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 …
Global navigation
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 …
Free Webinar: The Leading Global Retailers (and why)
I hope you’ll join me on Wednesday for a free one-hour webinar (sponsored by Lionbridge). I will talk about my research on the retail industry, focusing on companies like Amazon, …
The best global travel websites
I’m pleased to announce a new (and free) report focused on the globalization of travel websites. From American Airlines to Kayak to Wyndham, this report highlights those websites that have …
Are you playing favorites with your global gateway?
This is nothing new to regular readers of this blog, but I visited another fairly major website recently that used the following global gateway: I always cringe when I see …
Give me a .uk and hold the .co
Ever wonder why the UK home page for Amazon is located at amazon.co.uk and not simply amazon.uk? It’s one of those quirks of the domain name system. Countries have control over …
How Nike localizes “football”
In the US, football season has officially begun (there goes my weekends). But outside of the US, football season means something entirely different. So how does a global sporting goods …
Entering the Nike “language tunnel”
Nike has a brand new website and they’ve made a few navigational changes along the way. For starters, it appears that Nike is now using geolocation to detect the location …
A map of the multilingual Internet
With Mongolia gaining approval for its new internationalized domain name (IDN), there are now 30 countries and territories with non-Latin top-level domains. I’ve updated my map and, as you can …
Looking for a translation icon?
If you haven’t visited the Noun Project yet, take a moment and drop by. It’s a great initiative to provide open source icons. All you have to do is provide …
Taking Mobile Global: Tips for Aligning Mobile and Global Web Strategies
Here’s a new article I’ve written for UX Magazine on the importance of aligning global and mobile strategies. Too often, companies develop mobile apps and mobile websites without considering localization requirements. Here …
France to offer support for actual French domain names
The French domain name registry AFNIC has published a PDF explaining why it will soon support internationalized domain names (IDNs). According to AFNIC: As of July 3, 2012, it will …
Web globalization in a post-PC world
The 2012 Web Globalization Report Card is my first attempt at analyzing web globalization in a post-PC world. By post-PC world, I’m referring to a world in which the website adapts not …
Users don’t change settings — so you better guess right
There’s a good article on Brainsparks about how rarely users get around to changing their default computer settings. “Less than 5% of the users we surveyed had changed any settings …
ADP’s global gateway combines globe and flag icons
Payroll services company ADP demonstrates that you don’t necessarily have to choose between using a flag icon or using a globe icon on your global gateway. As shown below, the …