| Internet Marketing Components |
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"Watch out if you
want to create a multi-language Web site
- it quickly becomes a mess"
| Internet Marketing Components |
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| Internetional!! | ...continued | |
| Though 50% of all servers are situated in
the USA, the rest of the World is starting to catch up, and one of the
inherent opportunities when communicating via the Internet is international
markets. The Internet is the only media which allows for world-wide communication
with a minimum investment.
Any Web site is automatically accessible from anywhere in the world, and both suppliers, competitors, and potential clients can consult information on a company's Web site - only the language and the character set put barriers to free and international communication. The consequence of this forced internationality is that the globalisation process is accelerating and that impressive new opportunities open up to companies ready to internationalise. However, it is important to remember that communication is not all there is to a sale, and that international communication does not erase rules on international commerce and barriers to trade. In a Web strategy, the forced internationality can be more of a barrier than of an opportunity. International issues must be taken into consideration when creating, promoting and maintaining a Web site. Should a French company make an English version of its Web site if it is not ready to sell abroad? This type of question complicates things slightly, both for the preparation and the practical solution chosen. If nobody speaks French in your company, it is perhaps not very interesting to have a French version of you Web site that you will need translators to work on every time you update your information. |
It is worth taking a little extra in the preparation
of the Web site, to ensure that there practical matters can be easily resolved
and that the shape of the Web site corresponds with a viable international
marketing strategy.
Maintaining a multilanguage Web site There are various ways of creating and maintaining a multilanguage Web site. For major Web sites, the pages are often duplicated in other languages with the exact same contents. In the construction phase, some pages may be missing and send the user to the default language page. Though this is a very practical solution it can create frustration for the user - he feels cheated by the beautiful ENGLISH, FRANCAIS, DEUTSCH options that he saw on the entry page. A serious flaw in this structure is often how to deal with updates: the advantage of a Web site in terms of immediate publishing may be lost when waiting for the translations. Translation software is not yet powerful enough to resolve this problem. A better solution may be to maintain different Web sites for each language or individual versions for each language. This gives more freedom when updating the information, but still requires multi-language updating, and the real benefit of having several language versions should be evaluated. The forced internationality must be considered seriously and then turned to your advantage. Anders Hjorth |
© Copyright Anders Hjorth, 1997
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Anders Hjorth and Innovell.com as the source
