THINK GLOBALLY

It‘s not always easy to think globally, yet many of our site‘s
visitors live abroad. In fact, most of them do. This has forced us
to pack a lot of learning into a short time.

We edit and publish a monthly e-zine from the tiny Greek island of
Karpathos. Kafenio, which premiered in March 2000, focuses on European
life and culture. The first step in thinking globally was to accept
our classified ads in any language using Latin letters, so French,
Spanish, German - no problem for our software.

Not so hard, is it?

That was an important decision for us. Living on a remote Aegean
island as we do, surrounded by goats and cats, it would be easy to
get tunnel vision and forget about the rest of the planet.

English is English, right? The first major conflict that punched us
right in the nose was British vs. American English. We then had a
contributing writer from Australia, another journalist from Canada.

What to do? We made it our policy that each writer would stick to
his/her native usage of English. No way did I want to ruin an article
by Americanizing it. That‘s not global thinking. Savvy readers in
Britain or elsewhere would spot that style slip-up a mile away. (I
mean a kilometer away, no better make that kilometre. See what I
mean?)

There is a vast difference between editing something for accuracy and
acting like the language police. No, we cannot please everybody and we
cannot spend every waking moment trying to. But to reach out to a
global audience, we have to willing to widen our thinking.

Global excitement
Recently we decided to run banner ads in languages other than English
and this kicks off in the July issue with one German and one Russian
banner. It‘s a start of something exciting and we think we can expand
on our idea as time goes on. Not every improvement to a site or
e-zine has to occur overnight.

As an European, I have followed the development of Internet and the
Web for a long time. When the web started, it started out in English.
Yes, its right, we had a couple of pages in Norwegian too, but back
in 1994/1995, if we wanted to be international, we made the
web-pages in English before even thinking about making Norwegian or
German pages. And everything was fine.

Me, I was blind until last summer - when I moved to France. I thought
I would get along fine with enough French to order a beer. Boy - was
I wrong. Internet in France is French, French, French. I’ve learned
the same applies for Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan. The same
thing applies to Norway, Sweden, and Finland. And this is why we
need to take action today - to meet these markets requirements.

Just have a look at these facts - and I am not lying here (Source:
Global Reach): Back in 1995, around 80% of the languages used on
Internet was English. Today, only 51% of the languages on the
Internet is English. Japanese, for instance, is way high with 8.1 %.
In Europe, there is a potential of 320 million people. Importantly,
more than half of these do not speak English. As of today, there is
approximately 70 million people online in Europe who do not speak
English or is not native English speaking. Add 18.5 millions who
peak UK English - you have then 100 million people online in Europe
alone that do not speak US - English. Do you dare to shut them out
of your web-site? Then add Asia with a number of online users of 50
million - and fast growing! Add Latin America with Spanish and
Portuguese - another 10 million - expected to increase to 45 million
by the end of 2002. So its up to you to do the calculations. Let's
just say you are shutting out as much as 50% of your potential revenue
today by shutting out the non-English. How much are you loosing
tomorrow?

So what I did was to build a software solution for web-site
publication in more than one language. My clients now are able to
publish their information in whatever language they like (well I
have not yet tested it with a non-Latin font - must be neglecting the
markets again). The principle is simple - let the visitor select the
language. Make your website available to the local visitors by
adapting it to the local visitors habits and preferences.

How do you find users in other countries? They use the big American
search-engines and indexes, right? Yes. And no. Research shows that
people prefer using their local search-engine. That is why Yahoo,
AltaVista and the others are getting local. And when getting
local - you need to speak the tongue. Again, translate your website
to make it possible for your visitors to find you among the billions
of pages out there.

Even a blind man see that this is more expensive then just keeping
the old simple one-language page. Of course. Then again, remember
today - 50%. Tomorrow? 30%? 25%? Who knows? Can you afford not to get
yourself connected to a network of professional, international
web-site builders and promoters?

A website that works perfectly in US may not sell at all in Germany.
And the one in Germany may not at all make customers in Scandinavia.
Why? This is a question of culture, preferences and habits. In US, it
is a tendency towards filling the pages with as much information as
possible. Conversely, in Scandinavia the design is much more open,
with lots of space and air.

In France they like strong colors and heavy use of the latest
technologies like Flash and Shockwave. It also seems they totally
lack the concern for visitors with older browsers. To me, a
Scandinavian who have tried to keep the HTML as simple as possible to
ensure as many visitors as possible may view the site, this was a bit
hard to understand. Until one of my French clients told me, "But Kai,
we do not have any older browsers in France because we started with
Internet so late." He has a point as long as he makes French sites
for French people. When he starts to target other users as well, he
will have to make one site for the French, and one for the others.

This is what you should consider when you are considering going
International:

<> Start by translating a part of your website, or all of it.

<> Send out a press release in the local language to the local press.

<> Register with the local search-engines and indexes. Start getting
local visitors.

Then, the next step is to target each language to the local habits,
culture and preferences. You do this by hiring a local copy-editor to
rewrite the content to fit the market. Let her go nuts. After all, it
is she who knows the local market, not you. Right?

The third step in making your web-site international is providing
special designed web-sites for each of the different languages you
implement. And again, trust your local design-partner to know what
he does.

Of course, be careful when selecting an off-shore partner to do the
development of your new, international homepage. Make sure they have
been in business for some time. Make sure they do the job you need
them to, and make sure that they are local. You wouldn’t like to use
a Brazilian web-design bureau to make your new Swedish website nor
vice versa. When going to Rome, do as the Romans does, as it goes in
the saying. The best partner you can find is someone with a large
international network and that have the expertise to walk the line
with you from developing the strategy to following up with quality
control and support when the solution is up and running just fine.

The most important part of internationalization may not be the
actual translation, but to find partners around the globe to help
you grow your business. Think global - locally.

info@pactrends.com