Select Country: The Art of the Global Gateway

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Select Country The Art of the Global Gateway
John Yunker President, Byte Level
Research jyunker_at_bytelevel.com
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Agenda

• What is a global gateway?
• Why should I care?
• The global gateway in four parts
• The art of the global gateway

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What is a global gateway?
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www.acme.fr All of the above
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A global gateway is more than a pull-down menu.
A global gateway refers to the visual and
technical elements you employ to seamlessly
direct users to their geographic- and
language-specific Web sites.
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Why should I care?
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Web globalization creep
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English is losing its grip
Languages Used to Access GoogleMarch 2001 -
March 2003
Source Google
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Wheres the English Web site?
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Now find the English Web site
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Before getting started

• How do people find my Web site?
• What pages do they land on?
• Who are they? Where do they live?
• What languages do they speak?
• To be successful, cast a wide net.

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The global gateway in four parts
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1. Localized URLs (mandatory) 2. Content
Negotiation and Geolocation (optional) 3. Splash
Gateway (optional) 4. Permanent Gateway
(mandatory)
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Graceful degradation Graceful degradation is a
practice of building Web sites to ensure that all
visitors, regardless of what make or version of
Web browser they have, will enjoy a relatively
consistent experience. For examples, a
Flash-developed Web site should degrade
gracefully so that even users without
Flash-enabled browsers can view the site. This
often requires that a company create more than
one version of its site. This concept can also be
applied to the global navigation. Global
degradation Global degradation is the practice of
developing Web sites that accommodate all Web
visitors regardless of their language or locale.
To gracefully accommodate all users, Web sites
rely on a number of overlapping techniques,
explained in the following slides.
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3Com France
Global degradation in action
To reach the 3Com France Web site, a user may
enter one of two URLs.
www.3com.fr
www.3com.com
Content Negotiation If the server detects a
French language preference, it may direct the
user to the French page above. If not, it
presents the gateway page below.
3Com U.S.
3Com Splash Gateway
Users can still find their locale by using the
permanent gateway.
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Localized URLs
.com does not equal USA

• www.amazon.com
• www.amazon.de
• www.amazon.fr
• www.amazon.co.jp

What about multilingual domain names?
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Where to get them
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Language-specific URLs

• www.acme.com
• www.acme.com/fr
• www.acme.com/es
• www.acme.com/de

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Avoid confusing addresses
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Stick with standards
Country codes www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm L
anguage codes www.unicode.org/onlinedat/languages.
html
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Content Negotiation and Geolocation
The magic that happens behind the scenes
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First, adjust your language preferences
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Next, visit Google
Accept-Language ru,en-us
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Google supports more than 90 languages.
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Geolocation, briefly
Source Quova
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Splash Gateway
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A drill-down approach
Ikea starts with country then language.
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Starbucks also drills down
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Cookies prevent recurring splash pages
DE_locale de_DE etrade.com/ 0 1535041536 31956184
1051177984 29542196 ghome visitorde_DEDE etrad
e.com/ 0 1535041536 31956184 1051777984 29542196
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Permanent Gateway
Let users change their preferences at any time.
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Make the gateway a priority
GE, 2003
GE, 2001
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And keep it a priority
GE, 2005
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Aim for the sweet spot
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The art of the global gateway
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Icons speak louder than words
vs.
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Translate the gateway
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The problem with pull-downs
Why isnt Japan translated? Be aware of
encodings and Unicode.
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Wave the flag cautiously
Any of these flags could indicate Spanish...
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The best global gateways

• ETRADE
• Philips
• Procter Gamble
• Ikea
• PalmOne
• Google
• Sun

Source Web Globalization Report Card 2005
www.bytelevel.com
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Usability must come first
From the Smart Car Web site. Fun to look at but
not very practical
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For more information
Global By Design www.bytelevel.com/globalbydesign
The Web Globalization Report Card
2005 www.bytelevel.com/reports/global2005 Beyond
Borders Web Globalization Strategies www.byteleve
l.com/beyondborders Web Globalization
News http//bytelevel.com/global/db.html
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Thank you.
Please keep in touch John Yunker jyunker_at_byteleve
l.com