Not-so-global Internet

Strangely, though, our Web sites don't seem to reflect any of that global awareness. Of course, I'm talking mainly about corporate Web sites, but if you're on the Web for any reason, listen up. You could be alienating, even offending, a lot of good customers.

Here's the lowdown. An IDC Web globalisation report found that Internet spending outside of the US will account for two-thirds of all Web spending by 2003. The same report found that Western Europe and Japan will make up 47 percent of all e-commerce revenue by 2003 -- up from 28 percent in 1999.

Internet spending outside of the United States will account for two-thirds of all Web spending by 2003.

At a conference I attended last month, it seemed as though many US companies, even the ones who are attempting to globalise, are making the kinds of amateur mistakes that will cut them out of the cash-cow loop in a hurry.

According to Jakob Nielsen, whose Nielsen Norman Group sponsored the Web Usability Today conference (and whom I've decided to trust when it comes to numbers, if not aesthetics), US sites fail international users in two key areas: customer service and e-commerce. Among Nielsen's findings: Domestic success rates, defined by Nielsen as "the percentage of tasks that users complete correctly," for customer service -- that is, sites that offer help with products or the rest of a company's Web site -- average 42 percent, while international success rates average a dismal 15 percent. In e-commerce, the rate at which users successfully navigate a sales site and purchase something, domestic success rates hit 61 percent, and international just 47 percent.

That means, in a nutshell, international surfers can't figure out how to buy things on American sites, and they can't figure out how to get help in order to buy things from American sites. Not good, right? Right. After all, if a massive number of prospective customers can't buy your product or get help with the products they do buy, I don't think your globalisation project is destined for success.

Use me or lose me

The problem, according to Nielsen, lies in the amount of work it takes to create a site that's usable, attractive, and comprehensible to international surfers. The ideal company, he says, would develop country-specific guidelines, perform user testing in the target country, use local designers, and use translators who have both language and usability training. Unfortunately, as Nielsen's own research demonstrates, most of the top US companies are nowhere near that ideal. Heck, they're not even on the same continent.

Web behemoths Amazon and Yahoo, two companies that have surely mastered the art of international usability, each sent a representative to speak at this week's conference. How did they fare? Well, despite offering sites and services in multiple languages, including French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese, to name a few, both companies admitted little or no work on international usability -- aside from literal translations and big promotions of World Cup soccer on international sites. In fact, Maryam Mohit, vice president of site development at Amazon, didn't even mention international usability, and David Shen, vice president of user experience and design at Yahoo, told us that "international consistency" is "a work in progress".

Here at CNET, we routinely receive mail from international readers who complain that they simply couldn't find a particular product or review on our sites. We're often forced to turn to our nearest bilingual or multilingual coworker to answer such queries.

¿Cuál es el problema?

So, why aren't sites such as Amazon, Yahoo, CNET, and your-store.com trying to better reach the global audience? Well, for one, it costs money. Small companies don't have the resources to perform comprehensive usability testing overseas, let alone in every country, and in these troubled times, the Big Three mentioned above aren't expending any more cash than necessary.

That said, even without the means and resources to do up your international site properly, you can make a couple of simple guideline checks.

It's not hard to be good members of the global online community.

For example, way back in 1996, Nielsen was advocating basic international usability rules, such as avoiding graphics that might be offensive to other cultures. So, if you're designing a site for the world to see, don't, for example, use images of the bottom of a foot, which is offensive in some Asian cultures, including Myanmar. Don't use the US hand gesture for OK, which is a rude gesture in Brazil. Don't picture a closed fist, considered obscene in Pakistan. Make sure you define your time zone and location if you're listing, say, support hours or announcing a conference. Do not, whatever you do, use AltaVista's Babel Fish to translate your site into another language. Believe me, it won't come out right.

It's not hard to be good members of the global online community. As always, it comes down to certain countries -- realising that they're not alone in the world. If you're launching a business, expanding a business, or just hoping that someone overseas will check out your blog and become your new pen pal, get off on the right foot.