Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

With English still the number one language on the web with over 536.6 million English users in 2010 it is easy for designers to forget about other languages when developing applications for the web. Yet the web is a truly global medium, (according to internetworldstats.com) Chinese is the second language of the web with 444.9 million users in 2010 and looks set to continue growing through 2011 with other languages such as Spanish and Japanese also catching up.
If your website is in the business of making money or selling you are missing out on a potential 78% of all internet users by providing an English only version of your website. In many cases an English only website will suffice for small and local businesses, but if you are looking to reach out to users in other cultures using their native languages then follow some of our top tips for cross-cultural web design.

Keyword Research
Proper keyword research is probably the most important aspect of launching a website in another language, especially for e-commerce and businesses selling products or services. Many will be tempted into simply translating their English based keywords for products into the target language which is a definite step on the road to failure.
A classic example of bad keyword translation is for ‘Car Insurance’; Google Translate gives the result of ‘l’assurance automobile’ in French. While this translation is accurate it is not a typical search term that French users would use, whereas they would most likely use something along the lines of ‘assurance voiture’.
Language specific keyword research should be approached in much the same way as English keyword research by researching popular search terms using tools such as Wordtracker and Google Insight, while also employing a professional translator to help brainstorm for synonyms and popular keywords for your sector. (more…)