[IxDA Discuss] RE : country views on global sites

Wed Aug 2 22:35:13 PDT 2006

Yes, the IP address is the best way to detect the country. Since a  
browser in a laptop moves around quite a bit, it is good to use the  
language setting of the browser just to determine the language and  
not the country. This method will capture over 90% of your audience  
properly. For the rest, you could provide a multilingual language &  
country chooser page.

John Grøtting
Grøtting + Sauter
Barnerstr. 14
22605 Hamburg
Germany

MOBILE +49.0172.4246976
TEL +49.40.398.34342
FAX +49.40.398.34340
www.g-s.de

Am 03.08.2006 um 01:19 schrieb Peter Bagnall:

> How are you detecting the country? One approach is to use the IP  
> address, another approach is to look at the accept-language HTTP  
> header, which will give you a language, and often a country. the UK  
> shows up as en-GB, the USA as en-US for example.
>
> So if you use the accept language header (it may be called  
> something different, I'm offline as I write this) you can often get  
> the country right as well as the language in those countries that  
> have more than one.
>
> Of course, you may already be doing this and finding that not  
> everyone tells their browser where they are or what language they  
> speak! I'd love to know if that's the case, since I intend to be  
> using this approach on a site myself soon, as yet I've not tried  
> this myself, it's pure theory!
>
> Of course it'll never be perfect, but it may get you another few  
> percent happy users.
>
> Cheers
> --Pete
>
> On 2 Aug 2006, at 16:18, John Grøtting wrote:
>
>> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted  
>> material.]
>>
>> 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
>> SkypeIn +1.818.574.8440
>> Fax +49.40.398.34340
>> Mobile +49.172.4246.976
>> www.g-s.de
>> g at g-s.de
>>
>>
>> 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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