Chapter 10: Globalization and Multicurrency Capability (Part II)
HOW TO BE A MAJOR PLAYER IN A MARKET
If you implement the above steps on your site, you're going to be "open for
business" in the markets you choose to sell in. However, you'll never be the first choice among merchants doing business
in those countries. Any local company that comes along selling comparable products for comparable prices is likely to erode
your market share in that country. Customers would rather shop in their own language, avoid seeing tariffs as a line item,
know that customer service will be handled in their own language, and spend time at a site that reflects the colors and
images that are familiar to them. Ecru and forest green may be comfort colors in the great Northwest, but to Latin American
eyes, they reek of foreignness. Even within the United States, pastels are more a part of the local culture in certain cities
(e.g., Miami and Los Angeles) than in other cities (e.g., Boston and Chicago). It pays to have a footprint that creates
comfort.
To be a long-term contender in the international marketplace--which means maintaining sales even after local merchants
have established themselves with an online presence--there is no shortcut for setting up a local site in the native language,
with native language customer service. It's not enough, however, to simply translate your site into the local language. You
have to create a new site that incorporates the culture, customs, and colors of the country in which you want to have a
presence. For example, in the United States, we all know what a shopping cart looks like and what an icon of a shopping cart
looks like. However, is that icon familiar to every other culture? Do their shopping carts look like ours? Unless you invest
in local content developers to help you create appropriate icons, your icons might not resonate with your target audience.
ACQUIRE THE APPROPRIATE DOMAIN NAME
If you're going to be a player in a local market, you need to have a domain name that's appropriate for that country. The
.com top-level domain was never intended to be the U.S.-specific domain, but it has turned out that way. There are 239
country-specific domain names. The first thing you want to do is to acquire your .com domain as a country-specific domain.
For example, www.overtheweb.com, if it wanted to go into France, would need to acquire www.overtheweb.fr. This new domain
name will serve the dual purpose of giving local visitors from that country a direct link to a localized home page and the
local country search engines a way of knowing that this site is intended for their local audiences.
INTERNATIONALIZE YOUR ARCHITECTURE
Internationalized architecture and code means that nothing in your code is hard-coded for any particular cultural convention.
For example, in the United States, dates are shown as month/day/year, but that's by no means an international convention.
Date formatting, currency formatting, and money formatting should be parameter driven. A variable in your system should
determine how these things are formatted, rather than having the formatting hard-coded into the system.
The other component of internationalized architecture is that your database can handle double-ASCII characters, which is how
some other languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, are stored. ASCII only handles up to 256 characters, which isn't enough
to display all the characters in many languages. If the database that supports your systems can't support double-ASCII, then
you really have to start from scratch.
A final example of internationalized architecture is the ability for your database to sort a particular field by the
appropriate language. For example, if you have a product description field in multiple languages, it would need to know the
correct alphabetical order for English, Japanese, and Russian, in order to sort the field.
PROFILE: Uniscape
Uniscape is a best-of-breed solution for e-business globalization. Uniscape's technology platform and set of globalization
services allow companies and dot-coms to cross linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.
The Uniscape Globalization Infrastructure for eBusiness is a comprehensive globalization solution addressing the strategy,
architecture, and business processes required to manage a global, multilingual Web presence. Together, Uniscape's
technologies and services allow companies to manage the complex, distributed e-business globalization process.
Uniscape's Globalization Infrastructure is a technology platform for globalization that includes Uniscape Global Content
Manager (GCM) and Uniscape.com.
The Uniscape Global Content Manager allows companies to coordinate content updates across multiple multilingual sites.
Uniscape GCM detects changes throughout a network of globalized sites, automatically triggering localization of new content
according to predetermined schedules, processes, and customer-defined business rules. For example, if a change is initiated
in the United States, the system will know which sites should be updated, and then initiate the localization and posting.
Uniscape.com is Uniscape's Web-based localization solution. Designed to streamline the distributed localization process
across more than forty languages, Uniscape.com automates and monitors the flow of content through each step of the
localization process. Hosted by Uniscape, Uniscape.com ensures that content localization is an efficient, rapid process that
meets time-to-market deliverables.
Uniscape also offers a full range of globalization services, including globalization strategy, internationalization,
technology integration, and localization management services.
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LOCALIZE YOUR CONTENT
Route customers based on the referring IP address, based on their selections on your home page, or (best of all) based on a
domain name specific to that country to a site that's in their native language. Carry your logo through the local site--as
long as you're sure it doesn't have some other meaning in that other country--but localize the colors. Some cultures prefer
more subdued colors, some prefer more flamboyant colors. Find an editor in that country who can steer you right. Don't count
on your graphic artist in Seattle or Manhattan to dictate the color scheme.
Retain the services of a translation company with reputable clients to handle the translation of the content and the message.
There's more to translation than just converting word-for-word or sentence-for-sentence. Translation must include cultural
relevance. A good translation company will rewrite all your product descriptions to make them appropriate and appealing to
the local country. For example, in Japan, American logos on merchandise sell well. The product description in English might
read, "New York Yankees hat with white stitching on black canvas." In Japanese, the same product description would
probably read more like, "Authentic baseball hat for the New York Yankees baseball team. Just like they wear in New York
City! White stitching on black canvas reflects the team's colors."
Include relevant warranty and returns information for the local country. Although you may routinely pay for returns shipment
with a return merchandise authorization (RMA) number within the United States, be sure your policies are legal and can be
supported for international shipments.
Respect the privacy laws of the local country. Be sure you have a lawyer who's licensed to practice in that country review
your privacy policy to make sure it's compliant. In the European Union, for example, the privacy laws are much tougher than
in the United States. Be sure your site reflects compliance and that you are operating within local laws.
GET LOCAL TRANSLATORS
Studies show that visitors spend more time, view more pages, and make more purchases at sites in their own native languages,
which doesn't really come as any surprise. There are many, many companies that offer language translation services, but there
are major differences in how they deliver their services. Some international translation services contract with independent
translators in the native countries, which means that there may be less consistency and reliability, or accountability. Other
translation services contract with local companies to provide the translation services, and still others employ their own
translators in each country. It is important that you avoid translation services that employ translators who are not local to
the countries where the content will be seen. Even a few years out of a country can make the difference between current and
outdated use of idioms.
TRANSLATION SYSTEMS
Since you're generally paying for translation by the word, you want to be able to take advantage of technology that reuses
translation so that the same content never needs to be translated more than once. Some of the more sophisticated translation
systems offered by the larger globalization services actually use a multistep process to translate text.
First they consult a dictionary that your company has compiled for the target language, which indicates the preferential
translation for each company-specific technology or term. Every time there's a match, those terms are translated into the
target language. This ensures that regardless of who's doing the translation, your own technological terms and business will
be translated consistently.
Next the system reviews the text in need of translation to see if any parts of it have already been translated. If so, the
system pulls the previous version of the translation directly out of the database and applies that. Since only finalized,
approved translation makes it into the database of translated text, you're sure that the translation is one you can live
with.
Finally, anything left in the document is passed to a human translator who translates anything that was missed. This approach
to translation can address up to 90 percent of your translation needs from reused content.
WORKFLOW ROUTING
Regardless of how you elect to translate your site, you'll need an industrial-strength workflow routing system. Every time a
page changes on the primary site (which, for the purposes of this example, we'll assume is in English) and that page is not
specific to the U.S. site, then the page needs to queue up to get translated and ripple out to all the other localized sites.
That page should go into a translation system, which takes note of the changes--since not all of the page has probably
changed--and runs through the three steps described in the section above to apply the best translation with the least human
intervention. Then, that page probably needs to be reviewed by an in-country editor, legal counsel for that country, and
possibly the in-country site manager.
This review process can't be handled with Post-it* notes or with e-mail. E-mail can certainly be part of the solution, but
ownership of files has to be managed more stringently than that so that no content is posted until it has passed all reviews.
Finally, the approved page needs to go live on the site, with the content and the original English content going back into
the translation database for future reuse.
Going live on the site probably involves some sort of integration with your existing content-management system, so it's a
good idea to make sure your CMS (see Chapter 14) integrates with the systems of the globalization vendor you select.
PROFILE: Welocalize.com
Welocalize.com is a multilanguage globalization services company offering Web-enabled, enterprisewide translation,
localization, and internationalization solutions.
Welocalize.com offers organizations a way to accelerate global delivery of multilanguage products through a scaleable,
Web-enabled, enterprisewide workflow system. The system includes the Extend Site Monitor for maintaining and updating
multilanguage Web sites, the Extend Tool Kit for text extraction and translation database preparation, and the Extend Client
Interface for real-time project tracking via any browser.
The company can also work with your existing content-management system, which is easier if it's already internationalized
(see Chapter 12 for more information about internationalized CM systems).
Welocalize.com's process is quite formalized. The company handles everything from site translation through dynamic
identification of a visitor's location, so it can show the right home page from the beginning, through automated content
management. Most companies generate content in one primary language. So Welocalize.com monitors your site for pages that have
changed. Then it runs the new content through the company's translation service and all other language sites get updated as
quickly as possible.
Welocalize.com has its own translators, who are resident in the relevant countries, so quality control of translation
services is strong. Translators make use of assisted translation tools and a translation database tool to expedite
translation, maximize consistency, and minimize costs.
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ACCEPT APPROPRIATE PAYMENT METHODS
Credit card penetration in most of the world does not come close to that in the United States. Investigate alternative
payment options, such as eChargePhone (for delivery of digital goods), iPIN, InternetCash, and Global Internet Billing. You
will find that certain countries favor certain solutions. Find the one that's got the greatest penetration in each local
country. An excellent resource for current reviews and evaluations of payment options is the ECommerce Guide at Internet.com
(http://ecommerce.internet.com).
HANDLE CUSTOMER SERVICE LOCALLY
To the degree possible, you want your customer service to be handled in the country where your shoppers are located. Find a
customer service center that has local offices, to avoid having to evaluate different companies and contract with them in
different countries. Your choice of customer service center should be seen as a strategic alliance, and it should be given a
high level of attention. Incorporate real-time chat, if possible, but realize that in much of the world, local calls are
billed by the minute, so a fast phone call may be cheaper for your customers than a chat session-which would be free in the
United States for most people.
DON'T FORGET THE SEARCH ENGINES
Although it's not uncommon for people around the world to go to Yahoo.com, it's more likely that they're going to begin
searches for local merchandise (where they don't have to pay for international shipping) at their local Yahoo.cc (where cc is
their local country code). In addition to Yahoo!, there are many, many other country-specific search engines. Many of them
don't even have U.S. counterparts. If you're going to be found in other countries, you need to be listed in the comparable
places on sites that international visitors frequent, which may not be those where you're being found today.
Seek out search engines and directories for any countries in which you want to have a presence and get your company listed.
You can use Media Metrix and Nielsen_NetRatings.com to find out which search engines in which countries have the most
traffic. You'll often find that there are first-tier and second-tier search engines and directories that see far and away the
vast majority of the traffic; there also are a lot of also-rans. Focus on where the traffic is, just as you would in the U.S.
market.
RESOURCES
The easiest thing to find is translation services, but as you've read, that's only a very small fraction of your solution.
For fulfillment and logistics companies, start with:
From2.com (www.from2.com). Handles complete fulfillment solution worldwide, but its specialty is the Latin American
world. Its solution includes a real-time cost calculator that you integrate into your checkout process so that your customers
can see the final cost of having goods delivered to their doors.
E-Commerce Logistics (www.e-commercelogistics.com). Offers a complete fulfillment solution for Europe, including returns handling.
For globalization and localization services, there are many companies willing to assist. You can look at:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/Companies/Localization
_and_Internationalization/
Or if you need to make a phone call today, try:
Uniscape (www.uniscape.com). Offers full-service localization.
Welocalize.com (www.welocalize.com). Offers full-service localization.
The E-Commerce Arsenal
(c) 2001 Alexis D. Gutzman.
All rights reserved.
Published by AMACOM Books
www.amacombooks.org
Division of American Management Association
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
The E-Commerce Arsenal is available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.
The E-Commerce Arsenal