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When professional web developers in English-speaking countries create new web sites, just how much thought do they give to making the site adaptable to other languages? Not a great deal would be our best bet – at least, at the present time. But, as of May 2010, that has probably all changed – and pretty rapidly, we’d bet. That’s because the way the web works throughout the world changed as of that date, even though users living in countries using a Latin-based alphabet system, such as the UK, Germany, Canada, US, Spain, Australia or France, will not have noticed much difference.

The web-changing event was the fact that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) introduced a system that allows full URLs with no Latin characters. This means that URLs can now be composed of entirely non-Latin scripts, such as Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic and Thai, with the country code included.

Going Global

This change has been described as one of the most significant since the internet began and one that has massive ramifications. But, you may be wondering “How does this affect me?”, and the answer lies in the fact that, until now, the web has been basically an English language platform, but, with this latest development, the web is set to take on a truly global look and feel and become a truer reflection of the global nature of the rapidly growing online population.

Since Asia accounts for 75 percent of the Earth’s total population, and 40 percent of the world’s total internet users, and China has about one third more online users than the U.S., it’s vital businesses start to think and act more globally than locally.

Web Design For The World

What then can web designers and professionals do to help make the internet a truly global entity? Even if a purely English site is being designed and built, there are certain things that can be done to ready a site for the linguistic and cultural requirements it will need to meet to be a genuine global community.

We all know that content is king, but sometimes web designers need to be reminded of that, since creating a site with all the glitz and glamour possible won’t keep visitors coming back time and again – it’s content that does that.

Here are some things that can be done to set a web site up for global expansion:

• Unicode is used with the different writing systems of the world to ensure that text is represented consistently. It has a repository of more than 100,000 different characters and covers 90 different written languages or scripts.
• If a designer wishes to set up a site that can be easily adapted for other languages, such as Chinese or Arabic, an excellent option is the use of UTF-8, which is a Unicode variable length character encoding that’s compatible with the majority of the common platforms and browsers. Also, PHP is great for handling strings, which is a necessity when dealing with non-Latin scripts.

Consider Content

The length of words varies greatly between languages, so this is a factor that must be borne in mind when a web site is being designed. Elements containing text should allow words to expand and flow as required, so using cascading style sheets (CSS) would be advisable as it allows design and content to remain separate through its table-free design. This is important since it means separate pages won’t need to be designed and built to accommodate different languages.

Keep It Simple

Another factor that needs to play a part in design for a truly worldwide web is the fact that, despite the flourishing of broadband throughout Europe and the U.S., many parts of the world can still only access the internet at much slower dial-up speeds.

Therefore, avoiding the use of Flash animation and other bandwidth-intensive graphics is imperative, otherwise many users around the world may be prevented from accessing your site. So, providing 2 versions of your site would be the solution – one HTML only, and the other with all the flash and pyrotechnics you like.

Consideration For Other Cultures

The culture of our native country is ingrained in us from our earliest years, and so we often don’t realise that what may be funny or amusing to us may actually be inappropriate or offensive to people from other cultures. Therefore, avoiding controversial topics or images, such as religion, nationality, etc., as part of your web site’s content would be advisable so as not to be offensive to cultures that may be more conservative.

Take the seemingly innocuous subject of using certain colours on your site. This may seem trivial but can have a startling impact in some cultures. For example, the colour red in Europe and North America indicates such things as danger or love, while in many Asian and Middle-Eastern cultures red denotes good luck or celebration.

There are many other examples of how colours in one culture can mean one thing, yet something completely different in others, and this is the type of thing that should be factored into web site design and associated colour schemes. 

While the ramifications of the recent ICANN changes are still not entirely clear, the fact they will be far-reaching is in no doubt. Factoring in flexibility and adaptability into the architecture of any web site is a necessity going forward as you may want to extend the reach of your business to take advantage of the new global possibilities now available to you and your business.

The above points are just a few of the many that should be considered in order to create a web site that has the potential to be globally appealing. A UK internet business coach is versed in the impact of the ICANN changes and can give you the help you need in establishing your internet business as a player in the new global market going forward.