Global Websites | The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly

2009-01-12T18:51:00Z

We recently put the finishing touches on our research project to identify how effectively leading IT companies address language requirements on 700+ global Websites operating in 232 countries around the globe. The companies under our microscope include the Who’s Who in enterprise systems (IBM, HP, Dell and Sun), enterprise software (SAP and Oracle), and the networking industry (Cisco and Nortel Networks). Quite frankly, we would have loved to add other major players, such as Microsoft, CA, Symantec, Adobe and others, but at 700 Websites we had our hands full.

The good news is that everyone can learn from the steps and mis-steps of these leading IT vendors.

siteIQ clients have access to our study results in a new siteIQ SnapShot report, Global Websites | Key Metrics | Language Compliance. For those of you who don’t have access to the siteIntelligence Research Service, I thought I’d share some of the more interesting things we learned.

The Big Picture

The IT industry has come a long way since we last looked at the global landscape in 2005. Then, language compliance in key markets, such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, were hit and miss at best. Today, these regions stand out as having some of the strongest language compliant Websites. Among the companies studied, Dell’s Latin American regional sites are the venues to watch.

On the other end of the spectrum, the emerging market du jour– Eastern Europe–is a language compliance disaster. Here, companies are following a number of less-than-effective strategies. Those that deliver sites in Russian appear to be unaware that this language is spoken in less than half of the 29 countries in this region. Others, like Oracle, fall back on English-based Websites in a region where English is not a first, second or an official language. None of the companies we studied “get it”, but if you want to see the best of a bad lot, spend some time observing Eastern European sites operated by IBM.

Among the companies we studied, Dell, IBM, and Cisco stand out as good-to-excellent performers across the globe.

Dell achieves this distinction by having a massive global footprint (sites in 166 countries), an intricate and highly effective regional schemas – and also pads its overall score by having the best Latin America performance across the board.

IBM, with sites in 98 countries, is actually the provisional leader in our minds, due to a strategy that delivers content (at minimum) in the target language at the top four levels of sites. IBM also gets our vote for leadership because it is the only vendor in our group that operates zero (yes, zero) sites that are not language compliant.

Cisco (75 sites) also gets our ‘good housekeeping’ seal of approval by pursuing a strategy that, on average, delivers either perfect language compliance or compliance at the top four levels.

In a reprise of our 2005 results, Oracle retains the crown the worst global language performer. Over a third of Oracle’s sites are not language compliant and it appears that the company has never seen an English-based global Website it didn’t like. If you want to see language ‘bait and switch’ in action, Oracle is the company to watch.

The Method to the Madness

When all of the scores were tallied, we found that four distinct global language strategies are in play around the globe.

The most effective is the “Almost Perfect” strategy executed by sites that deliver virtually all content (except support) in one of the country’s top three prime or official languages (as determined by data provided by the CIA FactBook). Although the random piece of content may be delivered in English, these sites clearly focus on delivering most marketing, channel, corporate, and promotional information to visitors in their lingua franca. Just over half (51.3%) of the sites we studied fall into this category—but when you factor out English-speaking countries, this drops to 22.8% of non-English speaking sites. In other words, relatively few companies operate perfect, non-English-based global sites.

The next effective is the “Largely Compliant” strategy which is observed on 14.8% of the sites. These sites deliver the vast majority of content in the country language, but rely on US or English-based content up to 20% of the time (we would have preferred 10% but 20% ended up as the logical break point). Of the 700+ sites reviewed, only 14.8% were deemed to be following a ‘Largely Compliant” strategy. The company that relies most on this strategy is Cisco (48 sites or 64% of its total global footprint).

We dubbed the next strategy the “Top Four Levels” gambit, which reflects that these sites tend to deliver the top four levels of the site in the target language, and then link visitors to the company’s U.S. site content at lower levels. Typically, these top four levels consist of a language-compliant home page and features, reseller and channel information, product gateway pages, press releases and promotions and occasionally, top level product pages. When you get to product detail, however, you are on your own unless you speak English. Of the sites reviewed, about a fifth (19.6%) fall into the “top four levels” category. Here, SAP is most likely to pursue this strategy (53.1%), followed by IBM (33.7% of all sites).

Finally, we have the least effective strategy across the globe—the “Non-Compliant or Bait and Switch” strategy. These sites give every IT vendor a bad name (to put it mildly). They either deliver language compliant home page links that lead to English content—or don’t even try to deliver a site in the country’s target language. (This, of course, begs the question: if they don’t speak English, what’s the point?) The good news is that only 14.2% of global sites we studied exhibit this egregious behavior. Among the companies we studied, Oracle gets the prize (35.9% of sites) and Sun Microsystems gets an honorable mention.

Words to the Wise

When all of the numbers are tallied up, it’s obvious that even the best funded IT vendors (note: the companies we studied spend well over $2 billion annually on their Website operations) struggle to deliver perfect global language behaviors. Given that, what should the less well-heeled do?

Avoid List Envy. Ignore where your competitors (or leading IT companies) are operating global Websites. Just because a company has a footprint in a country doesn’t mean it operates an effective Website. To avoid playing follow the loser, map your global Website strategy to your own channel strategy—and then prioritize countries based on their IT spending, the number of Internet users in each country, and the country’s real language requirements. If you can’t support the site in the user’s local language, put this country at the bottom of your list.

Think Regional. Some of the best performers build their excellence on well-crafted regional language sites. Dell’s Latin American sites—which are built around country-specific home pages backed by a Spanish-based regional site—is a classic example of a regional schema that works. Regions that are prime for regional language designs are Latin America, the Caribbean and about 10 countries in Eastern Europe.

What do you think about the global Websites operated by IT companies? Sound off in comments. Marty

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2008-05-13T00:11:00Z

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