Preparing to go global with your website is a big commitment and will take a lot of time, resources, clear goals and detailed planning in order for the globalization to be a success and to minimise the risk of errors occurring.

Why so much commitment and planning? Website production has matured very quickly over the years, but the practice of web globalization is only just beginning. Very few corporations have more than one language on their website, in fact, less than 15 % of American corporations with a website offer more than one language.

As web globalization is only starting out information and examples on going global are quite scarce, which makes room for error that much bigger. Errors big or small can lead to unnecessary work and embarrassing mistakes, so if you are interested in or planning to go global with your website, here are a few tips to help you on your way.

1. Don’t take on too much work, make sure even before starting that you understand what is required for a project of this size and what could go wrong. Work on one language at a time and keep it simple, by doing this you will find it easier to perfect development by finding out what clearly works and what doesn’t at each stage.

2. Ensure all parts of the company that will be affected by the globalisation are included in a feedback system so refinement in relation to individual departments is easy and manageable.

3. Ensure all viewers can access their language quickly and easily, as they will quickly move on to a website that will if yours is not easily accessible, which could mean potential loss in customers. A language gateway is the easiest way to ensure viewers can gain access quickly and easily, but be careful what type of gateway you use:

• Avoid flags as they can represent more than one language.
• ‘Welcome’ mats are great for making a website come across as friendly and welcoming, however, if any more than 4 languages will be added, the mats can start to take up a lot of space on the site.
• If you are adding a lot of languages to your site then you could let users select their language through a pull down menu. Although pull down menus take up very little room, they only show one display word until activated and certain languages won’t display without the correct fonts installed, so thought needs to go into which gateway will work best dependant on how many  and what languages you have and how much room you have on your site.
• You also need to anticipate text expansion or contraction for different languages and how you will format the site to allow for these changes.

4. Remember that for  each target local(e) the following may need to be changed:

• Currencies
• Time and date formats
• Measurements
• Authoring style
• Colour/ image selection

5. Make it easy for other countries to find your site through advertising and search engine registration in markets, once your site is complete you can use in-country language testers to test and ensure that your site works in its target locale.

Neil Payne+

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