Website Globalization

Web site globalization entails deploying multiple Web sites across the globe respecting localization requirements by country or brand while maintaining central control where needed.

Description

Anytime on-line

The world is an online village. That is not true of course but it neither is science fiction. Enterprises today work on a global scale. The Americas, Europe and Asia/Pacific are all part of the continuum called the 24-hour economy. The challenge this brings to enterprises is to ensure that products, services and communication are localized in a way that fits the business best. At the same time corporate communication, brand and identity consistency are becoming increasingly important from a commercial and compliance standpoint. Combine this with the speed of the Internet and you will recognize the relevance of having a solid Web site globalization strategy that goes a lot further than simply translating content.

A new Web site now

Reacting to market trends, introducing a new product or launching a micro site to support a campaign, are all daily tasks of your corporate and local marketing and communication departments. Speed is key in executing these tasks successfully. This often presents a challenge for companies these days. Troublesome access to corporate identity elements, dependency on IT and vague communication rules and guidelines often leads to loss of time and sub optimal online presence at best.

Target audiences

For many enterprises, the promise of real one-to-one marketing is unrealistic and, for even more, not really necessary. Of course, every customer believes he or she is unique but in reality we know that from a sales and marketing perspective there is nothing wrong in grouping of customers and markets in entities with similar product needs and communication requirements. Mapping those target audiences to a global business model however is the true challenge. Multiple sites, languages, offerings etc. often cause sleepless nights for communication managers, marketers and IT managers.

Global Web site enterprise architecture

The globalization of businesses not only cause challenges for marketing and communication professionals. Also IT is faced with serious questions around supporting local editors/ users; a wide range of Internet and intranet sites; storing data and guarantees for uptime; and functional availability to the online world. IT has the responsibility for offering a stable and reliable environment for the online presence of their companies.

Excerpt taken from Tridion.com.