Editorial

And it was no joke – I was working as a consultant that year for Netscape, to set up their localization function – I saw the skaters and little old ladies in the reception area, inquiring as to how to purchase shares. Totally surreal!

Fast-forward ten years later. The internet (no need to capitalize it anymore!) is still a very exciting place to be, especially if your focus is outside of your home market. The opportunity is huge, with internet usage continuing to soar. According to glreach.com, as of September 2004, there were more than 800 million users worldwide, representing an increase of 121 million people over the previous year (roughly the population of Japan!). English stood at 35.2%, Chinese at 13.7% and Spanish at 9%. Non-English markets are growing even faster than English-speaking ones (but not in terms of e-commerce). And 85% of all internet traffic is now being directed by search engines. Think about it!

Web sites are born global, whether or not their creators realize or understand what this really means. There are many excellent resources now available to help web designers and implementers (and the business people who depend on them) focus on the “big picture” worldwide. Professors Nitish Singh and Arun Pereira have recently published The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace. Their research provides real confirmation of the benefits of cultural customization:

• Higher web site usability, accessibility and interactivity
• A more favorable attitude towards the site
• Increased browsing comfort
• An increase in purchase intentions

Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.

According to Nitish and Pereira, the web globalization industry lacks the tools and framework to do the cultural customization that is required for web sites to be completely successful. This book offers 36 web site features (all empirically tested) that are the basis for cultural customization that can be used to change this. Check out our excerpt from the book in this issue (premium).

The research underlying The Culturally Customized Web Site is based on the original work of Professor Geert Hofstede, Professor Emeritus at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. What is interesting about this body of work is that it applies to all cross-cultural interactions, not simply those engendered by the web. As Hofstede points out on his web site, “Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster." For an explanation of Hofstede’s Five Cultural Dimensions and review scores for 56 countries, check out http://www.geert-hofstede.com/.

For a view of how to apply Hofstede’s theory to the business of designing web sites, we offer Applying Cultural Theories to Web Site Localization, by Dr. Andy Smith, Technical Director at optimum.web limited, Director of the U.K. Centre for Software Internationalization and Co-convener of the Indo European Systems Usability Partnership. (Premium) Originally published in August 2003, Smith’s research is still very much applicable to today’s web globalization projects. There is still a lack of equivalence between country and culture (though we are starting to make some progress). Another issue remains the global nature of the web itself, and the extent to which the web is a truly global phenomenon, operating irrespective of culture. (Just watch anyone under 25 in my neck of the woods use the web …)

Would you like your hard work on web globalization projects recognized?

Many of you reading this issue of the Globalization Insider have worked on more than one web globalization project, whether as a creator, implementer, consumer, etc. You deserve to have your work recognized – and now, you can! LISA and The Association of Support Professionals (ASP - known worldwide for its Ten Best Web Support Sites program) are collaborating to produce the first Year’s Ten Best International Web Support Sites Awards Program.

When you enter a web site into the competition, independent experts will provide detailed feedback on how well the site supports customers worldwide and what could be improved. And, if the site is selected as one of the Best International Web Support Sites, your work will be recognized and profiled in a book to be published by LISA in early 2006. Click here to find out how to enter.

79% believe that we should develop a certification program for service providers.

If you have visited the LISA site recently, you may have noticed that we have reinstituted our popular Reader Polls. The results of our June poll (Should the language services industry develop a certification program for service providers?), the overwhelming majority of people who responded (79%) answered in the affirmative.

We ran two polls in July. In the first (Do you optimize the local version of your web site for search?), 41% replied that they did and 46% replied that they didn’t. Definitely some work to be done in this area. If you are a LISA Member, check out Web Site Google-ization: Localizing for Search Engines, a thought-provoking presentation from Curt Porritt at 10X Marketing during the recent LISA Global Strategies Summit in Boston.

In our second poll in July, we asked if your organization had a Director and/or higher-level executive responsible for globalization. Thirty-seven percent of you confirmed that you did, while 59% of you said that this function did not exist. Perhaps there is a direct relationship between the lack of upper level executives with responsibility enterprise-wide for globalization and the fact that software developers continue to lose international sales due to the old-fashioned attitude towards localization, i.e., it is simply one more product-specific task – just a check box that needs an X before a product can be sold.

Clearly, companies need to invest more in their international markets than they now do, but specific guidance for what investment to make has been largely limited to anecdotal evidence about markets. Even when companies recognize that their international customers are treated as second-class citizens, they may not know how to change the situation.

There is now research to prove that quality errors in localized software products have an impact on sales.

Due to this lack of hard data, LISA partnered with IBM to create the first annual Global Software Survey in February 2005. The survey gathered data from approximately 400 business users of localized software to better understand their needs and the market for localized software. Published as Taking Software to the World, the results contained some surprises, but showed conclusively that international markets are systematically treated with less responsiveness and support than domestic markets and, more importantly, that quality errors in localized software products have an impact on sales. In addition, the survey was able to identify those software application areas where localization has the greatest impact on sales and actual business use. For more information on the actual results of the survey, read Arle Lommel’s We Now Have Concrete Proof: Software Quality Issues Drive International Sales (public). Click here to order the report today.

And, if you register before August 31 to attend the LISA Forum Europe (Succeeding in Global Markets), to be held in Zurich from November 7-11, you will receive a free copy of Taking Software to the World. Just click here.

“LISA surveys help us communicate industry best practices and trends to our prospects and clients.”

We also want to take this opportunity to highlight another one of the winners in our drawing for Taking Software to the World, Patrice Martin, co-founder and manager of ACKTIL, a French firm dedicated to helping companies manage their multilingual assets efficiently through the implementation of best industry practices and tools designed to increase their revenues and profit margins from international markets.

In other LISA news …

After a short hiatus, Arle Lommel, Publications Manager for LISA, is back to blogging. Check out the latest at Everything LISA.

The deadline for comments on two new standards is fast approaching. Please click on TBX-Link and/or GMX, if you are interested in contributing. Read May Flowers (public) to catch up on everything that OSCAR has accomplished over the last few months.

LISA Partner Webcom (Publisher of Software Business Magazine), is hosting SLAM: Sales, Licensing, Alliances & Marketing for Software Companies Conference, to be held August 17-18 in Vancouver, Canada. Marketing and supporting global software is a featured part of this year's conference.

That’s it for this month. I love hearing from our readers, so don’t forget to drop me an email at editor@lisa.org anytime.