Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
For the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied the following 15 consumer technology websites: Adobe Apple Canon Dell HP HTC Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba Xiaomi The consumer technology sector includes many of the most globally successful …
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card and, with it, the top 25 websites: Google Facebook Wikipedia Hotels.com NIVEA Booking.com Nestlé Pampers Adobe …
And so it has begun: The world’s biggest online shopping day.
In China.
More than $9 billion dollars was spent this day last year and experts are forecasting a number well north of that this year.
As I’ve been doing for the past few years, I’ve collected a few screen grabs of localized websites in China. Here are the latest:
Nike
Apple can’t seem to rid itself of using flags on its global gateway. And, yes, I’ve been writing about this for awhile now.
Every time Apple launches a redesign I get my hopes up.
But this latest design merely offered up newly “flattened” map icons, as shown here:
Current Apple Global Gateway:
Previous Apple Global Gateway:
I read a brief report on digital Arabic content produced by the Wamda Research Lab, in partnership with Google and Taghreedat. A few data points jumped out at me, such as: By 2017 over half of the Arab world will have access …
Four years ago, for the Web Globalization Report Card, I began noting (and rewarding) those websites that supported mobile devices. Even then one could easily see the virtual grounds shifting in favor of mobile devices. But at the time, only about 20% of the …
In China, November 11th is known as Singles Day and it has quickly become the world’s biggest day for ecommerce. Tmall, the massive ecommerce website owned by Alibaba is already promoting this day: Tmall hosts a great number of Western …
When you welcome visitors into your home, you probably don’t usher them directly to the basement. Yet when it comes to websites, this is exactly how many companies treat visitors from around the world. That is, they expect visitors to scroll down to …
Every time Apple updates its web design (which it did recently) I get hopeful that the global gateway will receive a similar upgrade. But this has not yet happened. Apple’s global gateway remains firmly entrenched in the use of flags. And …
I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile. A few months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly said this at an investor meeting: “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the …
Sometimes it’s difficult to see a revolution when you’re standing right in the middle of it. Which is how I still feel sometimes when it comes to web globalization. Web globalization feels at times like slow-moving revolution. Every year, companies …
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. More than ten years ago I set out to create a report that benchmarked global websites. I looked at languages supported. I studied the localized websites. I interviewed the executives …
I’m optimistic about the year ahead. I base this optimism in part on discussions I’ve had this year with dozens of marketing and web teams across about ten countries. While every company has its own unique worldview and challenges, a …
Here’s my latest post for client Pitney Bowes: Any company with global aspirations cannot afford to ignore the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It’s a region that includes more than two billion people across more than 20 countries, ranging from Australia to …
So I just spent an hour upgrading my iPhone to iOS 7. My first thought was: Boy, these icons are ugly. And there’s this strange mix of text-only buttons and visual buttons. Some of the apps feel like a step …