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"Love is complicated. Match.com is simple." These six words, broadcast on TV, radio and billboards across the United States, neatly sum up the idea that in the turbulent waters single people must navigate when looking for love, Match.com's online dating service offers an easy and effective way to find a mate.
If only communicating such a resonant message to singles in Europe, Asia and South America were as simple.
Match.com has millions of international users and is the online dating service of choice in several foreign markets. But when the company began its international expansion three years ago, setting up local websites in 32 countries from Norway to China, executives made a common miscalculation. They assumed that overseas cultures would respond to the same basic pitch that had worked so well in the U.S. market. But in many regions, that message simply did not stick. Something was lost in Arabic translation.
"We learned that it was not just about taking the copy off our English site and translating it," says Match.com Chief Operating Officer Joe Cohen, who oversees the company's international operations and expansion efforts. He now understands that localizing a website is very different from translating it.
"I'm at the point where I tell Arabic translators to forget the copy on the U.S. site," says Cohen. "I say, Let's talk about the meaning and the semantic message." Since that initial overseas push, Match.com has worked to strengthen ties with local marketing partners in the 35 countries where it now has local Arabic language sites in order to more effectively reach customers in those areas.
"Developing relationships with marketing people on the ground in each region is incredibly important," says Cohen. "We are trying to develop a relationship with our customers so that they can develop a relationship with someone else. And there is so much nuance in that message that has to come across. It's an incredible challenge." The semantics are often subtle. The primary message on several international sites is not "Love is complicated" but "Millions of possibilities." In India, the company adds to that message the tagline: "For marriage and friendship."
"Many markets treated the website more like a brochure than as a medium to maximize our message."
– Pattiann McAdams, Executive Director of North American e-commerce, Avon
Translating a website is relatively easy. But localizing it in a way that addresses foreign customers in meaningful terms, without straying too far from the U.S. brand, poses a significant marketing challenge for many global companies. At one end of the spectrum lies the temptation to scrap the U.S. content altogether and develop a fresh voice that's tailored to local customers, be they in Portugal or Peru. At the other end is the belief that every international site should fall in lockstep with the brand, supporting the creative so carefully cultivated back at corporate. The sweet spot, as one might expect, often lies somewhere in the middle.
"It's a fine balance between determining how much content should be standard and how much should be customized," says Jeff Swystun, global director of Interbrand, a global brand consultancy. The balance may vary greatly from industry to industry, although Swystun generally recommends a "70-30 rule of thumb"—that is, lock down 70 percent of the content so that it's consistent across all websites, and localize the other 30 percent.
Speed Kills?
In hindsight, Cohen says he should have moved more slowly with Match.com's international expansion. It's a frequent misstep: A company rolls out international sites in rapid-fire succession to establish a presence, without a lot of thought behind customizing the content for each region. Driven by their need for speed, executives may overlook the fact that the brand message should not be left to the devices of website designers scattered around the globe.
"I always suggest to clients that they start with one market, maybe two," says John Yunker, president of Byte Level Research and author of the book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies.
When Avon Products relaunched Avon.com as an online shopping site five years ago, it established a local Avon site for each of the 44 countries where it did business. The company gave overseas representatives a fair amount of creative leeway along with some basic tools to update the content to reflect their local business. The strategy enabled Avon to get foreign sites up and running in a matter of months to gain a quick online foothold in multiple markets.
That was the good news. The bad news came in the form of a wildly inconsistent brand presentation across 44 very different websites. The Avon South Africa site, which prominently features skin care products on its start page, bears little resemblance to the Japanese site, which displays lipsticks and features a decorative butterfly fluttering around the page, which in turn looks nothing like the Venezuela site, in which visitors are greeted by the image of a beautiful woman holding a syringe up to her face along with links to information about a collagen product.
"In some markets, the level of quality given to the websites was similar to what you were seeing in the U.S. five years earlier," says Pattiann McAdams, Avon's executive director of North American e-commerce, who also works closely with localized Avon sites in other parts of the world. "In many markets, they treated the website more like a brochure than as a medium to maximize our message with graphics and animation."
As its global Web strategy evolves from setting up shop in foreign markets to growing its business in those regions, Avon is sending out its U.S. resources and expertise to improve Web design and consistency across the sites. The main lessons learned from its earlier expansion? The need to proceed at a more measured pace and build localized sites that mimic the style and overall quality of its U.S. site, says McAdams. The company's initial focus is on revamping local sites in its strongest overseas markets in Europe to make them more consistent with the U.S. site.
This type of slow, thoughtful global Web buildout is generally wiser than a quick push into multiple markets, since mistakes, once made, may be difficult to correct. Companies are well-aware of the dangers of deploying an e-commerce site before the technical infrastructure can handle overseas shipping and related tax and regulatory matters. They must equally consider the damage that can result from inconsistent branding across multiple sites.
"It's absolutely possible to expand too quickly. The Web is a very powerful tool," says Jerry Bossick, senior vice president in charge of international marketing at Mattel. The toy company's marketing group strives to create a precise and consistent image for Barbie and other well-known brands, right down to the background color and tone of its websites. One solution to the Arabic translation versus customization dilemma is to offer more limited content on overseas sites.
"There has to be a lot of consistency, but the content might not be as broad [on foreign sites]," explains Bossick. "We offer selective elements." In other words, the start pages look the same, but there's less information available to users on many of the company's 50-plus international sites. "We don't want someone going off and reinterpreting what the appropriate elements of the brand are," he says.
And that's a critical point: Regardless of the level of customization a company undertakes with its international websites, it must stay true to its brand.
"Every company has certain values, and those should remain constant in every country of operation," says Interbrand's Swystun. "You don't want to be a business whose image is dry and academic in one country and loose and hip in another."
Global DNA Test
One irony of website localization is that the risk of error often runs much higher for Web-only companies that may have mastered underlying e-commerce technology but have little experience in managing a global brand. Established brick-and-mortar multinationals, on the other hand, are well-versed in global marketing and often apply that expertise to their websites. FedEx, for example, does not regard website localization as much different, in principle, than any offline global marketing initiative it has ever done. "Global business is very much part of our DNA," says Karen Rogers, the company's vice president of electronic channels marketing.
And acquiring expertise in global marketing, regardless of whether it's done online or on the street, takes time. "We've done business globally for decades," says Duane Schulz, vice president of Xerox.com. "We have a very diverse set of nationalities on our staff. The sense I get is that some of these younger companies that have not operated as a truly global culture will have a tougher time branching out. You can translate a webpage, but there is a difference between looking Brazilian and being Brazilian."
The Xerox formula for successfully selling its technologies and consulting services online is a careful mix of exact Arabic translation and loose customization. Selling mostly in the B2B space, Xerox must cater its offerings to the varying business climates in different countries. In some regions, customers are primarily large enterprises, while in much of Europe, the company sells mostly to small or midsize businesses. While customizing the message for these different audiences is essential, all localization pursuits are based on a centralized framework to ensure that each message is consistent with the core brand.
"You can translate a webpage, but there is a difference between looking Brazilian and being Brazilian."
– Duane Schulz, VP, Xerox.com
"The brand itself is something we really drive," says Schulz. "We want to make sure there is an umbrella, so we provide content and structures from the center. The different countries can come back with specific adjustments if they need to. If you don't manage that centrally, you can be operating 30 different companies in 30 different countries."
A consistent message is just one piece of the puzzle. Schulz also emphasizes the need for consistent performance across all sites, from the same quick response time to tight integration among the localized sites, ensuring that business can be transacted smoothly. Performance issues, he says, reflect on the company and its brand at least as much as a logo or website copy.
"The website certainly must deliver on innovation and represent the branding in terms of the color scheme and overall look," says FedEx's Rogers. "But it also has to be reliable."
As a global service whose lifeblood often involves connecting customers from different countries, FedEx needs exacting consistency across all of its 220 country-specific sites, from Albania to Zimbabwe. Regardless of their location, customers must have full visibility of the status of their shipments and a consistent online experience. All post tabs for tracking packages and estimating transit time, for example, fall precisely on the same part of the page across all sites.
"They all have a common style that is dictated by a very detailed style guide," says Rogers. The contents of that style guide were developed by the marketing team and approved by the uppermost levels of FedEx management. So committed is the company to promoting a consistent online brand across the globe that any major website design changes must be approved by Chairman Frederick W. Smith before they are implemented.
It may sound like an extreme compulsion for consistency, but from a customer standpoint, it makes perfect sense to FedEx. "For us, there are two pieces to a transaction: the sender and the recipient," Rogers explains. "One may be in the U.S. and the other in China. And if the sender is giving directions on how to track a package, he has to be able to do that in a way the recipient can follow."
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