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Going Global Gracefully: Strategies for Building the Global Gateway

Guest Article by John Yunker

Choose Your Language. Choose Your Country.

The world speaks many languages, and so do an increasing number of Web sites. Yet with these languages and locales come a host of challenges for the Web teams who manage them, challenges that are not likely to go away. 

As companies "localize" their Web sites for new markets and languages, they run into the navigational challenges of directing users to their localized Web sites. For instance, if your site offers a dozen localized Web sites, how do you ensure that users arrive at their intended sites without getting confused or lost along the way? 

This article presents strategies for building a global gateway. A global gateway is much more than a "select country" pull-down menu on the home page. It's an all-encompassing term for the devices you use to direct users to their locale- and language-specific sites. And, as you'll soon see, there are many ways to build a gateway.

The Problem with Gateways

As localized Web sites are developed, often little consideration is given to how these new sites will fit in with the parent site. Should we assume that all users around the world will arrive at the parent site (which is usually in English) and be directed to the localized Web sites? Should we assume that these users understand English, or a little English, or none at all? Or should we assume users will arrive at the localized site via country-specific URLs? The answers will vary depending upon your company's global strategies and users. But by asking these questions now you are already well ahead of those companies that have overlooked the significance of global gateways. After just a few minutes of surfing the Web, it's easy to find sites in which the gateway is cumbersome, hidden, or missing altogether.

The Cumbersome Gateway

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The Cable & Wireless home page has a global gateway that is almost too sophisticated for its own good. The trademarked "navpad" is the gateway, but how many users would know this? Click on the navpad and you'll find a choice of locales.

The navpad is a full-featured navigation tool, but it assumes that users instinctively know what navpad means, in any language, which is assuming a bit too much.

The Hidden Gateway

Siebel plays "Where's Waldo" with the link to its localized Web sites. Tucked down on the very bottom of the page right above the privacy notice is the "Global Web Sites" link, hardly a prominent gateway.

The Missing Gateway

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General Electric recently redesigned its Web site. Along the way, someone apparently forgot to include a global gateway. General Electric, one of the most globally oriented American companies, has its share of localized Web sites, yet you would never know it by looking at this page.

Building Gateways that Degrade Gracefully

A global gateway is like a net. You want to make sure you build it in such as way that nobody slips past. Many Web sites feature a global gateway on the home page and nowhere else, based on the assumption that all users will arrive through this one page. Yet there are any number of places within a site a user may first arrive. A search engine, for example, may send a user deep within your site; if there is no global gateway on this particular landing page, that user will likely assume there are no localized Web pages available and quickly leave. 

Graceful degradation is the practice of building Web pages so that no users are left out. For example, if someone can't view a Flash site, a gracefully degrading site will send an HTML version of the site. Global degradation takes this concept and applies it to navigation, ensuring that users can find localized Web sites, regardless of how and where they first arrive at your site. The four steps below will lead to a site that catches as many users as possible. Begin with step one and work down from there:

1. Add a new front door with a localized URL.

2. Greet users by language using content negotiation.

3. Force users to select their preference with a splash global gateway.

4. Let users change their preference with a permanent global gateway.

Some sites use all four steps, some only use one or two; it all depends on the needs of your users. Let's look at each step and its advantages and disadvantages.

Add a new front door with a localized URL

If you're serious about expanding into a new country, you should register a country code domain, such as .fr for France or .de for Germany. IANA manages the codes; you can view the list here. Each country can decide how it wishes to administer its domain. Countries used to be much more strict with their domains; for example, Japan required companies to establish an office in the country before they could register a domain name. That rule has since been dropped. And in October, China opened up its domain name to outside companies. 

One immediate advantage of a country domain is that you begin to establish your brand in that market. Large multinationals will register country domains as yet another way to protect their brand name globally. Country domains also play an important role in how Web pages are ranked by country-specific search engines.

Many people still use the front door. In other words, the .com legacy is alive and well. Globally, many users assume that if they want to access a company, they should use the .com suffix. So don't assume that users will just naturally know your new domain.

Multilingual domain names are coming. On the horizon, are multilingual domain names. The folks at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are currently working on a standard that all software vendors and registrars should adhere to. Basically, a multilingual domain name would allow you to register a domain name in any major language - from Chinese to Korean to Arabic. Some registrars are selling these names already - and they can be made to work in limited cases. But don't jump into registering one until you're sure it will work and until you know which users will benefit.

Greet users by language using content negotiation. Current Web browsers can be configured according to the user's language preference. This comes in handy because Web servers can be configured to respond to these preferences with language-specific Web pages. The process is often referred to as content negotiation or language negotiation. The technical details are far too complex for this article, we'll just take a moment to watch it in action.

Greet users by language using content negotiation

Current Web browsers can be configured according to the user's language preference. This comes in handy because Web servers can be configured to respond to these preferences with language-specific Web pages. The process is often referred to as content negotiation or language negotiation. The technical details are far too complex for this article, we'll just take a moment to watch it in action.

Typically, the browser's preference will default to the language setting of the operating system, yet this preference can easily be changed; on Microsoft Explorer, select Tools > Internet Options > Languages, to rank your language preferences. The language at the top of the list is your most-preferred language.

 
Now (assuming your preference isn't already set to Russian) try changing the setting to Russian and then visiting the home page of Google. You should now see the Russian home page, as shown here: 

 
The Google server can tell from your browser request what language is preferred. If Russian is requested, as is the case here, the Russian page is served up. If Google had no Russian page available, it would have looked at the next language down on your list, and so on.

Content negotiation is transparent to the user, which isn't a good thing if the user is served a page he or she doesn't want. If, for instance, I'm traveling to France and use a colleague's computer, odds are that the browser is configured to request French pages, which may not be my preference. Content negotiation is not without its faults. I've spoken to people who truly dislike content negotiation. They say it feels a little "Big Brotherish." Also, content negotiation won't work with older browsers, so you can't always depend on it; if you do use it, make sure you have a global gateway readily available for users who need it.

Force users to select their preference with a splash global gateway

The gateway splash page is gaining momentum on the Internet. Companies such as FedEx, eTrade, New Balance, and Nike, to name a few, rely on these splash pages. If you've got a large selection of localized Web pages, the splash page becomes essential because it forces users to pick a language or country (or both) before moving into your site. If you've only got one or two other languages, you can probably get by without one, as long as you provide an easily found gateway on your home page.

Splash pages grow quickly annoying if you must click through them every time you return to the site. That's why it is essential that you make them disappear. By using cookies to store language or country preference, you can make the gateway a one-time event for most users. Like content negotiation, there are dangers to this strategy, which is why you always want to have a permanent gateway available as well.

For the splash page, here are a few point to consider:

• Avoid flags. What flag, for example, would you use to represent a Spanish-language Web site? And what language does the Canadian flag represent: English or French? It's challenges such as these that make flags confusing. Boston Scientific relies on flags for its gateway but runs into trouble with its Latin America link, in which it created a fictitious flag, shown here: 

• Avoid pull-down menus. If you've got the luxury of entire page to work with, don't force all users to tediously scroll through a pull-down menu, particularly if you've got a great many options to choose from. The FedEx site has more than 60 sites in all; fortunately for U.S. users, the USA link is at the top of the list, but users in Venezuela are not so fortunate. 

 (Click to view full size image.)

• Use icons over words. Instead of the words "select your country' use an icon of a globe or world map. Icons will speak to users no matter their native language.
   

• Translate the links. The word "Russian" makes sense to English speakers, but English speakers are not the intended audience. Your links to different languages should be in those languages, not English. This gets tricky with scripts that fall outside the ISO 8859-1 character set. A Web page can only support one character encoding. If you've specified 8859, which most English or Western European sites do, you can't also include Japanese or Russian or Arabic text. To represent these scripts, you should embed them in graphics. As shown here with Symantec: 

• Don't leave users feeling left out. On the Pioneer gateway, the user is asked to choose a country, but only given two countries to select. What if you're from Europe or Japan? The implication is that you are not wanted. To its credit, though, notice how Pioneer allows users to save their country preference so they don't have to see this splash page again. 

Let users change their preferences with a permanent global gateway

Despite your best efforts to make sure users find their localized sites, some won't. Therefore, you need to build in a highly visible permanent gateway on all of your sites. Naturally, this strategy lends itself well to a global template, as shown here with IBM.

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IBM Belgium

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IBM Japan

A global template is ideal for globalization because the key navigational elements remain consistent across locales. However, not all sites use global templates. Honda, for instance, varies dramatically by country.

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Honda Japan

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Honda France

 
You may find that the benefits of "being local" outweigh the benefits of standardization. Either way, make sure your gateway is easy to find, that is, at the top of the page, not buried near the bottom.

Cast a Wide Net

As more of the world's population goes online, Web teams will need to build sites that catch as many of these users as possible. While a global gateway alone won't make your site global, it's an important step in making your site more globally usable. 
 

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