Question - Based on this article and your experiences, debate the question: `Site localization is essential for each country for an e-commerce offering to be successful in that country.
After referring to several online articles and couple of published papers on ‘Website localization’, I have summarized below some key learning and findings about ‘Why website localization is essential?’
Website localization facilitates reaching more customers throughout the world and hence increase Sales, revenue and profits –
World Wide Web itself means a business can reach out all over the world through a click of the button. Internet knows no boundaries and it enables business to expand into international market since websites are easily accessible to one and all. Some useful 2012 statistics of where the 2405 million internet users come from are -
Asia has 1076.7 million users (44.8% of total users)
Europe has 518.6 million users (21.5% of total users)
North America has 273.8 million users (11.4% of total users)
Remaining 22% is spread across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Oceania/Australia
Growth of internet users in last 12 years has been very high in –
a) Africa – 3606.7%
b) Middle East – 2639.9 %
c) Latin America/Caribbean – 1310.8%
d) Asia – 841.9%
Source : www.internetworldstats.com. Copyright © 2001 - 2012, Miniwatts Marketing Group.
All rights reserved worldwide.
Best websites like Google, face book, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, e-bay, live etc. are all popular and successful because their users are from all over the world.
Website localization crosses all Language barriers -
According to 2012 report by www.internetworldstats.com only 27% of total internet users know English. Number of internet users in non-English speaking countries is rapidly growing. For instance in last 10 years –
i. use of Arabic online has
Bibliography: – Published papers: Globalme Localization Inc, Vancouver paper ‘Designing Your Website with Localization in Mind’ available from http://cdn.globalme.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/web-localization-whitepaper.pdf [accessed on 2/11/2012] Jesús Maroto & Mario de Bortoli (2001) paper - ‘Web Site Localisation’ published in Proceedings of the European Languages and the Implementation of Communication and Information Technologies (Elicit) available from [accessed on 1/11/2012] Online articles: Paul Sawers (2001) article ‘Web design, with the world in mind: a guide to website internationalization’ available from http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/20/web-design-with-the-world-in-mind-a-guide-to-website-internationalization/ [accessed on 29/10/2012] Jenny Warner (2010), PixelCrayons, article Web Localisation Is Important... But Why And How? available from http://abduzeedo.com/web-localisation-important-why-and-how [accessed on 29/10/2012] Prepared by Jay Makwana