Multi-language version of the site to consider four factors

before you design and develop a multilingual version of a Web site, consider the following factors:

1-selection of the applied character set

A corporate web site located in a different language country is bound to provide multiple language versions of products and sales information to meet customers and partners in different languages around the world, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and so on. But one problem is very easy to be overlooked by web designers. This is the site's character set problem.

Generally we use the Simplified Chinese (GB2312) character set, but for multi-language sites, the Chinese character set may make you work hard failed. The reason is simple: this is the insignificant small character set in the mischief.

In the field of computer application, there are dozens of different character sets, and when users browse different language pages, they tend to have garbled characters when they are not compatible with each other. When we browse some foreign websites, we often have to switch back and forth between the various character sets in order to see the information on the website normally.

Imagine: If a site provides the Chinese, English, French, German and other languages version of the content, full of content, the design of beautiful Huan. We are in the Chinese coding environment to browse these non-Chinese version of the page feel very perfect, now a French customer to your product interest, when he entered the French layout a look-garbled many, or even the entire layout is a collapse of confused. What's the point of doing your website a lot more?

so for a multilingual version of a Web site, the Unicode character set should be the ideal choice.

It is a double-byte coding mechanism of the character set, whether Oriental or Western text, in Unicode, all are represented in two bytes, so that at least 65,536 different characters can be defined, almost all of the world's current universal language can cover every single character. Therefore, in the design and development of multi-language sites, it is important to note that the non-Chinese character set of the page is defined as "utf-8" format, namely:

√:
X:

This is a very important step because if you change the character set after the page is done, it is a very, very thankless task, and sometimes you may even need to start over again and re-enter the text content of the site.

2-language writing habits & navigation structure

In some countries, the language writing habits are from right to left, such as Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew used in many Middle East regions and so on. If your market target is a country of these languages, then you need to consider these special language writing habits in your web design. And if you use a vertical navigation bar in the site navigation structure design, you should put it on the right side instead of on the left as we used to.

3-database-driven Web site

For a database-driven Web site, especially when a customer can leave messages and add information to the database, you should consider how to technically implement the collection and retrieval of different language data information.

4-Search Engine & Market Promotion

Search engine Optimization (SEO) is really a big problem for multi-language websites. It also needs to be noted that not all mainstream search engines will support multi-language pages, which is why a multilingual site is not necessarily included in all the mainstream search engines. Of course, Google does not have such a problem.

Second, consider what search engines or portals are used by different market target countries and customer groups that each language is targeting. Just as we are accustomed to using a home-grown Baidu search, the most widely used in some language countries may still be their own search engine or portal site.

The best way is to find a professional website promotion company to help with market research. The research content should mainly include: target market country or region to what search engine or portal website usage rate is highest? What are the real query rates for some of the major portal users? This is particularly important. Like we often use Sina, Sohu and other large domestic portals, but generally more for the use of its mail services. The query is still like Baidu or Google, you need to understand in these people have added to the portal site, in the end how many people are running inquiries. Full market research can be targeted to ensure the most generous return on investment.