Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
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 …
An interesting study courtesy of the Society for New Communications Research: Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes has been studying corporate communications strategies of the Fortune 500 for the past eight years. Key findings include: Twenty-one percent of the Fortune 500 has a …
When talking about language diversity across the Internet, I like to include a visual that illustrates the language leaders of the Internet: This chart is based on data from the 2014 Web Globalization Report Card. English (US) is not counted. …
I wrote recently that if you can make your product “translation worthy” the world will follow. Reading about Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp I went back and did some language crunching. In December 2012, WhatsApp supported 15 languages. I also noted …
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 …
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 your company is successful on Facebook. And Twitter. And now you want to expand your social reach into China. Well, you can pretty much forget Facebook and Twitter, because these services are blocked. Instead, you’ll need to focus on …
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 icon is insufficient for indicating language. That the globe represents …
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 web and software globalization implications of many of these slides. …
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 poorly implemented. So here are five tips to consider before …
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. I’m pleased to announce the top-scoring websites from the 2013 Web Globalization Report Card. This is the ninth annual edition of the report and it’s always exciting to highlight those …
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 are two previous articles I’ve written for UX Magazine: Select …
This week, ICANN begins accepting registrations for the much-hyped and controversial “.brand” generic domain names. What this means is that companies will be able to register domains that function without any .com suffix. So what companies are going to register …
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. I’m happy to announce the publication of the 2012 Web Globalization Report Card. This year, we reviewed 105 websites across 17 industries; the websites comprise 70% of the Interbrand Best …
I was interviewed recently by Paul Sawers of The Next Web. He wrote a great article about the challenges and opportunities of web internationalization. I recommend sending this link to anyone who thinks web globalization is a simple matter of …