Think beyond "Select Country"

As your company adds country web sites, successful navigation grows more challenging. This one-of-a-kind book will help you understand: When not to use flags. The ins and outs of geolocation. How to register country domain names. Which companies have the best global gateways. From the latest trends to profiles of real-world web sites, this book will help you help more web users find the content they're looking for. Table of Contents About the Author

Increase traffic to your country Web sites by 20% (or more)

Has your company recently launched multilingual or country web sites? Do you have a plan for directing visitors to this new content? Based on our research, roughly half of all visitors to global web sites comes from outside of the US. Effectively directing this traffic to local content can have an immediate impact on a company's bottom line.

This book will help you direct more web users to local content, resulting in increased traffic, leads, and sales. Whether your company offers 10 country web sites or 100, this book will provide the information you need.

The techniques and recommendations in this book are the result of more than six years spent studying the evolution and challenges of directing web users to local content. We've interviewed hundreds of executives and learned first-hand what strategies work and what strategies don't.

Table of Contents

Where am I?

Part I

Select Language; Select Country: Global Gateway Basics

• What's a global gateway?
• The .com problem
• Terminology 101
• Select language vs. select country
• Not all gateways are good
• The hidden gateway
• The confusing gateway
• The overdesigned gateway

Part II

Elements of Global Navigation

• The big picture
• Country Domain Name: The front door
  • Why register a country domain?
  • Registering country domains
  • What if you can't get country domains?
• Language Negotiation: Speaking in tongues
• Geolocation: We know where you live
• The Global Gateway: What the user sees
  • The splash global gateway
  • The permanent global gateway
  • The hybrid global gateway

Part III

Global Gateway Best Practices

• Translate the gateway
• Wave the flag carefully
• The problem with pull-down menus
• Icons speak louder than words
• Don't play favorites
• Keep the weight off
• Speaking of text
• Use the "sweet spot"
• When using a splash gateway...

Part IV

Creating a Global Navigation Strategy

• A global navigation road map
• Global navigation checklist
• Global gateway Q&A
• "Templatize" it

Part V

Global Gateways Profiles

• IKEA: The gateway pioneer
• Volvo: Making use of .us
• Philips: Cross-country gateways
• Google: Working behind the scenes

Part VI

Spanish and the US Market

• Which URL to use?
• Spanish gateways

Appendix: Country Domains

About the Author
The Global Gateway Benchmark

About the Author

Byte Level founder John Yunker has focused on global navigation issues since 1999 and pioneered many Web globalization techniques. In 2002, he authored the first book devoted to the emerging field of web globalization, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies. Widely acclaimed, the book is now used in a number of university and corporate training programs.

John consults with many of the world's largest multinational corporations, providing Web globalization training and benchmark services. Over the years, John has been quoted on Internet development and web globalization in such publications as:

• The Boston Globe
• Business Week
• Internet Retailer
• MultiLingual Computing

John is author of the best-selling report, The Web Globalization Report Card.