The Dutch love .nl
Country codes (ccTLDs) provide local and regional “front doors” to websites. They also can be used as local brand extensions, as shown here with Amazon: Not surprisingly, country code registries …
John Yunker
On creating your own Web Globalization Report Card
I first published the Web Globalization Report Card about 10 years ago. Since then, a number of companies have developed their own internal Report Cards (and I’ve assisted with several). Adobe, in …
Taking the Great American Pastime Global
I was raised a Cardinals fan. But I don’t live in St. Louis anymore so I must follow the team virtually. Fortunately there’s the MLB mobile app. Now I can listen …
Chevrolet wants a consistent global brand — hopefully a consistent website will follow
Interesting article in the WSJ (sub. required) about Alan Batey, the new global brand chief of Chevrolet. From the article: Mr. Batey says he wants to unify the brand’s strategy. “We used to …
LinkedIn now uses a globe as language icon
And here it is: I think it works. I realize some UI experts won’t agree with me on this. I’ve been told many times over the years that the globe …
A global look at Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report
Mary Meeker, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, recently provided another healthy dose of data and trends, along with a number of predictions. But the media largely overlooked the …
iYouth: The battle over the next generation of tech consumers
I love these new Apple advertisements: And… But one thing I couldn’t help but wonder while watching them: Where are the older folks? That is, where are the people of …
Five tips for successful, global web surveys
It seems like everyone is running a web survey these days. While I appreciate the importance of asking your website visitors what they think, too many of these surveys are …
GoDaddy going global
In this interview with Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy, he mentions the company’s focus on expanding global reach: We’re localizing, globalizing and marketizing our code base which means we’re building …
Microsoft Outlook now supports 32 country codes
Speaking of country codes, I’ve been meaning to mention this. Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) now offers users an impressive range of country code domains. Here’s the full list of supported country …
When country codes go generic
The .co domain is the country code of Colombia. But a few years back Colombia sold its soul (I mean, licensed its country code). So now .co can be registered …
Cisco Systems: The Best Global Enterprise Technology Website
We studied 12 enterprise technology websites for the 2013 Web Globalization Report Card. The Web Globalization Report Card is an annual benchmark of how effectively companies internationalize and localize their websites …
Living in a post-PC world
The latest data from IDC show the sharpest decline in PC sales on record. From the release: “Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the …
Bienvenido: Using language negotiation to support bilingual US websites
During my work for the Web Globalization Report Card I encountered a number of US-focused websites relying on language negotiation (also known as language detection) to make their Spanish-language websites …
WhatsApp adds Thai
WhatsApp is now supporting 16 languages with the addition of Thai, shown here: I noted earlier how much I admired their global gateway. Simple and effective.
English