2nd day of a well organized IQPC conference on Web Site Globalization, Barcelona Sep 20, 2007
Laurent Ezekiel – Senior Client Partner
LBI GROUP
Dan O’Sullivan – Director
EMEA, TRANSLATIONS.COM
“Creating, Deploying and Managing a Multi-Lingual / Multi-Country User Generated Content Site” Continue reading
2nd day of a well organized IQPC conference on Web Site Globalization, Barcelona Sep 20, 2007 Continue reading
1st day of a well organized IQPC conference on Web Site Globalization, Barcelona Sep 20, 2007
Dr. Simon Lande – CEO
“A Guide to Defining, Implementing ang Managing Global Web Standards”
Simon Lande talked about Web Standards Continue reading
1st day of a well organized IQPC conference on Web Site Globalization, Barcelona Sep 20, 2007
Bruno Herrmann – Marketing Manager, Web Content
Chairperson’s Welcome Address:
“Web globalization is an important topic and there is room for improvement on many sites.”
Web Site Globalization Conference – Wednesday Morning Session
Maikki Frisk – Senior Manager Operations Development
NOKIA MULTIMEDIA
“Expanding Your Web Presence on Both a Global & Local Scale while Maintaining Brand Consistency”
Globalization aspects of the Nokia music store. Primary goal being global brand consistency (”connecting people”).
OVI (www.ovi.com) is Nokia’s new Internet brand , launched only weeks ago.
Localization needs:
Nokia has a team to deal with online globalization issues, consisiting of international and global experts. Unified content management and workflows are in place, specified by guidelines. All systems (CMS, templates, workflows) support local requirements. Nokia is not using a translation management system.
Katherine Attoe – Global Communications
IT BUSINESS PARTNERS, UNILEVER
“The One Unilver Project”
Unilever facts:
“One Univelver” Project:
In 2004 Unilever started to introduce a more central approach to online publishing, including online strategy. Before 2004 all countries made their own sites. All sites now have consistent design, single technology (Tridion) , global content creation with local translation, localization and/or re-purposing. Local content added in addition. Significant savings after 2004.
One Unilever today:
Challenges:
Translation management (TMS) not in use. Local site is created by locally translating a blueprint master
Found to be very important: Developing local business champions, and integration with other channels.
Next steps:
Panel discussion
“Evaluating and Translating Your Web Efforts into Financial Terms to Secure Senior Management Buy-In”
Miguel Sánchez- Director SEO
Mauricio Garza – Consultant Europe
Fulvio Marfoni – Business Process Architect UnAssisted Support
Q1: Why SEO the localized content?
A: Google evaluates 165 variables per site for the ranking
Local SEO is NOT just translating the English keywords and not just translating the SEO’ed English copy.
Local versions need to have their own domain name with the local top level domain or subdomains like italy.site.com.
Q2: How to get management buy-in for the cost of translation with involving specialists to ensure cultural differences?
A: Only translating English content (without actually localizing it) is not enough. Tone of voice and other local differences to be implemented. Proven on eCommerce sites that real localization generates more revenue. It usually takes years to get management buy-in for proper online content translation management. The Google API can help identify search keywords used in different languages and often shows differences to their “just translated” English counterparts.
Q3: Informatinoal vs. transactional sites. How to convince management to make budget available for purely informational sites?
A: Much harder – if not impossible – to determine translation ROI for informational sites. Refer to widely published figures:
only 30% of all web users speak are native English speakers, will soon be even less
13% speak Chinese
52% intenet users only buy on sites that have their native language
generate your own stats (based on browser language and geolocation stats)
Refer to potential cost savings of translation management. Sony sees click through rates on emails up to 10 times higher on emails with subject and body in local language.
On transactional sites the localized language is very imporant. All research shows significant increase in sales after localization.
Q4: Better to have only a few languages, properly localized, or having many languages not properly localized?
A: To be decided on company needs (main markets, main languages…). At least for focus markets proper language localization needs to be done. Usually multiple English localizations (US, UK, AUS, CAN…) are not justifiable.
Steven Joseph – Web Manager, CMC Global Brand Management
“Ensuring Business Alignment Through Consensus Building and Regional Input”
Amadeus = Technology for tourism industry (airlines, hotels, booking, content…), present in 217 local markets.
Amadeus sites:
Prior to 2005 completely decentralized approach. Improvement was needed.
Local marketing/website manager’s dream:
Result: Brand inconsistency!Central web managers dream:
Reality: Local teams need to have site ownership, identify themselves with them. Otherwise they will not extend/use and promote the sites!
Amadeus solution to balance central and local needs:
Main cultural challenges:
Main technical challenges (CMS):
Extranet to provide to agencies:
Competitive spirit helps to improve site quality and promotion. Amadeus publishes stats for all sites to all LoCos regularly.
Next step: provide system to publish best practices and experiences so that all site owners can implement successfully, too.
Excellent talk!