E-commerce Across Borders
By John Yunker,
WEB-publisher and author
www.globalbydesign.com
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Versão
em português
 Tips
on taking your web site global
Interested
in expanding your potential online audience
by 200 million people? Add French, Italian,
German, and Spanish Web sites. Add Japanese
and Chinese Web sites and you will gain
another 300 million potential visitors
— without opening a single international
office.
Today, there are more than a billion Internet users around the globe. Yet based on my research fewer than 30% of these Internet users are native-English speakers. By 2010, that percentage will drop below 25%.
Savvy Internet retailers have learned to embrace the world; one country and one language at a time. Starbucks, Amazon, and IKEA, to name just a few, have all developed Web sites for foreign markets. This article takes a look at a few such retailers and some of the key challenges you will need to overcome when you take your business global.
Thinking
Globally and Locally
Ideally,
a company builds its global Web site in two stages:
internationalization and localization. Internationalization
is the process of preparing a Web site so that it
can be easily adapted to multiple locales; a locale
may be a country, a language, or both. Ideally, a
company will design a “global template”
that can then be localized for each new market. Once
the template is developed, it is then customized,
or localized, for each locale. The best way to understand
how these two stages fit together is to see how they
apply in real life, such as with the IKEA’s
US and German sites, shown below.
Pictures:
The US and German IKEA sites convey
a consistent global appearance
Notice
how both Web sites share similar layouts,
color palette, and logo placement. The
internationalization stage of the development
process would have entailed creating an
architecture that could remain consistent
across all locales, yet remain flexible
enough to allow for local modifications.
During
the localization stage, the product selection,
promotions, phone numbers, prices, and
support options are addressed. Although
the two home pages may appear quite similar
initially, the differences are significant.
Now
look at two Wal-Mart country sites. Notice
how the Wal-Mart US and China home pages
have little in common. Clearly, no global
template was ever created. As a result,
Wal-Mart will find it difficult to create
a global online identify as well as maintain
these sites centrally – a strategy
commonly employed as companies develop
multiple localized Web sites.
Pictures:
The US and China Wal-Mart sites do not appear
related
Building
the Global Gateway
Just
because you build a localized Web site is no
guarantee that people will visit. Much overlooked
in Web design is the navigation system that
directs users to their localized sites. Webmasters
at many of the world’s largest companies
tell me that up to half of all traffic to their
.com domains originate from outside of the US.
As a result, it is vital that companies develop
a “global gateway” strategy for
seamlessly guiding users to their local content.
Too
often, these global gateways are buried at the
bottom of the home page, such as with Apple.
Picture:
Buried at the bottom of this page is Apple’s
global gateway
Picture
a user who only speaks Korean visiting Apple.com.
Will that person have the patience to scroll
to the bottom of the page?
Now
picture that same person visiting the IKEA home
page, shown here.
Picture:
IKEA’s global gateway forces Web users
to pick their localized site
The
IKEA gateway forces users to pick a locale,
preventing them from getting lost along the
way. Keep in mind that a global gateway is more
than a few links or Web pages; it is a comprehensive
system of design and technical elements that
work together to provide a seamless shopping
experience for any user, no matter the language
or location. When developing your gateway strategy,
consider the following tips:
- Reserve
country-specific domain names. For
example, www.acme.com, when it launches its
German site, would want to reserve the German
domain www.acme.de. If you are thinking of
expanding globally, start reserving those
country domains.
- Always
make it easy to get back to the gateway.
If a user gets to the German site by mistake
and wants the Spanish site, always include
a link back to the gateway.
- Avoid
flags. Many gateways rely on flags
to denote locales, yet this is not often the
best icon to use. For example, what flag would
you use to signify Spanish? Also, the use
of Taiwan’s flag is bound to offend
many Chinese Web users.
- Translate
your gateway. For example, instead
of using a link to the Spanish site that says
“Spanish,” use “Español”;
or use “Deutschland” instead of
“Germany.” Details such as these
are often overlooked by Web developers who
do not look at their sites from the points
of view of non-English speakers.
Finally,
sometimes you will need to localize a Web site
into multiple languages to effectively cover
one country, such as Switzerland. Although a
relatively small country, Switzerland has four
official languages: French, Italian, German
and Romansch (a variation of German). Noticed
how the IKEA Switzerland site is available in
French, German, and Italian.
Picture:
The IKEA Switzerland site is localized into
French, German, and Italian
Globally
usable design
Pay close attention to the colors, icons, and
photos you use on your localized sites. For
example, a bride typically wears white to a
wedding in the US, but a bride in China will
wear red. Black signifies death in the US; in
Asia, white signifies death. The significance
of icons also may vary by locale, such as a
mailbox, which may be blue in the US, but is
yellow in Sweden.
All
Support is Local
So much of Web globalization has nothing to
do with the Web site: for example, employee
training, product localization, and product
support. Before your company takes the leap
into a new market, be sure you can support not
only the Web site but also the many customers
and questions it will generate. Here are some
key challenges to keep in mind:
- Payment.
Always make sure your site can accept the
preferred payment method of your target locale.
For example, credit cards are not commonly
used in Germany, where many customers prefer
to pay by money order or debit card. For small
businesses, PayPal promises to solve this
problem with cross-national support for currencies
such as the Euro, Canadian dollar, and Yen.
- Support.
When you start receiving emails in different
languages, do you have people prepared to
answer them? And how about phone calls, faxes,
and letters?
- Manage
Expectations. When you first begin
localization, you probably will not be able
to offer all forms of customer support. But
make it clear on your site what types of support
you do and do not offer.
Web
Globalization Cuts Both Ways
Given that companies ranging from Microsoft
to Intel to McDonald’s now owe more than
half of their revenues to the world outside
their native countries, globalization is showing
little signs of slowing. As long as companies
find success in new markets, they will need
to localize their Web sites to serve these new
markets.
This
means that just as you can expand your business
into a new market, so too can companies in foreign
markets expand into yours. The time is now to
begin preparing your globalization strategies.
Web globalization is not easy and it is not
always cheap, but you will find it is a lot
easier and profitable to adapt your Web site
to the world than it is to wait for the world
to adapt to your Web site.
John
Yunker is publisher of the popular
Web globalization website and newsletter Global
By Design (www.globalbydesign.com).
Newsletter subscribers include companies such
as Autodesk, FedEx, Google, Dow Corning, and
Panasonic. John is author of Beyond Borders:
Web Globalization Strategies.
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