It‘s not always easy to think globally, yet many of our site‘s visitors live
abroad. In fact, most of
them do. This has forced us to pack a lot of learning into a short time.
We edit and publish a monthly e-zine from the tiny Greek island of
Karpathos. Kafenio, which
premiered in March 2000, focuses on European life and culture. The first
step in thinking globally
was to accept our classified ads in any language using Latin letters, so
French, Spanish, German -
no problem for our software.
Not so hard, is it?
That was an important decision for us. Living on a remote Aegean island as
we do, surrounded by
goats and cats, it would be easy to get tunnel vision and forget about the
rest of the planet.
English is English, right?
The first major conflict that punched us right in the nose was British vs.
American English. We
then had a contributing writer from Australia, another journalist from
Canada.
What to do? We made it our policy that each writer would stick to his/her
native usage of English.
No way did I want to ruin an article by Americanizing it. That‘s not global
thinking. Savvy
readers in Britain or elsewhere would spot that style slip-up a mile away.
(I mean a kilometer
away, no better make that kilometre. See what I mean?)
There is a vast difference between editing something for accuracy and acting
like the language
police. No, we cannot please everybody and we cannot spend every waking
moment trying to. But
to reach out to a global audience, we have to willing to widen our thinking.
Global excitement
Recently we decided to run banner ads in languages other than English and
this kicks off in the
July issue with one German and one Russian banner. It‘s a start of something
exciting and we
think we can expand on our idea as time goes on. Not every improvement to a
site or e-zine has to
occur overnight.
Oops!
Do most sites truly think and act globally? No. I can‘t count the times I
have tried to sign up for
free subscriptions to newsletters or zines, only to be rejected because I
didn‘t fill in my state and
zip code correctly. Or that my phone number did not fit the (American)
format. This oversight is
going to turn off not just mewith a Greek address and phone numberbut
other potential
customers around the world as well.
Another thing that urks me at many sites is when you see a button where you
can click on your
weather. Most of these programs turn out to offer weather for North America
and North America
only. What if your reader in Tokyo or Paris wants to know the weather, too?
Ditto the news. For sites offering the top news reports, I‘ll bet half offer
only American news.
What about visitors living in Asia or Europe, don‘t we also want news? In a
news story, I find it
bothersome that every reference to “government“ has to refer to Washington.
Or that every stock
quote must be from the U.S.
Folks, there‘s a whole world out here ready to visit your Website and maybe
buy your products.
Why shut us out?
Do you suppose I‘ll be going back to a Website that offers only weather for
North America or
claims my address is incorrect because I did not select a state from their
listing? No, I‘ve had the
door slammed in my face and once is enough. They won‘t get my business
because they‘ve more or
less made it clear to me at first visit that I am unimportant to them.
I‘m not suggesting we go out and hire sociologists instead of Webmasters,
but let‘s not go out of
our way to turn off a potential customer base from all over the planet
either. Examine your own
site and see what positive changes you might make in this regard.
Once we all start thinking globally, we‘ll act it. As we attract new
customers, our success rates are
bound to go up. After all, I can‘t think of a better place to go global than
cyberspace.
About the Author
Roberta Beach Jacobson is an American freelance writer who has lived in
Europe since 1974. She
is the editor of Kafenio (http://www.kafeniocom.com). She can be reached at
editor@kafeniocom.com.