Why Adobe is one of the best global websites

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 in a row, followed by Microsoft, which continues to lag in regards to global consistency and navigation.

Meanwhile, Apple has continued its slow-motion ascension through the rankings.

Adobe expanded its global reach over the past year, adding localized websites for Chile and Thailand; it now supports 37 languages.  And, as seen below, global consistency is fundamental to its web architecture; seen here are home pages for Turkey and Japan:

Adobe pioneered the use of overlays based on geolocation to ensure that visitors to the .com website indeed want to be there. For example, a visitor from Spain to .com will see this dual-language overlay:

Adobe honors the user’s intent (by not redirecting him or her away from the .com) website, but also makes it easy to manually switch directions to the Spain home page. Too many companies continue to overlook the many challenges that people around the world face when simply trying to navigate to their local home pages.

Depth of localization remains strong across most product segments. To help fill in language gaps, Adobe continues to offer machine translation as part of its customer support platform; shown below is what the user sees after translating a text string into Spanish. Note the user of Microsoft Translator.

Easier said than done I realize, but a growing number of companies, as documented in the Report Card, are doing just that.

Overall, Adobe excels across all web globalization criteria earning it not only the top spot in this category but a spot in the top 25 best global websites.

As a group, consumer technology companies generally lead in both languages and lightweight websites, though there are exceptions.

Additional highlights from the Report Card:

• Over the past year, Apple added a localized website raising its language total to an underwhelming (for such a massive company) 36 languages. 
• Sony took a major step backwards in global navigation over the past year. 
• Dell is making good use of machine translation to unlock vast quantities of support content.
• Toshiba and Fujifilm include the name of the country or region in the header — a practice we’d love to see more companies support. 
• Nintendo has made progress in expanding its global reach.

We devote 40 pages to consumer technology website profiles in the 2022 Report Card. If you have any questions about the report, please feel free to contact me.

Also included with the Report Card is the 2022 Web Globalization Best Practices & Emerging Trends report.