It’s almost a cliché, but the most effective way of building a global web presence is to be as local as possible. It’s not an easy thing to do, though, and the process begs a few questions. First, how local do you really want to get? Secondly, are your ambitions the same for all markets, or do they vary significantly from one to the next? What degree of localization are you capable of sustaining over the long-term for your different markets? Finally, does your current capability map to your strategic ambitions?
Your answers to these questions will help you make a critical choice about the type of landing page you want for your global website. What do you want your users to experience when they land on your dot.com home page? How will they use that page to access their localized content?
There is no single, standard way of building a global website. Rather, there are several models you can choose from. It’s not always easy to move from one model to another, though, so choose your model carefully. The model you choose will serve as anchor for your website for a certain amount of time. It also has implications for the brand message and market commitment you want to convey, as well as on the resources and processes you’ll need to support your presence.
So what are your choices, and what are the impacts? Here are some of the prevailing approaches to structuring global websites today.
The ‘Local-First’ Portal
These are sites that send a strong message: yes, we are global brands, but above all, we’re local players, and we know how to adapt. Proximity is the key value here. A strong look and feel, common templates, and a shared content catalogue in several languages often tie these sites together. But there is a high degree of localized content—delivery and support, promotions, addresses and contacts—while local site managers have more choice than in other models in what they can include or leave out.
There are two dominant navigational models for local-first portals; one forces users toto choose a country before they get any content (companies like Nokia, Ikea, Coca-Cola do this); the other employs browser-detection. Type in Samsung.com if you’re in France (as I am), and you get a site that’s been customized for the France locale (which in localization parlance is the combination of country + language, as a country can include more than one locale).
‘Global Reach, Local Touch’ Portals
Like local-first portals, these are companies with strong global brands as well as strong local presences worldwide. However, what they have to say globally does matter, because it sets the agenda for what goes on locally.
Such global players generally have well-established portals with a default site that is usually labeled as their ‘worldwide’ site. Local site managers can localize some elements of content, often in sections like About Us, News and Events, contact information and phone numbers, and occasionally support. Local site managers can also add local campaigns to the global mix on the home page. The level of translated content can vary from one country (and language) to another, or even from one site section to another, but by and large, there is a very strong consistency between the global site and the local instances. Large B2B companies like Siemens, Cisco, and Deloitte follow this model.
Companies like IBM and Microsoft use this model as well, but they don’t have a default worldwide site; instead, the dot-com is clearly labeled as the U.S. site. Perhaps this is a legacy issue, derived from a time when dot-com basically meant a US site. But it also may be because sites like these do have strong local delivery policies and more of a consumer focus.
The ‘Multi-Purpose’ Portal
These are sites with multiple audiences and purposes. These portals often have several layers—a worldwide default site, a range of specific business sites (some localized, some not), as well as a full series of country/locale sites.
Banks and insurers are good examples of this. HSBC, for example, has a global corporate site with content for institutional audiences. It also has dedicated sites for services like global banking, where local information is limited to local contact information. Then, of course, it has its fully localized country sites that focus on local products and access to transactional services.
‘Multi-Version’ Portals
These are companies that sell globally but don’t necessarily have a strong global presence. The offering is standard worldwide: Sales and support teams might be regional, and there may be a number of offices, but with few employees. There is minimal in-country localization or local touch (though some is possible); there is little leeway in-country. There are probably not a lot of supported languages – sometimes only one or two.
Here, the focus is on making content available in other languages, rather than for specific locales. There may be some differences in the content highlighted, but home pages are pretty consistent across languages. Firms like SDL or Bombardier take this approach. (In fact, so do most global organizations like the United Nations or the Council of Europe, although for different reasons.)
‘Best-Effort” Portals
These are sites where content is primarily in English. There are some localized resources, but hardly a critical mass, so these are integrated within the overall English source site. Networking solutions company Brocade does this. It’s not ideal, but it’s an honest approach that doesn’t lead users down a garden path of translated home pages and very little underneath—or worse, translated navigation only.
Of courses, these models are not hard and fast; there may even be some hybrid possibilities between them. That said, the model you adopt will set the foundation for your presence for a certain amount of time, so choose it carefully.
Take the ‘Local First’ portal: if you choose this model, you’d better deliver a fully localized experience for each of the markets you choose to serve. There’s no fallback here, no way of telling users that more information is available (albeit in English) on a default, corporate site. The ‘Global Reach, Local Touch’ portal does offer more flexibility in this regard: you can even choose to have different tiers of locale sites. After all, chances are your global presence differs significantly from market to market; it stands to reason that your resources will follow suit.
Multi-purpose models are particularly challenging to get right, especially if there are varying levels of localization for different parts of the business. Meta-navigation between the different sites is particularly important here. Meanwhile, multi-version websites are a particularly good option for smaller companies who see real opportunities to sell worldwide – even if they are only 6 people sitting in an office, somewhere in the world.
Finally, if you’re in best effort mode, ask yourself: is this temporary? A way for you to ramp up your localization efforts? If it is, make sure you build some flexibility into your model so that you can evolve to a more robust model later on.
So, there you go: several models to choose (carefully) from. Just remember this: effective localization is a long-term journey. Make sure you set out on it on the right foot.
