International Web Presence

[s22jcd]

I am after a bit more advise from everyone:

The company I work for is looking to target their website to 13 different countries across Europe, I have a number of questions that I am not sure on at the moment.

Should Alt tags and image names also be translated into the different languages?
Should we keep a common theme across all the sites?
We have set up the different domains (.de, .se, .es) should these be hosted on servers with in the right country?

If anyone has any experience within this field please let me know as I am having more and more questions as the minutes start.

[olivero]

If it is possible avoid a .it name. A huge pain in the arse, it took me 3 weeks to set-up after loads of phone calls, faxes(!),emails and a few forms in the post. I live in Italy and am resident here, but would never do it again. The chap from Register1 had similar problems, so not just me. Register1 is very recomended by the way, easy to set-up and great customer service. You won't be able to register for a .it name without an address here or will have to go via an Italian company who will buy the name for you. I used Aruba.it last time as they are the biggest hosting company here. But have a look at total volumes and you will see how far behind things are here.

You will have the same problem buying names in a few counties without a physical address there, but will all be easier than Italy.

Good food and weather though.

[mikef]

Get the relevant .com domain - and if you can't, then change your company name or your website address. If you're in a competitive market, get as many country-specific versions as you are concerned with, and redirect them all to your .com

edited to add: if it's not clear what I'm saying, your country-specific site would be (for instance) www.apple.com/uk rather than www.apple.co.uk - if you can also buy up www.apple.co.uk, then make it a simple redirect to www.apple.com/uk

Put country selection (typically through country flag images or a drop down list of countries) either just on your home page and any other "landing pads" - or on every page. Usually the former, as it's less bother.

For full Section 508-type compliance, you should localize the image tags' alt text. If you use country flags to allow selection of a country-specific site, it's normal to always use the national language for their alt tags

If your messaging is the same in every country, then by all means keep the theme (site map, page layout, css) consistent, but aim to make as much as possible culture-neutral and use "fluid" layout to account for the fact that German text (as an example) will be 30% longer than English on average, and Japanese will be more compact

Edited by mikef on Thursday 17th May 22:40