[IxDA Discuss] RE : country views on global sites

[John Grøtting]

I have seen a few approaches that can work for this.

Entry page
An entry page can help you capture language and country information  
and store that in a cookie. This is good when you aren't able to  
determine the country or language of the user. Since it only appears  
on the first visit (if they have cookies turned on), it is a minor  
annoyance. This is particularly useful for companies where their  
customers may not be able to read any English at all and may even  
have a non-roman character set.

Localized homepage
Quite often you can detect the country of origin. This will help you  
restrict the site to the local languages (official and unofficial).  
You will then need to determine if you want all content on the  
homepage to be in multiple languages. If you do, often it is helpful  
to have one language be English, in case the visitor is coming from a  
country such as Japan, but has French as their native language. In  
this situation, it is important that any English usage be geared  
towards non-native English speakers. This means removing jargon and  
using sentence structure that is simple. Here you will need to have a  
visible option for the user to change the language of choice.

Either way you will be confronted with how to deal with local content  
in the local languages and in one or more additional languages that  
are in common usage by your audience.

What is the content of the website? Who is the audience?

John Grøtting

Grøtting + Sauter
Barnerstr. 14B
22765 Hamburg
Germany

Tel +49.40.398.34342
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Am 02.08.2006 um 17:01 schrieb Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted  
> material.]
>
> Just make sure that any user can escape easily from that preset
> experience.  Most countries do not have a single common language (the
> US and the UK are exceptions) or neat marketing arrangements for all
> goods, despite the united or monobloc facades their governments  
> like to
> present to the world.  Making it possible and relatively easy to get
> info in another language on another country site is a must.
>
> Alain Vaillancourt
>
>> It has been requested by the client that whenever we can detect the
>> country
>> from which the user is comingl, we should "preset" the experience to
>> reflect
>> that country (local language, offerings, contact info, etc.).
>
>> Has anyone had experience with this type of arrangement? Is there any
>> overriding argument for or against this?
>>
> 		
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