Laurent Ezekiel – Senior Client Partner
LBI GROUP

Dan O’Sullivan – Director
EMEA, TRANSLATIONS.COM

“Creating, Deploying and Managing a Multi-Lingual / Multi-Country User Generated Content Site”

Creating a successful community site is a big challenge:

• how open can the community be (content filtering, moderation before or after publishing)
• who is the content owner
• is it authentic
• tools: blogs, microblogs, wikis, virtual worlds, social bookmarking…
• risks: author bias, credibility, brand attacks, legal (copyrights, data protection, child protection)
• difficulty: “seeding” (getting initial attention)
• localization strategy
• posting guidelines

Case: ThisIsGirl.com, Lacoste fragance for 16-20 year old girls

• LBI created the site, translation.com took care of the translaion and localization
• translation.com also drives discussions as a moderator (topics relevant to local market)

Tools used:

• MSN messanger skin
• posting (no threaded discussions)

Moderators:

• same age group
• kick off or stimulate discussions

Ersin Kurun – Senior Project Manager
Unic Internet Solutions

“Understanding Web 2.0 to Enhance the Scope and Return of Your Online Marketing ”

“Reputation economy”: volunteers generate content and participate at no charge

Principals of Web 2.0:

• The long tail (use peers to market the less popular items for you)
  • user recommendations

• user generated content
  • users become more extroverted, share more personal info
  • collective intelligence

• easy information distribution (CSS, XML, APIs)
• recommendation instead of information
• mashups, mostly with Google map, like maps with local disease info provided by users
• social networking
• non-hierarchical
• conversation, collaboration, connection (people and data)
• giving up control

Presentations not attended to:

Salome López-Lavado – Translation Manager, SONY EUROPE
“Deployment of a Translation Workflow: Effective Local Communication Versus a Manageable Technical Solution”

Gerhard Budin – Professor, UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA, AUSTRIA
“Managing a Cost-Effective Terminology Strategy as an Integral Part of Your Localization Workflows”

Niklas Schlappkohl – Senior Manager Online Globalization
STARWOOD RESORTS & HOTELS

“Using the Web to Develop Your Online Presence and to Protect Your Online Brand Equity”

Critical: Understanding cultural acceptance while protecting brand standards

Examples:

• Languages
• Salutations: Title / First Name / Last Name / Both / San (jp)
• Style, Colors, Layout
• Geosegmented functionality

Usabilty testing localization issues showed that pictures were far more important than content. US State/Province dropdowns in destination selections are an obstacle for users, even if not a mandatory input. International users do not know what states US cities are in. Date formats are very important to avoid confusions.

No country sites for Sheraton Hotels (identified as a problem!). One web site has all geographical areas and languages. Geotargeting based on user’s IP address will provide local features (contact phone number, field marketing offers.

Miguel Ángel Hernández Álvarez – Media Director
REAL MADRID

“Using the Web to Develop Your Online Presence and to Protect Your Online Brand Equit”

Real Madrid is a global brand, but uses different terminology: Business is “the sport”, Company is “the club”, Customers are “the fans”. Brand is about passion and feelings, not business. Fans happily buy high priced fan products, e.g. personalized shirts for up to 100 Euros. Revenue comes from ticket sales, marketing (fan products), and broadcast rights (1/3 each). 200 million fans world wide. Largest budgets of all clubs.

Problem for RM: The mass media rights, now seen as “Mess media” because different channels defined in rights are now overlapping, e.g. RM is allowed to broadcast a game via IP TV on a TV screen 30 min after the game, whereas regular TV broadcast (RM’s own pay TV channel) is not allowed until 2 days after the game.

RealMadrid.com:

• 2 million uniques per month
• translations so far only EN, ES, JP
• translation being done internally with own translators
• 60% traffic from outside Spain

Mobile devices becoming more important revenue streams, e.g.

• SMS messages sent during a game
• friend to friend SMS invitations to watch the game on TV
• news service (purchasing new players…)

Localization for mobile services important.

PANEL SESSION: Establishing Global Content Management and Workflow Systems to Support Multi-Market Deployment

left to right:
Arancha Caballero – COO, TSG-GLOTAS & GALA BOARD MEMBER
Maikki Frisk – Senior Manager, Operations Development, NOKIA MULTIMEDIA
Steven Joseph – Web Manager, CMC Global Brand Management, AMADEUS
Mauricio Garza – Consultant Europe, COMMON SENSE ADVISORY

Panel advise: Selecting and implementing CMS and TMS systems:

• company processes and strategies need to define the CMS/TMS system, not vice versa
• mandatory central content should be translated (and paid for) centrally
• software licenses are only a fraction of the costs involved
• continued service as important as the software itself
• ask vendors about R&D projects – what will the system do and look like in 5 years?
• phased roll-out highly recommended, market by market, site by site

Veronica Johow – Web Manager
ASTRAZENECA – ITALY

“Integrating Your Global Web Resources into Local Sales & Marketing Strategies and Tactics to Drive Company Growth”

AstraZeneca Italy needs to operate within the same legal frameworkl as all pharmaceutical conmpanies, making it impossible to promote prescription medicines to consumers directly. In addition to various EU and national legal requirements, AstraZeneca has its own global and local codes for online publishing on the international corporate site, country sites, and brand sites (product sites).

Main target audiences are doctors (HCP, health care professionals)  and the public (patients).

Veronica gave two examples for global/local co-operation on web projects:

1. re-using and translating disease content on an AstraZeneca international site to add a disease section for patients on their Italian corporate site

Main lesson learned:  The registration procedure was a big obstacle for visitors and the site’s traffic increased significantly after this requirement was removed.

2. eDetailing

Global eBusiness  provided evidence as to how useful eDetailing can be. Local implementation, with email marketing (rented list) being used for the promotion. User registration required. Sales reps were involved at an early stage, and they were the ones to receive  requests for more information sent through the eDetail. The campaign was successful, and sales reps were convinced of its usefulness, too.

Dr. Simon Lande – CEO

“A Guide to Defining, Implementing ang Managing Global Web Standards”

Simon Lande talked about Web Standards

• what they are and why they are important
• how to define them
• how to implement them
• how to manage them

Defining standards:

• Process standards, incl.
  • workflows
  • internal communicaion

• Technical standards, incl.

• company specific standards
  • brand, layout, visuals
  • information architecture, content
  • Metadata standards

• general standards
  • usability, accessibility
  • privacy, copyrights
  • general web standards
  • SEO standards

Web standards need to be

• well documented (200 -400 pages not unusual in big organizations)
• practical, understandable, enforcable
• based on global and local input

The Shell case

• 200 websites, inconsistent designs and standards before 2006
• now all based on Shell’s standards (3 main pillars: brand consistency, accessibility, usability)

Implementing web standards throughout the organization

• should be done sequentially, with key objectives per phase
• have a proof-of-concept site ready to show standards at work
• be patient, long term goals

The Unilever case

On each Unuilever template page there are about 30 areas where standards were defined. With 250 pages per site and 200 sites that’s too many pages to review manually. “Magus ActiveStandards” tool used to check automatically. Checks many different Unilever web standards, like SEO, page titles, link formating, content length, outdated new articles. ActiveStandards integrates with Tridion, e.g. showing staging server URLs for pages that need correction.

Reinhard Schäler – Director, Localization Research Center (LRC)

“Embracing Cultural Diversity to Increase the Attractiveness and Entertainment Value of Your Web Site”

Globalization, internationalization and localization have diffrent meanings. Localization is about the cultural aspects of globalization. R. Schäler showed interesting examples of the more general aspects of cultural adaptation and how things can go wrong. He also observes more and more “reverse localization, which introduces foreign cultures into local content (ads) on purpose, e.g. to emphasize the lifestyle that a particular product stands for.

Fulvio Marfoni – Business Process Architect UnAssisted Support

“Revamping the Localization Process Strategy to Deliver a Timely, Consistent, Localized Consumer Web Support”

In the past HP pushed US content written for US consumer support down to local organizations. Today HP has implemented a unified content strategy, using (mainly) Documentum as the central CMS. All channels (web pages, manuals…) are published from the central content source.

Web sites are either fully or partially localized, some only have a local home page. All content that is not translated falls back to English automatically. Reusable content and translation management has resulted in significant cost savings and faster time to market.

The Content Silo Trap:

HP observed that if content is created by authors working in isolation, it is often re-created, sometimes multiple times, and often with changes at each iteration, resulting in increased costs and reduced quality.

Next: Thursday morning session

Bruno Herrmann – Marketing Manager, Web Content

THE NIELSEN COMPANY

Chairperson’s Welcome Address:

“Web globalization is an important topic and there is room for improvement on many sites.”

Web Site Globalization Conference – Wednesday Morning Session

• usability of flags to indicate languages or currencies (UK/US/Australia problem) – DON’T!
• AVIS.ch: No language except EN (in a multilingual country!)
• HILTI Honkong: Text on images not translated

Maikki Frisk – Senior Manager Operations Development

NOKIA MULTIMEDIA

“Expanding Your Web Presence on Both a Global & Local Scale while Maintaining Brand Consistency”

Globalization aspects of the Nokia music store. Primary goal being global brand consistency (”connecting people”).

OVI (www.ovi.com) is Nokia’s new Internet brand , launched only weeks ago.

• Consists of music store, communities, and games, all for both mobile devices and PCs
• Music store: access from, search, buy, playlists, podcasts…
  • iTunes competitor, but with over the air downloading and no proprietary DRM (Windows DRM)

Localization needs:

• local music
• content
• language,
• currency
• payment methods
• campaigns
• look and feel

Nokia has a team to deal with online globalization issues, consisiting of international and global experts. Unified content management and workflows are in place, specified by guidelines. All systems (CMS, templates, workflows) support local requirements. Nokia is not using a translation management system.

Katherine Attoe – Global Communications

IT BUSINESS PARTNERS, UNILEVER

“The One Unilver Project”

Unilever facts:

• 100 company sites + Unilever.com in 74 countries
• brand is about “feel good”

“One Univelver” Project:

In 2004 Unilever started to introduce a more central approach to online publishing, including online strategy. Before 2004 all countries made their own sites. All sites now have consistent design, single technology (Tridion) , global content creation with local translation, localization and/or re-purposing. Local content added in addition. Significant savings after 2004.

One Unilever today:

• 5 days to publish a new site (a new blueprint). 2 day CMS training course.
• common look and feel all sites
• one global search engine and branded content QC through 3rd party (ActiveStandards from Magus)
• shared content, images and tools (polls…)
• aggregated web metrics
• centralized secure hosting

Challenges:

• Senior management buy-in
• Content quality
• Quality assurance

Translation management (TMS) not in use. Local site is created by locally translating a blueprint master

Found to be very important: Developing local business champions, and integration with other channels.

Next steps:

• design and strategy review
• SEO
• more Web 2.0 (doing Podcasts, video and RSS already)
• blogging currently evaluated

Panel discussion

“Evaluating and Translating Your Web Efforts into Financial Terms to Secure Senior Management Buy-In”

Miguel Sánchez- Director SEO

iPROSPECT

Mauricio Garza – Consultant Europe

COMMON SENSE ADVISORY

Fulvio Marfoni – Business Process Architect UnAssisted Support

HEWLETT PACKARD

Q1: Why SEO the localized content?

A: Google evaluates 165 variables per site for the ranking

Local SEO is NOT just translating the English keywords and not just translating the SEO’ed English copy.

Local versions need to have their own domain name with the local top level domain or subdomains like italy.site.com.

Q2: How to get management buy-in for the cost of translation with involving specialists to ensure cultural differences?

A: Only translating English content (without actually localizing it) is not enough. Tone of voice and other local differences to be implemented. Proven on eCommerce sites that real localization generates more revenue. It usually takes years to get management buy-in for proper online content translation management. The Google API can help identify search keywords used in different languages and often shows differences to their “just translated” English counterparts.

Q3: Informatinoal vs. transactional sites. How to convince management to make budget available for purely informational sites?

A: Much harder – if not impossible – to determine translation ROI for informational sites. Refer to widely published figures:

only 30% of all web users speak are native English speakers, will soon be even less

13% speak Chinese

52% intenet users only buy on sites that have their native language

generate your own stats (based on browser language and geolocation stats)

Refer to potential cost savings of translation management. Sony sees click through rates on emails up to 10 times higher on emails with subject and body in local language.

On transactional sites the localized language is very imporant. All research shows significant increase in sales after localization.

Q4: Better to have only a few languages, properly localized, or having many languages not properly localized?

A: To be decided on company needs (main markets, main languages…). At least for focus markets proper language localization needs to be done. Usually multiple English localizations (US, UK, AUS, CAN…) are not justifiable.

Steven Joseph – Web Manager, CMC Global Brand Management

AMADEUS

“Ensuring Business Alignment Through Consensus Building and Regional Input”

Amadeus = Technology for tourism industry (airlines, hotels, booking, content…), present in 217 local markets.

Amadeus sites:

• Amadeus.com (globval audience, sign-post site)
• 10 customer segment sites (content repository for country sites)
• 46 country sites

Prior to 2005 completely decentralized approach. Improvement was needed.

Local marketing/website manager’s dream:

• wants to be left alone
• but paid from central budget
• promises a perfectly targeted site

Result: Brand inconsistency!Central web managers dream:

• give me all the local money and resources and the mandate
• let me implement online brand consistency
• let me provide corporate messages for local roll-out, aligned with the global strategy

Reality: Local teams need to have site ownership, identify themselves with them. Otherwise they will not extend/use and promote the sites!

Amadeus solution to balance central and local needs:

• central strategy with local involvement
• standard templates and clear brand guidelines
• content provided in EN and local companies can choose and translate
• imagery on sites is local choice
• involving local marketers at an early stage
• developing and supporting local eChampions
• local cost savings
• allow for content and language localization
• some central content is mandatory
• central translation of mandatory content into 7 different languages, non-mandatory content and other languages to be translated by local companies themselves with local budget
• allow some individuality (”close your eyes approach”), e.g. Amadeus Columbia uses rounded corners

Main cultural challenges:

• Marketing teams still think print (want web template changes to squeeze their local offline campaigns in)
• Marketer vs. techie discussion (marketers don’t want to handle the CMS). Update web sites using a CMS is a marketing function today!!
• Ofter the CMS workflows requested are either too complicated or too loose. Good experience with only one person responsibe for approval.
• Techno-fear (e.g. creating links in and uploading docs into the CMS)

Main technical challenges (CMS):

• the CMS is often blamed for causing the problems
• local bandwidth issues to access the CMS (and to decide what mandatory multimedia content goes on)
• CMS bugs

Extranet to provide to agencies:

• brand and technical guidelines
• development resources

Competitive spirit helps to improve site quality and promotion. Amadeus publishes stats for all sites to all LoCos regularly.

Next step: provide system to publish best practices and experiences so that all site owners can implement successfully, too.

Excellent talk!

Next: Afternoon session