Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
For many years, the addition of languages (as part of website localization) has ranked one of the least-promoted developments on any given website. Languages were added. End of story. Perhaps this is because localization teams have rarely been looked upon …
Bogan is one of those Australian words that I still find highly entertaining, perhaps because I too am a little bit bogan. For example, boxed wine is known as a Bogan Briefcase: If you want to learn more about boganism, …
Awhile back I mentioned the missing scrollbar from the Delta Airlines global gateway. It seems that Delta is not alone in making this rookie mistake. Even the folks at Google are not immune, as seen below on the Google Firebase …
It seems like only yesterday (2009 actually) when Google Translate had reached 50 languages. And for the past few years it appeared that Google has largely plateaued at the low 100s. It currently supports 133 languages, having most recently added …
Scrollbars are one of those UI elements that you don’t realize you miss until they’re gone. Of course their prime role is to allow you to scroll up and down. But they also provide an equally important role — in …
Square has been slowly but steadily increasing its global reach, with support for 7 countries and four languages, including Japanese, French and even Catalan (in Spain). But on September 13th, Square announced web localization for a market that has nothing …
I’ve been meaning to share each of these links for some time now but life has gotten in the way. Better late than never! Australia makes .AU more user friendlyIf you want to visit the home page of say, Amazon …
It might seem simple enough. You need to add a date input field to a submission page on your website. So you create a <form> element with <input type=”text”> and give it a label of date and you call it …
I was honored to participate in a Wegginar with Laurel and Laura of Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global. I spent about an hour focusing on US small businesses and tips for going global, including: The second language you should add to …
I’m pleased to be joining Laurel Delaney and the team at WEGG on June 1st for an hour focused on web globalization best practices and insights for small businesses. Here’s the plan… You can’t build a leading global brand without …
Last year, I noted that Mailchimp had begun its global expansion with a few rookie mistakes. Mailchimp was using its super-header to announce support for multiple languages: The globe icon was (and is) perfect. But the location was not sustainable; …
For the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card, we benchmarked the following 16 consumer technology websites: Adobe Apple Canon Dell Fujifilm HP Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba Xiaomi (Mi) Adobe emerged as number one for a second year …
Stripe processed more than $640 billion last year on behalf of millions of Internet-enabled businesses. And while this number is huge, the founders of Stripe, in a recent letter to employees and customers, emphasized that we’re still in the early …
One of the four major benchmarking criteria of the Web Globalization Report Card is global reach. That is, what languages do you support? And how many languages do you support? To score a perfect 25 points in this category, a …
The ‘enterprise technology’ category of the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card includes a diverse mix of enterprise software and hardware companies, as well as a few companies devoted to logistics and delivery, such as DHL and FedEX. Here are the …