Five Answers About the State of Web Globalization

Thousands of companies, from Amazon to IBM to Yahoo!, have translated and localized their Web sites for audiences around the world, a process referred to as Web globalization. Now it’s not just for large multinational corporations anymore, with companies of all sizes trying to capitalize on the Internet and expand beyond their current borders, often into new cultural groups, according to a recent report entitled, Website Globalization Report 2007: 1,939 Multinational & International Marketers Reveal Tactics on Translating Content & Best Practices, put out by Warren, R.I.–based MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing, and San Diego–based Byte Level Research, a Web globalization consulting and research company.

To put it in even simpler terms: Web globalization drives sales. So how are marketers leading Web globalization efforts? Here are some of the answers from the 1,939 marketing executives surveyed.

1. More than 30 percent now manage multilingual Web sites and another 17 percent expect to launch Web globalization efforts in the next year.
2. More than half of the respondents spent less than $50,000 so far on Web globalization. Roughly half, however, plan to increase translation spending.
3. Eighteen percent of all large organizations have spent more than $500,000 on Web globalization.
4. German currently is the most popular language supported on the Web, but Spanish is expected to vault it within the next 12 months and Chinese is gaining quickly.
5. More than 30 percent of respondents already use multilingual AdWords or a similar service. That number is expected to increase to 50 percent in the next year.