Mailchimp makes a subtle but important global improvement

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; the global gateway needed to find a dedicated location that did not take up an entire header element.

Also, if you selected, say, German, you’d see this header:

The problem was that the text in the super-header was all in German, which wasn’t much use to speakers of the other six supported languages.

Fortunately, if you visit Mailchimp today you’ll see this:

Yes, the global gateway has a home in the main header — on the upper right side, which is generally the best location. I’m very excited to see it here, instead of in the footer, which too often still happens these days.

Clicking on the globe icon brings up this menu:

It’s not the most elegant UI, and oddly doesn’t appear to leverage the same design elements of other menus. Nevertheless, the languages are properly presented.

Now the folks at Mailchimp need to convince the higher-ups at Intuit to implement a similar global gateway in the header (it’s currently in the footer and, sadly, relies on flags).

Mailchimp was not included in the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card in large part because it is in the early stages of going global. But perhaps 2023 will be different.