Tesla was benchmarked in the 2019 Web Globalization Report Card.

Of the 16 companies studied, Tesla finished in the lower half (higher scoring than Honda and Subaru, but still with a number of recommended improvements).

Sadly, based on a recent redesign, Tesla is likely to see its score drop in the 2020 report.

See if you can guess why.

Here is the Denmark home page from January of this year:

And here is an excerpt from the Denmark home page today:

In January, you may have noticed a flag in the footer. This flag linked to the global gateway, shown here:

Now, the use of flags is a significant risk that I do not recommend taking (see Flag Free). And locating the gateway in the footer is also not a best practice. Nevertheless, the redesign made things worse.

Now the global gateway link is hidden under a menu located on the right:

In addition, the gateway menu itself now hides some of the available markets, requiring users to scroll down a list for no apparent reason (as no additional markets have been added).

How did this happen? My guess is that there is nobody at Tesla who specifically “owns” global navigation. Or, if so, this person did not have the opportunity to advocate for users when this redesign came about. Too often, redesigns happen without input from the globalization/localization teams.

So if this article carries any weight, hopefully the next iteration will see Tesla reverse course and in a big way, as in globe icon in the header, improved menu (free of flags) and a more lightweight design overall.

The 2019 Web Globalization Report Card

PS: Volvo emerged number one overall.

John Yunker
John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.

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