Transcripts
1. Introduction to Going Global 101: Hi, My name is John Yunker. Welcome to going Global 101 I am author of this book. Think outside the country. I am co founder of By Level Research, a firm dedicated to helping companies and organisations expand their global reach. And I am teaching this class to help you expand your global reach. By the end of this class, you will have downloaded a template self assessment worksheet that I've created. It's gonna ask you a number of questions about your goals, your markets and your obstacles. And by the end of this class, and after you've completed this document, you'll have a firm foundation for developing a global gateway strategy. My idea is that this is the foundational class for many other classes that dealt more deeply into issues such as usability, Web, globalization and so forth. So I encourage you, Teoh, just dive right in. You're gonna have questions and hopefully together we'll get a get all these answers, figure it out. So without further ado, let's begin
2. Speaking the World's Languages: the Internet connects computers, but language connects people. So if you wanna truly connect with people around the world, you need to speak their language. So what language is it? Well, if you're just speaking English, which my guess is most of you are right now, you're only gonna reach about 20 per. Your website is only gonna reach about 20% of all Web users. That's Native English speaking users around the world. On this graphic is actually already a little dated. It's only it's less than a year old, but there's no more than four billion Internet users. English represents a small slice, a declining slice as an X 1,000,000,000 Internet users come online, majority will not speak English and and Chinese, of course, as you see here, is the dominant language now of Internet users, followed by Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and so on. So the more languages you speak means the more people your reach is quite simple, and I I'm not advocating that you support all languages or try to sport all languages. This is very expensive endeavor, but understand that languages aren't means to an end. And if you've targeted certain markets, Japan, Russia, China etcetera. You're gonna need to invest in supporting those languages. So what languages? If I were to just pick 10 what would they be? Well, the this is based on my research, and this is based on work that I've done benchmarking the leading global brands and their websites. Uh, these are the 10 most commonly supported languages by global websites, beginning, of course, with English, English and Chinese are the two dominant languages. They're really on par with one another in terms of representation on the Internet, followed by French for France, Japanese, German, Spanish for Latin America, Korean, Portuguese for Brazil, not Portugal, Italian and rush. Now your mileage might very your if your goal is to target just Vietnam than Vietnamese is obviously gonna be your key language. But this is a representative sampling of the most popular languages supported globally. Now, when I study the global brands, the average number of languages and I put in quote because it's just reflects a leading global brands. It's a significant number. We're looking at 32 languages, which is double what it was in 2004. So it's this is where the world is right now in terms of global companies. And if you have highlighted a few companies here, beginning with Facebook in 2008 Facebook supported just three languages, which is kind of hard to believe it is now over 100 languages, and this should just actually, this should give you comfort because even Facebook started with just one language, and all of these companies started with just one language. So it's a gradual process, and you're just take it one day at a time and start slowly and build from there. Now I mentioned the benchmark A night I do, and one of the outcomes of that is an annual report called the Web Globalization Report Card. And I wanted to highlight the top 25 Web sites on the right here to give you a sense of some of the names a few that I've already talked about, you know, adobe and, uh, Kia, and so far it's a It's a range. And what these companies and organisations have in common, first and foremost isn't is a new investment in languages in global reach. Secondly, they've investing global consistency, and that allows you to have a consistent global brand website and products while still allowing some flexibility for each local market. And thirdly, there's a depth of localized content. This there's an investment not only just untranslated content but localized content. And when I say localized, I'm talking about visuals, functionality and also social media. A lot of these companies invest in multiple social media accounts and finally, as you saw previously, the global gateway, the strategy that these companies employ to direct users to the local content. That's very important, and it's often overlooked. So this gives you a sense of of some of the best practices, and I'm gonna keep coming back to these best practices throughout these thes presentations . But now let's move on to your worksheet.
3. A Quick Tour of Global Websites: okay before we dive in, too. The work. I think it's important that we spend some time looking at how other companies have gone global, have taken their websites global, and usually the websites provide great deal of insight into into how the organizations as a whole have gone global. And I'm gonna begin here with with Apple because I think this is one of the best known global brands, and what I'd love for you to do going forward is when you surf the Internet. When you use your mobile phone and you use APS, start toe. Look for how those abs and websites are configured for users who may not speak English who may not be based in your home country because it's all it's usually there. And it's usually something we overlook because we are in the process of looking for what we want in our own language for own country or region. So that's what I'm going to spend a few minutes doing. So let's say we go toe apple dot com and we land on this page and I want to navigate to a different country website or a different language. What if I don't speak English and I go to Apple Duck. What do I do while I scroll a bit? Because I'm looking for some sign that there that I confined content in my language. Let's say it's Russian. Okay, so I scrolled down and lo and behold, I see a little flag here. I see us mentioned, and what I land on is Apple's global gateway. Now, I should first tell you that I do not recommend using flags, and I will get into that at a much later stage. But Apple does use flags, but I recommend against it. So we go to this really long, somewhat cumbersome menu and I see a link to the Russian home page and I click it and here we are. We see this is Cyrillic script on it is for Russian consumers, and you might have noticed something in the header here. Now, this is something relatively new that Apple has begun using, which is geo location, which Apple is doing here. Is it saying I know you're not based in Russia. We know you're based in the U. S. So maybe you want to go to the U. S. Website and this is it a technology that a lot of companies use now to make the localised websites more discoverable. So as you start to look at taking your website global, um, taking your brand global, you have to think about navigation. You also have to think about country coats. Now let's say I wanted to just go to Apple France. People in in France would know to use your country code. Most likely they would do the take that front door, which is apple dot fr Now what Apple does. Of course, it's redirects here to apple dot com slash fr. Uh, not my recommendation, but a lot of companies do that. If I were to say, Let's do Microsoft Let's do Microsoft France, and you'll see here that Microsoft redirects is, well, it's a slightly different directory code locale code. But this is the France home page for Microsoft and as you as your price trying to get a feel to with Microsoft and let's let's change languages here. Let's say I didn't really want to go to the France home page. I scroll and hey, there's a Globe icon and I can I recommend using, uh, I click on this link and I get to a global go global gateway. This one is text based, and I do recommend text based global gateways. Uh, let's go to Japan. And one thing that I just want to point out briefly is Look at the consistency. That's something you're gonna learn as you start to take your brand, your products and services. Global global consistency. Now you also want to be flexible, of course, for for local models and local content. And, of course, let's take a look at me via and Via is one of the better websites in terms of localizing their models, which, of course, makes it natural sense for products that deal with your skin and beauty. And so if we look at Navy in China, we have local models. Generally on this is Brazil. You notice the content, the languages. The models are often localised thistles. Ghana. Uh, this is going the extra yard and is really, ultimately what you have to dio to be successful locally. Going global is really about going local. One country, one region at a time idea. If I goto wikia dot Kalmykia has a relatively new landing page in which they give me an option. I could go right to the U. S. On page or I can go to another country now. I'm at the dot com address and many people in the US assume dot com means us. And that's one of the challenges in global navigation. In fact, dot com is really a global domain, and many people around the world will visit the dot com, hoping to find a link to their localised website. And the U. S. Website here for Nike is i Kia dot com slash us slash e n so us country e n language. Let's move on to Facebook now. I'm not gonna log in to Facebook, but I do want to point out something that a lot of people may not notice. Is Facebook sports a lot of languages and Facebook is language oriented, and they included a subset of language links here. If you click on this, you're going to see more than 100 languages. This is an extreme example of globalization, but this is one reason why Facebook has billions of users. They have invested very heavily in languages. Finally, let's look afford. This is four dot com this is afford us homepage and Ford, Uh, it's smart to put the global gateway in the header, which I recommend, but what's interesting here is this is just English and Spanish because what Ford is doing here is this is the U. S. Page, and they've localized for Spanish speakers within the U. S. As well as English speakers within the U. S. And that's another thing to consider as you go global. It's not just about expanded beyond borders, it has expanded beyond language, expanding beyond culture. So as you go forward and surf the Web and all your websites, your competitors, websites as well start looking for how they organize themselves, how they communicate with users around the world. They may not do it the best way. So I'm not saying you should, uh, copy them. That's what we're also gonna cover in this class and future classes. But now that you got to feel for some of these websites and how they communicate with the world, let's move on. Teoh diving into best practices
4. Why Go Global?: OK, now it's time to dive into your worksheet and begin answering questions, starting with reasons for going global. I often hear when one of the more common reasons I hear the company's go global is is my competitors were going global, and that's not necessarily a bad rationale for doing so. But it's a risky one because sometimes your competitors have failed or are feeling and you don't know that eso I don't think this is the strongest basis for investing in going global . It's certainly one factor that you should be aware of, and you should definitely know what markets are targeting and learn what you can. But that alone should not be the reason to do it. Secondly, just targeting a market because there's a lot of people. There is not a good reason. Ah, huge markets alone don't justify, uh, going into those markets. China is extremely challenging market. A lot of companies have struggled and lost a lot of money trying to succeed in that market . Ah, and the problem with targeting very large markets. Uh, just because they're large, it can blind you to smaller, more attainable markets that are gonna be benefit more beneficial in easier for you to succeed with them. The reasons that I I really look for when I talked to companies and I think you should really play pay very close and attention to is anything you've received for prospects or customers around. So have you sold anything? Have you had requests for your products in different countries? Um, those those data and that feedback is critical, particularly if they've actually already purchased your products and have dealt with the currency issues and and you've overcome delivery issues. So if you've got some of Cem experience already in this in this area, that's gonna position you well for prioritizing certain markets. But always keep in mind that there's no such thing as a global consumer. I use the word global out. We all do, but always keep in mind that globalization is is really not what we're about worth. You think globally, but really, what is globalization? It is personalization. In the end, that's what you're going to be doing. You're going to be overcoming language and culture and demographics, geography to sell to another individual, to promote something to another individual in another part of the world and that's the reason that person purchases a product from you is the same reason you purchase products online or in person. It's a very personal decision, so always keep that in mind as you go forward.
5. Setting Global Goals: Now let's set your goals. I'm gonna ask Tito, list up to three markets that you want to succeed in. If you can only come up with one, that's fine. But the reason I would love for you to get three or more is to help you prioritize markets and also understand that each market is gonna have its own challenges, which we will cover in the obstacle section. Second, what products or services do you want to sell in these markets? It might very each market. You might have different opportunities within, and then finally, and perhaps most importantly, is how do you define success? And I think it's not just about sales. It's not. It's important to also look at lead generation awareness interaction with with your consumers. Going global is not about succeeding. In the 1st 15 minutes, some companies have had to invest in markets for 5 to 10 years before they've really seen a significant return on their investment, particularly when you're targeting emerging markets where the buying power might be where not where you want it to be not not necessarily where ah, you're accustomed to being in developed markets, but it doesn't mean that you can't succeed in emerging markets. It just means you have to adapt and have, ah take a long view. So complete that, and then we'll move on to the next section.
6. Identifying Global Obstacles: Now that you've identified your key markets, it's time to identify some of the key obstacles you'll face in each market. This is a really, really important requirement to success, and I know it can. It might seem a little intimidating at first, trying to look at all the ways you could possibly fail in a specific market. But trust me, if you do this right, you you will be very, very prepared for what you're going to go up against in each market and competitors are are something to be acutely aware of. I just have a few examples here to show you that even large companies construct around the world. We could look at China. The two large ride sharing companies in the U. S. And many countries are lifted uber, but you get into China. The dominant company is DD, the Chinese company that has actually now expanding beyond its borders in Russia. The leading search engine is not Google, but a company by the name of Yandex. Google is very, very successful in many, many markets, but it is not number one in all markets Target, Here's Target's website in Australia. Anyone in the U. S. would look at this and think I know Target. We have targets here in the US Well, actually, this is a different company. This is target dot com dot au au for Australia. It is actually a completely separate company, and here's target in the U. S. And these two companies have agreed to co exist on the planet with their respective brands that look extremely similar to one another. This underscores something that you also need to do research on in terms of obstacles. Can you register your domain globally? Can do you have any branding issues that are going infringe on other brands? Taglines naming country codes, domains? A lot of questions and honestly, you know you may not get everything you want, but it's something you need to do a lot of research on and see what the potential conflicts are now rather than running into them by surprise later. There are also obstacles that are more internal in terms of our products or websites are brands and and this is where you get into a lot of details but important details and I have a little quiz here, a mini quiz in which I've got a date displayed here. And the question is, Is this January or February? What day of the month is this? Well, the answer, of course, is, if you're thinking globally, we don't have enough information because it can either be February 1st or January 2nd, depending on what part of the world you live. Because in different countries this means different things, which means you don't want to display a date this way and have it mean the same thing globally. There different ways to display dates. If your product is, it has a lot of date display time display measurements weights Metric vs Imperial that all of these factors, all of these details, can inhibit, uh, your global strategy. So it's important. Just toe have, ah, high level view of some of the issues you're gonna face with with your branding and your products. And your website colors are another very culturally important area. They have great significance, and they don't mean the same thing everywhere in China. This screen grab of the stock exchange through western eyes. This would look like a very bad day on the stock market because of all the red. In actuality, it's a very good day. Red is positive. Green is negative. This is a bad day. It is completely opposite to how we see things in the West. Red is an extremely positive color in much of Asia, and that's just one example of how colors can sometimes throw you. Where did you go? Global gestures as well can be very challenging. My general advice is avoid gestures because this gesture could potentially be, uh, contextually offensive in some markets, Feed on the table in the Middle East can be very offensive, particularly seeing the souls of one's shoes that the dress you wear everything. One very famous global gesture, of course, is the peace sign. But if you make the mistake of showing it in reverse as former president dead in Australia many years ago, it could be offensive. And you just have to be aware of all of these details. And there's so many of them. I'm numbers Also, uh, this is a recent screenshot of the pricing of the news Mac, Mac pro, and you can see it's that there's nines. We tweet in the Western markets. We use a lot of nines if two round down. So instead of 2800. It's 2799 That pricing strategy is based on numbers are resonate through the culture. Uh, in China, you don't see the nines. Here, you see aches and why It's what eight is. A very positive, auspicious number. And and I on high ticket Good, You're gonna see a lot of eights. It is a pricing strategy. It is very intentional. Once again, these details do matter and the final potential obstacle, and it's a big one. It when you get into e commerce, when you're when you're asking for your customers to fill out, their address is in the eye. Four. Different, uh, localized address forms and you can just see the variety of address fields. And, of course, you might use different languages input, different scripts, input. How are you gonna handle all this? How do you process this on on your side when you when you get these orders or these requests? This is a really big question, and it is something that if you prepare for you can budget for and you can be prepared to succeed at going forward. Next, we'll move on to global strategy
7. Developing Your Global Strategy: Now we begin the last part of the worksheet and really the beginning of your global strategy, which I called us developing your global strategy, not completing your global strategy. This is just a very, very beginning. And what I most want you to take away from this this class is the dual concepts of internationalisation and localisation which really fit together in a yin and yang sort of relationship. These these two terms came out of the software industry. Ah, but they apply to websites, a plant of products and services. And if you can really understand how these processes work, you are gonna be so well positioned to not only take your business global, but every aspect of your business and brand not to explain or illustrate these two concepts I often use automobiles on. What we have here is looks like, uh, perhaps a wrecked automobile. It's actually not. It's actually a template. It's actually Toyota's global architecture template, and this is something that Toyota has been billions of dollars on over the years to create . And this this template of an automobile fits in a variety of different makes and models, so it is truly glow it. Can the steering Wilken be moved? Left right, you can. You can put many different body types on it. And by doing this, Toyota has created what I call a world ready automobile frame and that allows it to them, localize more cost effectively and localization are the different makes and models of the car. And why does toil to do this? Well, Twitter is not alone. A lot of automakers now do this, and the benefit of doing this is saving is saving huge amounts of money. Because if you can create something at a base level, that is, that is world ready, Um, and flexible, then then you. You can create all these variations of that product for each market based on those markets requirements. So if the steering wheel must move to the other side, that's fine. You don't have to redesign the automobile from the ground up, and that could apply to any product you create for the world or any website or software product you create from the world. So the workflow of globalization is in two parts internationalization process of creating a world ready product and then localization the process of adapting the product for a particular locale, and the locale could refer to a language region. Look on culture now. Historically, Uh, the way we go global is well in fits and and we often make mistakes. We are the website. We first create the product suite moat First Creator created for one market. They're created for usually our own home market. So we really aren't thinking about taking it to the world yet. Um, so sometimes you have to take a step back and then re engineer or internationalize that product or service. So just keep that in mind. Sometimes you have Teoh initially take a step back and and add the internationalization stage. There are two, uh, acronyms, if you will. For these two terms, I 18 n and the 18 refers to the number of characters between the I and the ant, similar with l 10 n. And I mention this because as you start to go global, and if you hire a vendor at localisation or translation vendor, they're gonna throw some of these words in terms around. So the more you know, the better the better prepared you'll be. So what are some of the elements of internationalization. Well, it really varies about varies as to what your internationalizing but first and foremost is identifying your target market's. So if you know exactly where you're going to take your product or service five markets 5100 that's going to determine how world ready it needs to be, uh, perhaps your software application. Maybe you're not going after the Middle East, so you don't need to support Arabic script, so that might remove some of the technical requirements. So may. So by knowing where you want to succeed in, you'll work back from that because each market's gonna have linguistic technical regulatory requirements, and that will feed into the internationalization of the product and service. You'll also want to create what I called world ready text website templates. Marketing templates. Uh, what is world ready Tax? Will world ready Texas text It can be easily more easily translated for each market. When we write text, we often put a lot of, ah, very cultural specific phrasing in our in our language. If I say you know you're this product will help you hit a home run. Well, that's that's a phrase that is very specific to the U. S. I mentioned legal and regulatory requirements. You're gonna need to think about your bland, Um, is it going to be easy to take your brand global are gonna run into conflicts In some markets, that's domain names, trademarks and so forth. There's a lot of questions you need to ask. But these on, of course, finally and perhaps most importantly, is the functionality of your website. For example, your websites, your products, your website. You probably have a search INGE on. It might work great for English, but do you need to optimize it for a traditional language and script E commerce? Are you going to support different currencies in different markets? This. A lot of this planning happens at the internationalization stage. And the more you do at this stage, the easier the next stage will be, which is course localization. And this is where the translation and editing fits in the localization of visuals. And, of course, I mentioned people, uh, promotions, pricing, currency dates, holidays. Every country has different holidays. Important dates. Will you create locally generated content? Will you have partners around the world who will help create that content, and you might and you might have users who submit content or become advocates at the local level, and a lot of small companies do that. And it I really recommend that approach. If you If you can recruit a lot of very proactive and choose partners around the world and then finally testing and tracking of your all of your marketing, how well isn't working? How well are people responding to what you're doing? Localization is truly never ending their lot of details. And I just put very, uh, to screen grabs from a travel app for Germany and German and English. And you can just see some examples here of localization requirements. The date. Display the potential holidays you're gonna have to support. And then when you take English into German, the text tends to expand. Ah, word. Because of the nature of German words, get a lot longer, so you need to support longer sentences, longer text strings. It's a lot of details, and I find it very exciting, but and I hope you do too as well. But you have to be aware of it. And ultimately, localization is point of view. It's about standing in your customers, uh, sitting in your customers seat standing where they live, Uh, in your mind imagining how they do the world and I love these. I've got two covers here from magazines and one is from what, a New Yorker, How a New Yorker views the world coming from New York City. And of course, you have, Ah, the rest of the US all the way to Asia. Of course, what's most important is the city streets nearest to that person. And then, of course, we have how China views the world, and and I think this is important to always keep in mind. When you develop your global strategy, it's it's global to you. But it's ultimately local and personal to the people you want to develop relationships with , and so the better you can empathize with your with your consumers and prospects, the ultimately, ultimately the most successful you'll be
8. Looking Ahead: Okay, So at this point, you should have completed your worksheet, and you should have the beginnings of a global strategy. Now, what I recommend now is making a copy of that worksheet something that includes all information that you're comfortable sharing with others and then uploading that and sharing it with with myself and others getting feedback. Note that this is a process. This is not the ending, but a beginning. And these questions are as important as the answers you're ultimately going to achieve. I hope this class was useful. And I hope you continue with future classes and dive more deeply into into various topics and keep in touch. Thank you.
John Yunker, Globalization expert, author, publisher
