the art of global gateway (excerpt)

8/8/2019 The Art of Global Gateway (excerpt)

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The Art of the Global Gateway

Secrets of Successful Multilingual Navigation

Second Edition

Publisher

Byte Level Books

www.bytelevelbooks.com

Copyright 2010 John Yunker

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0-9796475-3-6

First Edition 2006

Second Edition 2010

All trademarks, screen shots, and logos are the property of their respec-tive owners. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or

by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-wise), without the prior written permission of Byte Level Books.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participatein or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights (and hard work) is appreciated.
http://www.bytelevelbooks.com/http://www.bytelevelbooks.com/


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Contents

Welcome, Benvenuto, Bienvenida ...................... ....................... .............. 5

About this book ..................... ....................... ...................... ....................... ... 7

First Things First .................... ....................... ...................... ...................... 9

One Internet, many languages ..................... ....................... ...................... . 10

Elements of Global Navigation .................... ....................... .................... 16

Country codes: Local front doors .................... ....................... ................ 18

The global gateway: What users see ...................... ....................... ............ 27

The splash global gateway ....................... ...................... .................... 28

The permanent global gateway ..................... ....................... ................ 37

Global gateway icons .................... ....................... ...................... ......... 40

The language/country menu ...................... ...................... .................... 42

Mapping the global gateway ..................... ...................... .................... 59

Language negotiation .................... ...................... ....................... ................ 65

Web browsers and language settings .................... ...................... ......... 69

Geolocation: We know where you live ...................... ...................... ......... 76

Global Gateway Best Practices ..................... ...................... .................... 85

Translate the gateway, but dont overtranslate ................... ....................... . 86

.................... ...................... ....................... ............ 89

Be careful what you call country ..................... ....................... ................ 94

Pull-down menus dont scale ....................... ...................... ....................... . 95

Dont play favorites (or favourites) .................... ....................... ................ 97

Icons speak louder than words ........................ ...................... .................. 101

Use as little text as necessary ....................... ...................... ...................... 102

Use the sweet spot ..................... ...................... ....................... .............. 103

Use Unicode ....................... ...................... ....................... ...................... ... 104

Place usability ahead of creativity ...................... ....................... .............. 106

Dont pretend you speak languages that you dont .................... .............. 109

Global gateways shouldnt make you think .................... ...................... ....111


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Keep legalese to a minimum .................... ....................... ...................... ... 113

Embedded text is untranslated text ..................... ....................... .............. 115

Dont put age before language ..................... ....................... ..................... 117

.................... ....................... ...................... ....... 120

IKEA ...................... ....................... ...................... ....................... .............. 121

GE ...................... ....................... ....................... ...................... .................. 124

Google .................... ....................... ...................... ....................... .............. 129

Xbox ................... ....................... ....................... ...................... .................. 133

Spanish-Language Gateways for the US ..................... ...................... ... 136

Whats the URL? ....................... ....................... ...................... .................. 137

Spanish-language gateways ..................... ....................... ...................... ... 141

Trending Now: Mobile Devices and Social Media .................... .......... 148

The global gateway and mobile devices ..................... ...................... ....... 149

The global gateway and social media ..................... ....................... .......... 162

Developing a Global Gateway Strategy ...................... ...................... ... 172

Of big steps and baby steps ...................... ....................... ...................... ... 173

Case Study: The growth of a global gateway .................... ...................... 175

Global gateway FAQ ..................... ...................... ....................... .............. 182Global gateway checklist ..................... ....................... ...................... ....... 184

Terminology ...................... ....................... ....................... ...................... ... 189

Selected Country Codes .................... ...................... ....................... .......... 193

About the author ....................... ...................... ....................... .................. 195


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Welcome, Benvenuto, Bienvenida

A global gateway is the initial point of contact between your web site and

saying goes: . To

truly welcome visitors to your web site, youll need a welcoming global

gateway.

,

-

provements to their global gateways. And yet there is still much work to

be done. And much has changed since 2006.

This second edition is more than an update. It has been expanded to ad-

dress the emergence of mobile apps and social media such as Twitter and

Facebook. And it offers a number of new best practices that have evolvedover the years.

The information in this book is based on more than ten years spent study-

ing the evolution of global navigation, learning what works and what

doesnt, and directly helping companies improve their gateways.

Youll learn techniques and recommendations that have helped hundreds

-

tions are easy to implement; some take more time and investment. But all

are designed to help you create a more globally usable navigation strategy.

Web globalization is a journey, not a destination. As companies continue


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to add new languages and enter new markets, the global gateway will also

continue to evolve. So prepare yourself for a journey, an exciting one.

And get ready to develop a global gateway that will always make an ex-

John Yunker

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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About this book

A global gateway may seem like a relatively trivial design element, but

there is a great deal of complexity involved in getting it right, and this

book is designed to help you do just that. Global gateways, well executed,

From the visuals to the text strings to the server-side technologies, there

are many moving pieces. And global gateways rarely remain static over

time; they must evolve to support additional languages and changing user

expectations. This second edition of ad-

dresses new and emerging trends, like social media and mobile apps, as

well as pulls data from , which

benchmarks more than 200 global web sites across 21 industry verticals

and includes global navigation as one of its key metrics. And, of course,

nearly every screen shot in this edition has been updated or is brand new.

Who is this book for?

This book is for web designers, copywriters, marketers, localization ven-

dors, project managers, and developers. In other words, this book is for

those who create web sites and applications and those who take them

global.

While this book addresses technical aspects of the global gateway, it is

more strategic than technical. Most global gateway best practices have

to do more with the user interface (UI) than with the underlying tech-

nologies. That said, its important that you have a solid understanding of


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HTML and how web servers present content to clients. If you have ques-

end of the book.

And while the global gateway should above all be functional, it also must

integrate well with the overall site, and the word is in the title for a

reason. Youll discover that, from icons to interactive elements, there are a

lot of choices to make when developing a global gateway. Despite a num-

ber of established best practices, each company has its own unique needs

room for a little creativity.


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First Things First

I was referring to a pull-down menu a company was using on its web site.

And the term stuck.

But it has also evolved. Today, a global gateway is so much more than a

pull-down menu. It is an umbrella term for the visual and technical ele-

ments you employ to direct users to their localized web sites and applica-

tions.

This section will give you a general overview of the important role of the

global gateway, as well as introduce a few key elements to keep in mind

before you get into the nitty-gritty of strategizing and developing your

own gateway.


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As noted in , the average num-

ber of languages supported by large multinationals is now 20, up from 12

Apple, for example, has doubled the number of languages it supports on

its web site over the past three years, to 24 today. And Facebook exploded

from two languages to more than 70 in less than two years.

Speaking in tongues

While web globalization opens your web site to the world, it also opens

you up to a number of new challenges, namely how to ensure that visitors,

why the global gateway is so important.

Well executed, the global gateway functions like a multilingual tour guide,


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Global navigation isnt just about usabilityits about getting the most

it may as well not exist.

What should a good global gateway do?

At a minimum, an effective global gateway must accomplish the follow-

ing:

language the user speaks. The gateway should not display prefer-

ence for any one country/region or language.

The global gateway must display the users current language/

country settings.

The global gateway must give users the ability to change their

language/country preference.

about your customers and potential customers and how they navigate to

your web site. Where do they live? What languages do they speak? What

ultimately develop.


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Language and location

Successful global navigation requires understanding the complex rela-

tionship between language and location (for our purposes here, locationis synonymous with country/region).

Its natural to try to combine language and location when thinking about

global gateways, such as Spanish/Spain, French/France, and German/

Germany. But things are not always this simple. There is also Spanish/

US, French/Switzerland, and German/Switzerland. And if you decided to

would it be?

To further complicate matters, location alone be quite elastic and may

Burgundy to the exact location of an individuals mobile phone).

To develop the best global gateway for your companyand, by exten-

sion, your customersconsider the following.

Is your company language-oriented or location-

oriented?

Companies that have a more borderless relationship with customers are

more likely to take a language-based approach, such as hotel chains and

social networking applications.

As one example, the Twitter gateway, shown on the following page, takes

a language-oriented approach. And by contrast, eBay takes a location-

oriented approach.


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that target business executives who have a working knowledge of

English, but it is not a viable consumer approach.

A Spanish-language web site may, as mentioned above, com-

municate to residents of Spain, Latin America, and more than 30

million residents of the USbut this seemingly extensive reach

comes with varying degrees of success. This is because many lan-

guagessuch as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, or even

theyre spoken.

Your companys global gateway will likely evolve over time, and

youll want to prepare for this. You may begin with a language-

-

guages. Over time, as you add languages and begin to invest in

local markets, be prepared to migrate to a more location-oriented

approach. This is a natural process that many global gateways fol-

low.


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Elements of GlobalNavigation

content. This section explains the four major elements:

Country codes

The global gateway

Geolocation

Language negotiation

The following exhibit provides an overview of these four elements. Keep

in mind that a web site might utilize only the global gateway and still be

quite successful. The global gateway is the one element you should con-

sider mandatory.


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About the author

John Yunker pioneered the development of best practices in global navigation

and, over the years, he has helped hundreds of companies improve their global

web globalization, .

As co-founder of Byte Level Research, John has authored a number of land-

mark reports, including and

Tongues . For more information, visit www.bytelevel.com .
http://www.bytelevel.com/http://www.bytelevel.com/


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Additional Products and Services

The 2010 Web Globalization Report Card

www.bytelevel.com/reportcard2010/

Twittering in Tongues

How companies are going global with Twitter

www.bytelevel.com/reports/twitter/

Country Codes of the World Map

www.bytelevel.com/map/ccTLD.html

Byte Level offers in-house web globalization and navigation training

services. For more information, please contact us at reports@byte-

level.com.
http://www.bytelevel.com/reportcard2010/http://www.bytelevel.com/reports/twitter/http://www.bytelevel.com/map/ccTLD.htmlhttp://www.bytelevel.com/map/ccTLD.htmlhttp://www.bytelevel.com/reports/twitter/http://www.bytelevel.com/reportcard2010/

the art of global gateway (excerpt)

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