What is a Global Gateway?

In 1999, I first used the term “global gateway” to refer to the country pull-down menu a particular company was using on its web site.

The term stuck.

Today, the meaning of global gateway has expanded a great deal, but it still effectively reflects the challenges and solutions of directing global web users to local content. A global gateway is much more than a pull-down menu. It is an umbrella term for the visual and technical elements you employ to direct users to their locale- and language-specific web sites.

A global gateway is just one of four elements in a company’s potential global navigation strategy. These four elements will be explained in Part II. For now, begin thinking about your customers and potential customers and how they find their way to your web site. Where do they live? What languages do they speak? What search engines do they use? The answers will play a large role in the strategy you ultimately choose. While every company needs a global gateway, every global gateway should be unique to the company and its customers.

The .com Dilemma

Based on a 2005 survey of multinational corporations, between 40% and 60% of traffic to their .com Web pages originated from outside of the US.

This trend has led to a dilemma many Webmasters and marketing directors are now facing: How do you create a .com web page that appeals to Americans while simultaneously redirects half of all other visitors (many of whom do not speak English) to local web sites?

This dilemma is the main reason why country domain names are so valuable—they take web users directly to local content, bypassing .com entirely.

But most companies do not register country domain names for all markets in which they do business. To compound matters, some companies use their .com URL on all global advertising campaigns, ensuring a steady stream of international traffic to .com.

The solution to this dilemma is first a matter of understanding and then a matter of developing a global gateway that minimizes the many usability issues involved.

Americans think .com equals USA

The fundamental challenge is that most Americans believe .com is synonymous with the US. What you must do is work to create a web site that appears local to U.S. residents as well as accommodating to non-U.S. residents. That’s where the global gateway fits in, as a sort of global “air traffic control,” making sure everyone gets where they need to go.

For the near future, most companies will continue to use .com as both a U.S. and global address. But others might also begin using another domain, such as .net, to host their global web sites. Companies like Panasonic and Sony already do this, allowing the U.S. offices to use .com as the default U.S. address.

Although the U.S. has its own .us country domain, few companies use it. Volvo is one company that does use .us (profiled in Part IV).

It’s too early to know for sure how .com will evolve as a global destination address. But if you implement an effective global gateway strategy at the .com address, you’ll be in very good shape.

Select Country vs. Select Language

Does your company have a language-oriented worldview or a country-oriented worldview?

The answer to that question will play a key role in how you develop your global navigation strategy. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong, although companies typically migrate over time from language-oriented to country-oriented web sites.

Leading with Language

The Bentley gateway, shown here, takes a language-oriented approach. The prime advantage of leading with language is that languages often extend well beyond borders. For example, the “Español” site may communicate—with varying success—to residents of Spain, Latin America, and more than 30 million residents of the U.S. However, there are flaws in this approach. For starters, languages such as Spanish, English, Chinese and Portuguese may vary widely depending on where they are used. Americans know when they are reading a British English web site; while they may understand most of what is being communicated, that site will still appear rather foreign to them.

The other drawback to the language-oriented approach affects companies that have a local presence in foreign markets. For example, let’s assume that a potential Bentley customer in Russia visits the gateway. Because there is no Russian text, that visitor may not know where to look to find a local dealership. In fact, there is a dealership in Moscow, but the person will have to dig into one of the language-specific web sites to find it. A more geographically oriented navigation approach may prevent this dilemma.

Thinking Regionally

Many companies take a regional approach to web globalization, as shown with the Giro gateway. This strategy allows a company to target large sections of the world without a massive investment in web globalization.

However, this strategy also has its drawbacks. Since regions include many countries and many languages, there is no one language that can be used on a regional web page that addresses all residents of that region. As a result, regional web pages tend to be in English. This approach may work for companies that target business executives who have a working knowledge of English, but it is not a viable consumer approach.

The other problematic issue with the regional strategy is that there are often large markets within these regions that require specifically localized web sites, such as China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil and the U.S. And then you end up with a mix of regions and countries and a higher degree of complexity.

Leading with Country

As companies begin to “drill down” within specific geographic markets, the language-oriented approach often gives way to a country-oriented approach.

This level of granularity allows companies to fully localize translation and provide local contact information. Customers want to know that a company can actually deliver in physical terms what its web site promises virtually. Issues such as shipping, returns, payment, customer support, and service are addressed both regionally and at the country level under this model.

Saab uses a country-oriented gateway, a strategy that an increasing number of multinationals are adopting.

Language is still very important to successful navigation. The Ikea global gateway, shown here, features country names in the dominant local language.

Getting Personal

Ultimately, companies will narrow their focus yet further to hone in on each customer and prospect. But this takes time and investment.

Amazon did not develop its high degree of personalization overnight. It began with a very basic, one-size-fits-all web site that was improved iteratively. The same pattern will follow with your localized Web sites. Keep in mind that although your .com site may be in its 10th generation, your localized sites may still be generations behind. Web globalization takes time.

If your company currently has a language-oriented worldview, think ahead a few years to how that worldview may evolve and influence your global navigation strategy. A “select language” pull-down menu may work today, but you may need “select country” next year.

Not All Gateways Are Good

Imitation may be a form of flattery, but it may also be a mistake if you pick the wrong global gateway to imitate. Of the more than 200 global Web sites analyzed for the Byte Level 2005 Web Globalization Report Card, nearly two-thirds of the global gateways received a “below average” rating.

This means you have to be very careful about which web sites you choose to emulate. On the following pages are three examples of what not to do with your global gateway.

The Hidden Gateway

Some global gateways are simply hard to find. Pioneer Electronics offers a number of localized web sites. Unfortunately, this is not obvious from the global home page. Circled in red, at the very bottom, is the link to the localized web sites.

The Confusing Gateway

In 2003, the Cable & Wireless global gateway consisted of a “Navpad” link on its home page, circled below. When a user clicked on this link, a pop-up menu presented a complex array of pull-down menus, one of which included a country pull-down menu. This global gateway was confusing on two levels; first, the word Navpad is hardly intuitive to a non-English speaker, let alone native-English speakers. Second, using multiple pull-down menus in this manner may have further confused web users.

Fortunately, the Cable & Wireless site has since moved on from the global gateway to a more standard approach in which a pull-down menu is embedded in the home page. While the positioning of this menu is not ideal – the top of the web page is preferable – this gateway marks a big improvement from 2003.

The Over-designed Gateway

If you visit Sony.net, you’ll find a highly animated, rather frustrating global gateway. While the gateway may be interesting to look at, it is not easy to use and requires a fair amount of animation to be displayed before it can be used.

As a general rule, global gateways should be free of animation and anything else that will impede the user experience. The global gateway functions like a street sign, helping web users get where they want to go. It should not slow users down or, worse, confuse them.

---

John Yunker is president of Byte Level Research, a web globalization strategy firm, and publisher of Global By Design, a monthly publication devoted to web globalization best practices. Yunker is author of the first book to fully address web globalization: Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies (2002).