Half-hearted localisation
Looking at the web site of a well known British manufacturer of consumer goods yesterday I was struck by how poor their efforts to localise their web site are.
The German translation isn’t bad, although you can tell it is a translation rather than fresh German copy. The way they have set up the URLs for the various language versions won’t help them to be seen in local search engines, but it is the web site localisation that really lets it down.
On a page where the technology infrastructure for the products is explained in German, it tells the reader that one technology standard is used “in the United Kingdom, in Denmark and in many other European countries“. No mention of Germany. Elsewhere it points the reader to an English web site with content meant for a British audience. On another page it describes in German an award from a British magazine.
It’s obvious that the page has been translated from English without any thought about the relevance of the content.
Although the site does have some good points, particularly the way users can find a local German dealer, the whole site has a foreign (i.e. British) feel to it. The trouble is that this isn’t very reassuring for local visitors to the site. People have many questions in their minds when they visit a web site and want to have them all answered before they will take any action. Instead this site gives them more questions than answers, not least of which is probably this BIG question, “Will this product, which is so obviously British, really work in Germany?”
There are some other details that should be put right too. Although they have a local telephone number in one place, they don’t in others – they give a +44 number. The title for the “About” page is literally translated as “Über”. In Germany though, people are used to always seeing an “Impressum” page, which includes all the legal details of the company, its place of business, names of the directors, business registration and tax numbers. Sometimes they have an “Über uns” page as well as, but not instead of, an Impressum page.
Good localisation matters if companies want to get results from their mulitlingual web sites. It matters as much as search marketing, design, navigation and content. People need to be sure before they will buy or do business with any company, local or foreign, that the product or service will do what they want it to and won’t cause them any problems.
British manufacturers that sell to businesses rather than consumers face similar issues, although they may not be as critical. Business buyers want to know that the company is taking their market seriously before they will consider their proposition. Manufacturers don’t need big sites but they should make sure that they localise the site well to show that they are in tune with the market they are selling into. In fact it may be better to keep a web site in English rather than to do it badly in another language.
That thing about “Impressum” pages is definitely true. I’ve noticed this on websites not only from Germany but from other continental European countries too. These are fairly formal statements as to who is behind the website, what their postal address is, what their VAT number is and so on. Even personal blogs sometimes have this. This amount of formality may seem over the top from an anglophone point of view, but that’s how it’s done in those countries.
I find it interesting that even a relatively new and global medium, like the Web, has developed local conventions that differ from culture to culture.
Thanks for your comment MBM. The explanation is that the European Union’s “Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002″ state that the information has to be provided on commercial web sites. After EU directives are issued they are brought into law by each EU country’s Parliament, so after discussion and amendments the requirements end up being different in each country. So for example, the UK doesn’t require the names of directors to be on web sites. I don’t know if German law specifically requires an Impresssum page, but the fact that it is now common practice means that companies should provide one because visitors expect to find one.
This page has a lot more info.