for many people, it's not. That's one reason why search engines have come in handy -- because they function as a more usable front-end to the DNS. I can't count how many times I enter a company name into Google instead of trying to guesstimate its URL in my browser window.
So what's the solution?
A few years back we saw RealNames launch a workaround to the DNS in which companies could register their company name and all the Web user needed to do was input the company name. RealNames imploded in 2002 but I believe the technology is still being supported by somebody; I just typed a few brand names into my Safari browser (BMW, Coke, Apple) and was taken immediately to their corporate sites.
Today, I came across a press release from a company that is trying to do basically what RealNames did, only it appears to be a lot less usable. UnifiedRoot is developing a parallel DNS that would allow you to register a domain that completely bypasses the DNS we know and love, as illustrated below:
I don't see the value of this system. Large companies are going to register every country domain they need for IP reasons alone, so it can't be a cost issue. I could be missing something here, but so far it doesn't seem much easier than relying on Google.
What I think UnifiedRoot missed is the huge untapped potential for serving domains in non-Latin scripts, like Arabic, Cyrillic, and Chinese. The current solutions in this area are little more than hacks, and although the folks at ICANN are working on a long-term solution, they've been working on it for half a decade and still have a ways to go. It has to do with the immense complexity of migrating the DNS to Unicode and the numerous potential security issues that would result.
So while I'm glad to see UnifiedRoot taking a shot at building a better DNS, they're not there yet.
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November 18, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
Google has added Google News Web sites for Brazil and Portugal. This brings the total of language and country specific News sites to 23, assuming I counted correctly...
Today Google also announced the opening of offices in Mexico and Brazil, part of its ongoing effort to expand its presence in Latin America.
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November 11, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
Whenever I travel outside the US I get a kick out of entering "google.com" and seeing what happens. That's because Google makes use of two behind-the-scenes technologies known as "geolocation" and "content negotiation."
Here is the Web page Google took me to...
It is Remembrance Day here in Canada, which is why the logo has been localized. But also notice that I'm at the Google Canada Web page instead of Google.com. What Google did was look at my IP address and assume that because I'm now located in Canada that I'd prefer to visit the Google Canada site. But at the bottom of the Web page is a link that will take me to Google.com should I rather get back to the URL I originally input. Not everyone likes geolocation because it makes certain assumptions about what a Web user wants -- in my case it guessed incorrectly. Not suprisingly, international travelers typically complain about this Google feature.
Also, Google looked at the language preference of my Web browser and took me to the English Canada page. This is the "content negotiation" technology at work. Note that there is a link to the French-language Canada page should I wish to search in French.
I'd love to start collecting these country-specific and theme-specific Google home pages; if you collect a screen grab from where you live, send it to me at info@bytelevel.com and I'll post them.
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October 30, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
In the August issue of Global By Design, in the article Machine Translation: The Next Generation, I introduced statistical machine translation (SMT):
SMT is a data-driven translation technology. Rather than relying on a dictionary of translations and rules, it starts with data in the form of lots and lots of source and target text. The statistical process involves analyzing this data and identifying patterns. By analyzing millions and millions of words, the software gets pretty good at “guessing” how to translate a given text string. “We’re not really translating,” said Language Weaver CEO Bryce Benjamin. “What we’re really doing is a probability forecast.”
Language Weaver has been one of the pioneers in SMT but has focused only on the government sector primarily serving intelligence agencies.
Until now.
Language Weaver this week launched the “Customizer” and targeted it at large enterprises and government bodies. What makes this tool so unique is that a company can very quickly adapt it to its specific industry and the software will continue to improve in quality as more translations are processed.
According to Bryce Benjamin, “The Customizer allows each customer to create, within just a few hours, a unique set of translation engines that cannot be duplicated by anybody else without access to the same data resources.”
However, the Customizer is not for everyone just yet. For starters, the software currently only supports the following language pairs:
-> French <-> English
-> Spanish <-> English
-> Arabic <-> English
-> Chinese <-> English
-> Hindi -> English
-> Somali -> English
The other two obstacles are pricing and the minimum database of translated content required to get started. For a large enterprise, these obstacles are easily overcome but small businesses will need to wait until a low-end product is launched, or until Google launches its free SMT product, possibly as early as 2006.
I'm glad to see Language Weaver going after enterprises and I think they will find takers, though a good deal of education will be required. Machine translation is still widely viewed as not-ready-for-prime-time technology. I do believe that SMT, over time, will be a very positive development for Web globalization, helping companies publish a great deal more content for local markets, increasing sales, and better serving customers.
I'll have more to say on Language Weaver in the November issue of Global By Design, due out later this week.
PS: Here's another interesting article on the next wave of machine translation.
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October 27, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
According to Internet Retailer, Tiffany has launched a Canadian e-commerce site, with a selection of 3,000 products. Competitor Blue Nile launched a site for Canada in January of this year.
This is Tifany's fourth localized Web site -- and surely not the last. The company already gets 40% of its revenues from outside the US, mostly from retail stores, so following with e-commerce sites is the next logical step.
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October 25, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
Of course it had to happen. Once Weblogs became a profitable busines, it was only natural for people to try to expand these Weblogs into new markets -- and new languages.
The first major blog to do this was Engadget, which I've written about before. The site is now offered in Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Spanish. My understanding is that the blog has local editors who do their thing in their native language. Things get interesting when news items cross over and are translated between the various sites.
Not surprisingly, competitor Gizmodo has also been expanding outside the US. Gizmodo teamed up with VNU Business Media to launch seven sites for the European market.
And here's a Q&A with Gaby Darbyshire of Gawker Media (Gizmodo's parent) on the globalization of blogs.
And my favorite excerpt...
What particular steps do you take when internationalizing a blog? Language is an obvious issue. Are there other, less obvious ones?
Gaby Darbyshire: Local content and flavor is important: with gadgets, for example, there will be local review sites, manufacturer sites, ecommerce outlets, et cetera. Tone will also vary by country: it doesn't make sense to have someone sitting in New York writing a site for the French market. There will also be local stories that a U.S. blog wouldn't necessarily pick up on. So probably only 70 percent or so of the content is a direct translation.
Now if an upstart blog company knows how important it is to have local content and flavor on its local Web sites, why doesn't a company like GE offer local flavor and content on all of its local Web sites? This will be a topic for another day.
So what blogs are best suited to go global? According to Gaby "Tech and tech-related blogs are really the best for internationalization ... Entertainment or news blogs are harder to export because the content is so specific to a particular culture, though obviously one could have a completely localized version rather than a full or part translation."
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Posted by John Yunker
Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall St. Jnl. wrote an interesting article on foreign retailers who are using the Web to take a shot at cracking the US market; companies like Harrod's, FigLeaves.com, and Wedgwood have all recently launched localized US Web sites.
According to the article:
Foreign retailers see the Web as a way to expand their brand with few start-up costs and to test the waters before opening stores in the U.S. BJ Cunningham, co-founder of the British luxury-shoe company Georgina Goodman Ltd., says his company's online shopping site, launched in spring 2004, has helped the company to identify cities where it may be profitable to open a store, such as New York, Chicago and Seattle.
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October 24, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
The Apple iTunes Australia store is now live. That brings Apple to a total of 21 iTunes stores.
Anyone care to guess how long before a New Zealand iTunes store launches?
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September 16, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
I'm not sure if this is a first for Warner Brothers but it is the first time I've seen it. The movie studio is running a Spanish-language ad for the new Tim Burton flic Corpse Bride in Spanish for the US market. Here's what the ad looks like...
Naturally, when I saw this ad I got all excited thinking there was a Spanish-language Web site behind it. But when I clicked through I found that the Corpse Bride Web site is still in English...
This is not a huge surprise given the economics of Web localization. Creating a Spanish-language Web ad costs a few bucks; creating a Spanish-language Web site (particularly one in Flash) may cost upwards of $50,000.
Will Hollywood eventually launch full-scale Spanish-language Web sites for the US market as a matter of practice? Given that the US Hispanic online population is larger than the online populations of most Latin American countries, I think they will.
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September 15, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
Web usability consultant Jared Spool recently wrote about the difference between designing for "consistency" and designing for "current knowledge." This concept has great relevance to the design of global Web sites
Jared writes...
The problem with thinking in terms of consistency is that those thoughts focus purely on the design and the user can get lost. “Is what I’m designing consistent with other things we’ve designed (or others have designed)?” is the wrong question to ask.
Instead, the right question is, “Will the user’s current knowledge help them understand how to use what I’m designing?” Current knowledge is the knowledge the user has when they approach the design. It’s the sum of all their previous experiences with relevant products and designs.
So let's apply this concept to the design of a global Web site. Consider how Web users around the world expect to navigate a Web site to find content that matches their language and location. Even though we're in the early stages of Web globalization, Web users have developed a "current knowledge" in this area.
For example, as more and more Web sites locate their global navigation elements in the upper right corner of the Web page, more and more people expect to find cross-language or cross-country navigation there. To locate this "global gateway" anywhere else is to work against this emerging "current knowledge."
Also, the use of a globe icon to draw attention to the global gateway further increases usability, because it sends a clear message to all Web users regardless of what language they speak. And an increasing number of Web sites have wisely added the globe icon (or a map icon). Flags may also play a valuable role in this regard, but they also present inherent dangers.
The reason I like this "current knowledge" concept is not just it forces us all to keep our designs tightly focused on our clients and prospects but also because forces us to keep our eyes open to the evolution of Web designs around the world. We cannot afford to ignore design trends in China or Korea or Eastern Europe because they directly and indirectly affect how Web users interact with our Web sites around the world.
You can read Jared's essay here.
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September 12, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
I just upgraded from iTunes 4 to iTunes 5 and, wouldn't you know it, Apple changed the global navigation system. Instead of placing the link to the "global gaeway" in the upper left corner of the music store, the link has been demoted to the very bottom of the page, as shown here:
iTunes 4 (Germany)
iTunes 5 (US)
Apple no doubt wanted to free up that valuable real estate at the top of the page to promote more products. And, because users cannot purchase songs across borders, the global gateway is of somewhat less importance. The way things work now, if you want to purchase songs from different country stores, you need to set up separate accounts. I'm sure this is completely driven by license limitations.
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September 5, 2005
Posted by John Yunker
Web localization is all about managing expectations. Patrick Hall pointed out to me yesterday that although Google offers an Amharic (www.google.com/intl/am) interface it apparently hasn't actually indexed any Amharic content.
Meanwhile, Yahoo!, without an Amharic interface, has indexed Amharic content. Amharic is the official language of Ethopia and is spoken by more than 20 million people.
Check it out yourself below:
Google search vs. Yahoo search
Anybody out there know why this is? Perhaps Google has been so busy adding new language interfaces (116 and counting) that the folks in charge of indexing these languages haven't caught up.
PS: If your screen consists of a bunch of squares like this below, don't fret. You probably don't have the required font; my Mac apparently doesn't.
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