Web site globalisation: the world is an online village
Web site globalisation entails deploying multiple Web sites across the globe respecting, localisation 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 localised 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 recognise the relevance of having a solid Web site globalisation 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 globalisation 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.
Benefits
New Web sites in hours
The global 24-hour economy asks for responsiveness and flexibility on both a central and local scale. The ability to deploy new sites overnight using BluePrinting™ technology has been Tridion’s core strength for many years. Responding quickly to new opportunities in local markets increasingly determines your success. With SDL Tridion you can roll out a new Web site or marketing campaign micro site in hours (online demo) instead of days or weeks without needing your IT department’s involvement. The business user is empowered to execute their online marketing objectives. The cost saving benefit is obvious but being in the market much faster than before really makes the difference.
Translate and localise
Web site globalisation is so much more than copy and paste or translating Web sites for various countries. Of course language and country sites are the most visible result of a global online presence. The complexity, however, is in the intelligence of combining local needs with corporate communication strategies. Local needs go beyond translations – they go as far as localising company messaging; local business functionality in Web forms and applications; as well as locally targeted communication to multiple audiences through a Web site, e-mail and newsletter or even print! This so called multi-faceted management stretches far beyond the need for just translating. It also involves areas like the localisation of sites and content types.
Taking away the pain
Web site Globalisation is all about understanding the complexity of managing and maintaining your global online presence for your customers (Internet) and your staff (intranet). Understanding this also makes the pain and difficulties clear when delivering on the globalisation promise. Tridion customers took away their pain by intelligently using our WCM system and proceeded to deploy dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of Web sites sharing all kind of content and visuals across these sites while still maintaining local business flexibility.
European heritage
As a global supplier of Persuasive Web Content Management solutions we have European roots that make us a pioneer and the recognised authority in the area of dealing with different regions. The impact of that is not only to be found in our product but also in our worldwide presence offering support in multiple time zones, a multilingual interface including, for example, spell checking functionality.