Category: Companies

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Verisign launches Hebrew .com domain

Verisign has owned rights to the .com domain for many years, and profited enormously. So it’s no surprise that the company has been eager to see continued profits from language/script-specific equivalents of .com.

So it has recently pushed ahead with the Hebrew .com, which reads קום.

Verisign notes in CircleID:

Notably, a Verisign survey conducted in Israel in September 2017, comprised of 150 decision makers in small and medium-sized businesses with up to 30 employees, found that 69 percent of respondents would register a domain name that’s fully in Hebrew if they could.

But Domain Name Wire is not so bullish about this domain:

That hasn’t panned out so far. Verisign has launched three of these domains. .コム in Japanese and .닷컴 in Korean have fewer than 7,000 registrations each. The Korean .net transliteration, .닷넷, has even fewer registrations.

The key words here are “so far.” We’re still in the early days of non-Latin domains. I remain bullish on them. One of the main obstacles, I believe, have been the success of mobile apps that have usurped domains entirely. But walled gardens such as Facebook may not be losing their appeal in the years ahead, which would put the spotlight back on localized domains.

For more about IDNs, check out the latest edition of our map.

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It’s time for your website to go flag free

If you are flying the Taiwan flag on your website, consider yourself warned.

By China.

As I’ve written many times over the past year, China is paying close attention to how multinationals refer to Taiwan on their websites, not just textually but visually. And this includes the global gateway.

But the fact is, flags are completely unnecessary in global gateways — not just the Taiwan flag but any flag. And now is a very good time to extricate flags from your website.

Flag free means frustration free.

I’ve published a new report that details the many reasons for removing flags from your website; it also includes examples of websites that have gone flag free, including Costco, Google, Sanofi and Siemens.

This report is included free with all purchases of the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card.

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What’s the world’s most multilingual website? (2018 update)

A few months ago, I wrote an essay for Multilingual in which I noted that the world’s most multilingual website isn’t Google or Facebook or even Wikipedia.

It is the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

As I noted in the essay:

The JW.org website supports more than 675 written languages. And it doesn’t stop at written languages; it also supports more than 90 different sign languages as well as downloadable PDFs in languages ranging from Adyghe to Zazaki, for a total of 941 languages.

Apple, by comparison, supports a mere 34 languages. And Amazon, the company now synonymous with world domination, supports just 15 languages. Based on my studies, the world’s leading brands support an average of 31 languages, adding roughly one new language per year.

Religious leaders understand well the power of language. And so do the tech leaders. Sadly, too many other business leaders have not yet come to this realization.

Here are the top 10 most multilingual websites from the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card:

 

Notice how precipitously the language curve drops; it plateaus at roughly 40 languages for companies such as Audi, IKEA, 3M, Nikon and Cisco. And yet 40 languages is still a significant accomplishment for most organizations. The average number of languages, among the leading global brands, is just 32 languages.

The next great language boom will center around India, but this will take time as even companies such as Amazon and IKEA have been resistant to fully invest in the many official languages of this country.

To learn more about the language leaders, download a free sample of the Web Globalization Report Card.

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Welcome to the driver’s seat: Which automakers are doing the best job of welcoming female drivers in Saudi Arabia

It’s been a month since women have been legally allowed to drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I wanted to get a sense for how this massive new audience of drivers was being welcomed by the world’s automakers.

I spent time visiting the Saudi Arabia websites of a number of automakers, all included in the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card.

And, so far, I’d say that most global automakers are treading slowly, too slowly, in welcoming their new customers.

There were two notable standouts, however, that I want to mention: Ford and Audio.

As a bit of background, more than half of the websites I benchmark for the annual Report Card now support Arabic. And most of the automakers studied support partially or largely localized websites for Saudi Arabia.

Now onto the two standout automakers…

Ford has the most striking home page, shown here:

In English, the headline reads: You Drive in Front. Welcome to the Driver’s Seat.

And when you click on the main link you’ll see this visual:

Audi also leads with a bold, welcoming message: Sometimes history is written. This time, it is driven.

Clicking on the main link takes you to a video that features a husband and wife leaving the house and getting into their Audi. But instead of the man getting into the driver’s seat, we see the woman taking the wheel. In most other regions of the world, this would not be an attention-grabbing video; but Saudi Arabia is not most other regions.

Audi also includes a link to a test drive request form, a very nice feature.

Beyond Ford and Audi, there are a handful of positive examples from other automakers responding to this doubling of potential drivers:

  • Volkswagen features a TV ad that focuses on female drivers, with one behind the driver’s seat.
  • Mercedes has a Mercedes She global promotional campaign that does a degree of localization for women in the Middle East, but not nearly enough in my opinion.
  • Subaru and Toyota have been active on social media in welcoming female drivers. Shown below are examples from Twitter and Instagram:

The automakers not mentioned here are not doing nearly enough to welcome their new customers (if anything at all) — and I suspect this is not going without notice. Web localization is about respect and respect is about languages, cultures, and people.

To learn more about website globalization best practices in the auto industry and beyond, check out the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card.

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Deloitte: The best global professional services website of 2018

For the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied the following 6 professional services websites:

  1. Accenture
  2. Capgemini
  3. Deloitte
  4. Ernst & Young
  5. KPMG
  6. PWC

Last year, Deloitte and KPMG tied for first place. This year, Deloitte pulled ahead of KPMG with the top score.

While KPMG may lead in languages, Deloitte leads in global navigation as well as depth and timeliness of local content.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

  • Professional services websites tend to reflect highly decentralized corporate structures, with support for locally generated content and social feeds. Nevertheless, the leaders demonstrate that even decentralized companies can successfully support global consistency.
  • At 38 languages, KPMG remains the language leader in this category.
  • Deloitte was the first professional services company to use a globe icon and, as I predicted last year, would not be the last. Another company has joined this trend, but it could still benefit from improvement in execution.
  • Over the past year, Capgemini unveiled a new global design that is a clear step forward. The new design is less than half the weight (2.3MB) of the previous design (5MB). Also significant, the mobile design maintains the global gateway in the header, as seen here:

  • PwC takes an interesting (and unfortunate) approach to its global gateway. PwC relies on the “location” icon, shown below for its global gateway:

This global gateway fails in several ways. First, the “location” icon is more traditionally used to “find location,” as in find a local store or office. Using this icon for selecting a country or region is not standard. Also, the use of a pull-down menu is not user friendly. As you can see, the list is alpha-sorted, which will not be intuitive from users from many other countries and who speak different languages. For example, where would a German resident first look — under G for Germany or under D for Deutschland? In this case, the only link to Germany is located under G, even though PWC does support German-language localization.

  • Accenture also does a poor job of managing expectations. For example, shown on the Spanish home page is the link to an article (headline in Spanish); clicking on the link takes the user to the UK website and an article in English.

 

 

Despite the high degree of global consistency and support for languages exhibited by a few of these websites, more improvements are needed before any of these companies break into the top 25.

For more information, check out the Web Globalization Report Card.

If you’d like a report that includes only the professional services benchmark profiles, please contact us.

 

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Think you can succeed in India supporting English only? Think again.

#serveinmylanguage

It’s more than a hashtag; it’s a social movement. And it’s growing.

A movement among Indian consumers to force the vendors who depend on their business to actually support their native languages.

As this Times of India article notes: From ATMs to deposit slips, withdrawal challans and call centres, most public and private banks feel that service in Hindi and English should suffice their customer base –– Indians who converse in 22 major languages and 720 dialects.

This article is specific to the banking industry, but it’s safe to say that this is the beginning of something much bigger. Linguistically, India has been poorly served by websites.

As I noted in the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card, only 7% of the global websites studied support Hindi, followed by Urdu and Tamil. According to research conducted by Nielsen in 2017, 68% of Indian internet users consider local-language content to be more reliable than English. Facebook certainly understands this; Facebook supports more than half of India’s official languages. And it’s no surprise that Facebook now has more users in India than in the US.

Fortunately, some Indian banks are now becoming more multilingual. The Times of India article notes:

Private banks such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank are trying to be more multi-lingual in their digital banking strategy. “For instance, the Kotak Bharat app is aimed at financial inclusion. Users can transfer money, recharge their mobile, buy insurance, etc in Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil or Kannada. We plan to expand the app to handle other regional languages,” says Deepak Sharma, chief digital officer at Kotak Mahindra Bank.

And as you can see by this excerpt from my newly updated IDN poster, India represents a significant diversity of languages and scripts:

Languages are more than a means to an end; they are a sign of respect.

And companies that invest in languages are not only investing in their customers but investing in their own future.

Source

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BMW: The best global automotive website of 2018

For the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied the following 16 automotive websites:

  1. Audi
  2. BMW
  3. Chevrolet
  4. Ford
  5. Honda
  6. Hyundai
  7. Land Rover
  8. Lexus
  9. Mercedes
  10. Mini
  11. Nissan
  12. Subaru
  13. Tesla
  14. Toyota
  15. Volkswagen
  16. Volvo Cars

This year, BMW unseated Nissan, reclaiming the top spot. Both BMW and Nissan made the 25 list of best global websites.

BMW deserves credit for an increased focus on local-language social content — as well as the promotion of this content on its local websites. It also made slight improvements to its global template over the past year.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

  • The automotive sector has long been a leader in languages. The average number of languages supported by these 16 websites is an impressive 41 languages.
  • Mercedes most recently added two new local websites (and languages) raising its language total to 44. The company has been slowly (perhaps too slowly) rolling out a responsive design.
  • When it comes to global navigation, no automotive website stands apart. Too many automotive websites either bury the global gateway in the footer or overlook it entirely. Technologies like geolocation and content negotiation are not utilized to the degree that they could be to improve the user experience. 
  • What’s the best global website among American-based automotive companies? That would be Chevrolet. Among other best practices, Chevy does a good job of supporting Spanish for the US market. Note the bilingual toggle for US Spanish and English speakers:

  • Subaru was a new addition to the Report Card this year. With support for 39 languages, it holds its own with the other global auto brands.
  • Ford made a notable improvement to its global navigation over the past year. As shown below, the website added a globe icon in the header:

Currently, this gateway only allows toggling between Spanish and English (similar to other automotive websites). Ultimately, we believe its function will expand to enable better global navigation.

  • Automotive companies still have a long ways to go in improving global consistency and navigation. They decentralized structures have historically prevented them from working globally in this regard. And it’s easy to see how fragmented a site from Toyota or Chevrolet appears when compared with Tesla. Granted, Tesla supports a fraction of the number of models, but the architecture of the Tesla website ensures that it can scale better than the legacy sites of other automotive companies.
  • That said, even Tesla could improve its global navigation. Its gateway link is buried in the footer:

Tesla relies too heavily on flags for navigation. I believe it’s just a matter of time before this strategy shifts.

For more information, check out the Web Globalization Report Card.

If you’d like a report that includes only the automative benchmark profiles, you can purchase the Automotive Websites edition.

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Amazon Translate joins the machine translation crowd

Amazon announced earlier this week that it had made its home-grown Amazon Translate service generally available.

Like other Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can leverage the service across websites, apps, as well as text to speech. I should stress that this is a “neural” machine translation service — which has proven surprisingly effective at getting more natural sounding over time. Google and others are also investing heavily in neural MT.

And you can give it a free test drive; according to AWS, the “first The first 2 million characters in each monthly cycle will be free for the first 12 months starting the day you first use the service.”

The major limitation right now languages:  It supports English into just six languages, which feels rather retro compared to MT services from SDL and Google. Google Translate, by comparison, is 12 years old and supports 100+ languages (of varying degrees of quality).

And more languages are coming. I can’t comment on the quality of the translation but would love to hear what others have experienced so far.

As I’ve noted in the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card, machine translation continues to gain fans among global brands — not just internally but externally. That is, visitors to websites can self-translate content themselves — a feature I have long recommended for a number of reasons.

So it’s great to see another machine translation service available at scale for organizations of all sizes.

PS: Interesting to see a recommendation from Lionbridge on the home page — a happy Amazon Translate client.