This talk will explore real world examples and offer tips that will help build products and acquire customers in such economies. Key focus areas:
- How to use data for internationalization?
- Which features/ products should you prioritize when expanding globally?
- How to avoid pitfalls in translation and localization of a Product?
16. Increasing Internet users (+potential) outside of the US
Internet Users – Top countries, 2018
Global internet users = China @ 21% of Total… India @ 12%... USA @ 8% Global internet users = Asia Pacific leads in users + Potential
NOTE: Internet user data is as of mid year.
SOURCE: united Nations/International telecommunications Union, USA Census bureau, Pew Research (USA), China Internet Network Information Center (China), Islamic Republic News Agency / InternetWorldStats
/ Bond estimates (Iran), Bond estimates based on IAMAI data (India) and APJII (Indonesia)
0 0.8B 1.6B
Mexico
China
India
Indonesia
Brazil
Iran (I.R.)
United States
Japan
Russia
Germany
The Philippines
United Kingdom
Nigeria
France
Turkey
Internet users Non-Internet users Internet Users – Top countries, 2018
0 3B 6B
North America
Europe
Latin America and Caribbean
Asia Pacific
Africa and Middle East
53% of Global internet users
45% Internet user penetration in Region
15%
78%
13%
32%
10%
62%
9%
89%
Internet users Non-Internet users
17. Increasing Non-English speaking internet users
Top ten languages used in the web – April 30, 2019 (Number of internet users by language)
Top ten languages in the internet
World population for this
language (2019 estimate)
Internet users by
language
Internet penetration
(% population)
Internet users growth
(2000-2019)
Internet users % of
World (Participation)
NOTES: (1) Top Ten Languages Internet Stats were updated in April 30, 2019. (2) Internet Penetration is the ratio between the sum of Internet users speaking a language and the total population estimate that
speaks that specific language. (3) The most recent Internet usage information comes from data published by Nielsen Online, International Telecommunications Union, GfK, and other reliable sources. (4)
Population estimates are based mainly on figures from the United Nations Population Division and local official sources. (5) For definitions, methodology and navigation help, please see the Site Surfing Guide. (6)
These statistics may be cited, stating the source and establishing an active link back to Internet World Stats. Copyright 2019, Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide.
English 1,485,300,217 1,105,919,154 74.5 % 685.7 % 25.2 %
Chinese 1,457,821,239 863,230,794 59.2 % 2,572.3 % 19.3 %
Spanish 520,777,464 344,448,932 66.1 % 1,425.8 % 7.9 %
Arabic 444,016,517 226,595,470 51.0 % 8,917.3 % 5.2 %
Portuguese 289,923,583 171,583,004 59.2 % 2,164.8 % 3.9 %
Indonesian/Malaysian 302,430,273 169,685,798 56.1 % 2,861.4 % 3.9 %
French 422,308,112 144,695,288 34.3 % 1,106.0 % 3.3 %
Japanese 126,854,745 118,626,672 93.5 % 152.0 % 2.7 %
Russian 143,895,551 109,552,842 76.1 % 3,434.0 % 2.5 %
German 97,025,201 92,304,792 95.1 % 235.4 % 2.1 %
Top 10 languages 5,193,327,701 3,346,642,747 64.4 % 1,123.0 % 76.3 %
Rest of the Languages 2,522,895,508 1,039,842,794 41.2 % 1 ,090.4 % 23.7 %
World total 7,716,223,209 4,386,485,541 56.8 % 1,115.1 % 100.0 %
18. Changing customer preferences
56%
claim that their ability to get
information on products and
services in their native
language trumped pricing in
terms of preference.
87%
who can’t understand English,
won’t buy from English-only
websites
20%
Of the World’s population on
the planet speak english
20. es_ES
Spanish spoken in Spain
en_CA
es_US fr_CA
English spoken in Canada
Spanish spoken in the US French spoken in Canada
Best practices: Create a Locale
23. Pitfall 3: There is one version of the language
Languages are unique to the region/country
● Temperature: Celsius or Fahrenheit
● Decimal Separator: Comma or Dot
● Thousand Separator: Dot or Comma
● Distance: Kilometers or Miles
● Weight: Pounds or Kilograms
28. Determine launch strategy
How to use data to identify the next opportunity for your products?
1. Publicly available sources
2. Screening product reviews for insights
3. Developing insights into existing portfolio
4. Enabling export directly to customers where you see a demand
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
29. Hyper localized version vs one-size-fits-all?
Netflix’s success can be attributed to
two strategic moves:
● a three-stage expansion process
into new markets
● the ways it worked with those
markets (local-to-local and local-
to-global)
Source
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
30. Foundational research and benchmarking
Perform International foundational research
● Data connectivity
● Battery life
● Device cost and capability
● Data cost
Do Benchmarking study against competitors
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
31. Define l10n MVP
Determine the MVP and locally relevant features (i.e Customer delighters)
Example: Cash on delivery
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
32. Recruit team and local partners
Recruit:
● Core team: Marketing, Legal, PR, Tech,Customer Service
● Local teams: Manufacturing contractors, translators, supply chain deals
Set Milestones for Project
● Always leave more time!!
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
33. Difference between translation & localization
What’s in a name?
● Not everyone has a family name
● People are not always called by
their first names
● Sorting lists of users with latin vs
non-latin names would be tricky
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
34. Plan to work around dependencies
● Be wary against creating hard
dependencies against variables
that may not exist (Example:
Determining a user’s location
based on zip codes).
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
35. Is the cost of compliance worth it?
Two additional factors to consider:
● Compliance difficulty
● Market opportunity
36. L10n Best Practises
Maintain the products’ USP while still adding locally relevant features.
Capitalize on culturally important sporting events, food and holidays.
Timelines: Add culturally relevant features first
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
37. Launch activities
Launch:
● Soft launch / Invite only launch
● Dial up
● Launch (PR event)
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
38. Post launch activities
● Monitor Customer reviews
● Reporting ( Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly)
● Post-mortem
Ground work Set up Development Launch Post Launch
"As you checked in we sent you an email to join our online communities, events, and to apply for product management jobs. As members of the Product School community we'd like to provide you with these resources at your disposal."
Before we get started:
Languages
How many people speak a language other than english?
Keep your hands raised if its more than 3
More than 5
Region
Also, how many of you are not from the US?
Professional Experience:
How many are currently working on or have worked on products outside of the US?
Globalization the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
I18n: make software/ process flexible enough so that its eaiser to localize
L10n: adapting the product for a particular region/ market / country
T9n - pure basic - off the shelf - translation.
What are we missing today?
Getting only a piece of the pie by developing for NA -
Not only that - we have peaked or are about to reach the peak for internet users
Now that we have established - growth outside of US - lets learn about our future customers -
Columns - penetration and growth
Diving deep on the potential customers (removing the tech/ internet users filters)
process of ensuring a piece of software is actually flexible enough and ready to support multiple potential locales in the first place.
No actual language is involved in the i18n process; an application may well never be translated, but
if it is properly internationalized then translating it is quite easy (and, more importantly, doesn't require any development or computer skills at all, only knowledge of the target language).
Internationalization, then, is making software locale-friendly.
Source: https://www-bcf.usc.edu/~halfond/papers/alameer16icsme.pdf
Space: Designing the UI - Are the buttons/text space big enough to fit all translations?
One pitfall - is to assume that every language is as concise as English.
English text is often very compact in comparison to other languages – like German or Finnish, for example – and translations can vary considerably in length and density.
Pitfall” If you don’t prepare for this and there isn’t enough space, your strings might overlap other controls and the interface will require editing after translation.
Solution:
Design for +50% and Give Strings Room to Grow and Shrink
The interface must be able to adjust size to accommodate the length of translations provided at runtime.
2) You can also use layout managers, that understand how locale affects a UI and manage the pixel positioning of widgets for you at runtime, so your interface will adjust properly.
3) Another way to solve this issue is by storing the dimensions for a label in the locale resource file.
Assuming the same format LTR for all languages
Canada - legal requirement for bi-lingual packaging
Source: https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/2014/07/the-united-states-one-of-the-most-desired-countries-for-migrants-5278/
Expat population: Can expat customers use your product in an ‘Non-domestic’ language? For example, using a product in hindi in the US?
Source: https://content.lionbridge.com/how-to-localize-software-10-dos-and-donts-for-a-watertight-software-localization-process/
Establish i18n standards during software development stage: Be more vigilant - make it i18n friendly- Reviewing every line of text/ code to make sure that it fits the standards of i18n.
This should be done years before you even think about expanding your business - if you have a english product it is very likely that you are already global.
Make sure you are not creating architecture that is tied to any localization - such as a shopping experience to a particular locale
5 phase
Groundwork
Prep work
Product development
Launch
Post launch
Things you cant control:
Foundational reserach: •Companies can use techniques such as launching a beta version to gather feedback, internal company feedback, user studies, benchmarking against competitors to define the right priorities to focus on. Companies should also look into the geography specific technology requirements such as connectivity constraints to focus on building a ‘lite’ version of the app/website before jumping into the product/feature migration.
Learn how to provide a better experience for users connected to slower networks. Focus on optimizing images, optimizing networking, and fine-tuning data transfer.
https://developer.android.com/docs/quality-guidelines/building-for-billions.html
Things you can control :
Determine the MvP •Companies may fall into the pitfall of creating stringent timelines for launching a product in a new language as compared to a ‘traditional’ launch as some would assume that if a product works in the US, it will work all over the world.
Determine the MvP •Companies may fall into the pitfall of creating stringent timelines for launching a product in a new language as compared to a ‘traditional’ launch as some would assume that if a product works in the US, it will work all over the world.
In Japan and the UK, transit skills are important. In the US, maybe less. Product managers should remove all previous biases and design the product based on customer requirements.
Dependencies - user location for providing locally relevant content
Phone numbers
Creating a toggle button for websites and apps. (Should you redirect to the right website or should you offer to switch the language, Using geolocation or user’s history to detect and display relevant content)
Maintain the products’ USP while still adding locally relevant features.
Capitalize on culturally important sporting events, food and holidays.
Timelines: Add culturally relevant features first
Soft launch
Dial up - time zone
Launch (PR Event)
Customer review - mechanism to react quickly
Reporting - engagement data, any additional feature work,
Post - morten - what went wrong and what could have been better - Lessons learned