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Oct 11, 2010 | 5 minute read
written by Linda Bustos
If you’ve been trekking with us through our internationalization series, you’re familiar with the 6 things you need to consider about going global, and the decision to serve the world through multiple, localized stores or through one “internationalized” site.
Whether you’ve opted for one or multiple stores, you need to direct visitors who arrive at your home country’s site to the appropriate content – whether that’s simply shipping information, localized features (currency conversion, refined assortment) or localized sites.
There are several ways you can accomplish this:
Let’s break down the good and bad of each approach.
Example: Bluenile
If a vistor from Canada types “Bluenile” or “Bluenile.com” into her browser, she is taken directly to Bluenile.ca. Because product selection, pricing and style/model availability varies depending on the final shipping destination, redirection ensures the customer is never shown the wrong product catalog.
The customer is visibly assured that the site is Canadian with an easy-to-spot flag icon in the header. Clicking on the flag brings up shipping information.
Bluenile provides a manual override at the bottom of the page, where the customer can change shipping destination, currency, or both.
Benefits
Cautions
Example: Tiger Direct
Tiger Direct shows a conspicuous banner advertising its TigerDirect.ca site. Unfortunately, TD’s site design is so cluttered it may be easily overlooked.
Amazon’s a bit clearer:
Benefit
Examples: Nordstrom and Best Buy
Nordstrom serves a landing page asking customers to select their country and currency or proceed as US customer. The preference is saved so the settings are auto-applied for future sessions.
It’s important to save settings. Best Buy doesn’t remember your preference. Each time you return, you need to select your site again. Even worse, after making your selection, if you click on the Best Buy logo to return to the home page, you return to the country/language selection page again.
Example: Dell
Many large enterprise sites that have global brand recognition opt for the big pull down menu with every single country (or at least continent) covered. Dell is no exception, using a flag icon in the top left for clarity.
Many sites don’t make a big enough deal about international shipping. Information is provided behind “Customer Service,” “Shipping” or “FAQ” links, but not clearly advertised on the site.
While this is the lazy man’s approach to internationalization, at the very least, international shipping information should be easy to find under Customer Service, and through the search box. Just don’t expect as many international sales as with the other options.
Despite which option you choose, keep the following in mind:
1. Don’t assume they know about your localized site. It’s habitual to type Sears.com, for example, into a search engine or address bar. Sears makes no attempt to inform Canadians there is a .ca site (and Sears is the largest Canadian online retailer).
2. Use a flag. It might look a bit cheesy, but like a Noxzema girl, it will get noticed. Put it in the top left, center or right hand corner, not your footer menu.
3. Geolocation tools are not free, but they can prevent your domestic visitors from seeing international calls to action, and serve targeted content to the right ones. Not to mention, the host of other benefits of geolocation.
4. Always provide the option to change to the home country site.
We’ve only scratched the surface. Next post we’ll explore international usability tactics for category, search, product and cart review pages. And we'll discuss much more in our October 27 webinar Upcoming Ecommerce Webinar - Tapping into the International Online Consumer: What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About Going Global with Forrester Research Analyst Zia Daniell Widger. Sign up today!