July 19, 1999
Increasingly global, the Web challenges U.S.-based companies
The United States is accustomed to being at the center of the world's attention, online as well as offline.
But within the next five years, U.S. companies will have to get used to the fact that the Internet is no longer dominated by Americans and English speakers.
Already, users at non-U.S. domains account for close to half of all Web traffic, according to data published by WebSideStory, an Internet traffic measurement company.
These numbers are derived from traffic measurements at nearly 100,000 Web sites performed with WebSideStory's traffic analysis tool. The data shows that traffic from "foreign" domains (i.e., non-U.S. users) has been steadily rising since the beginning of the year, from around 36 percent to approximately 42 percent at the beginning of July.
The top traffic-producing countries after the United States are Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom, according to the reports.
WebSideStory also publishes a wide variety of other useful Internet data, from browser market share to Web site usage patterns. Its Web statistics site, www.statmarket.com, is well worth a stop.
The globalizing trend is corroborated by Computer Economics (www.computereconomics.com), a computer-industry research company, which predicts that non-English speakers will outnumber English speakers on the Web as early as 2002. Already, 46 percent of Web users are non-English speakers, according to Computer Economics.
As the demographics of the Web shift away from the United States, so too will Internet commerce. Many companies will need to offer versions of their Web sites in multiple languages to retain access to a global market.
That has implications for the design and information architecture of your Web site -- can you easily create and host foreign-language mirror images of it? This will be easier to manage if your site is built on a dynamic publishing system than if it is a collection of static HTML files.
In addition to language translation, you will also need to devote resources to cultural translations -- making sure that the images, logos, expressions, and metaphors used on your Web site are appropriate to the cultures it caters to.
International Internet commerce sites will need built-in business rules for dealing with foreign taxes, duties, and import/export restrictions.
The globalization of electronic commerce may also force Web companies to re-examine their encryption infrastructures. Thanks to the U.S. government's restrictive policies on the export of encryption technologies, international transactions using encryption developed in the United States are limited -- to 40 bits instead of more secure 128-bit encryption. If international transactions are part of your company's Web future, you may want to base them on encryption technology developed outside the United States.
More fundamentally, the globalization of the Web means that U.S. companies will increasingly be faced with international competition. Although foreign competition may not have been a significant factor up to now for many companies, the Web brings overseas competitors much closer -- and may demand a re-thinking of market and IT strategies in a global context.
As the Web's center of gravity moves off American soil, it is becoming truly world-wide. But is America ready to deal with an international Internet? Write to me at dylan@infoworld.com.
Dylan Tweney is the content development manager for InfoWorld Electric. He has been writing about the Internet since 1993.
Previous columns by Dylan Tweney
One-click buying makes online world spin a little faster
July 12, 1999
Web applications often fail to scale, much to the chagrin of CEOs
July 5, 1999
PC industry shows that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear
June 28, 1999
RosettaNet decodes the long-lost secrets of internetworking
June 21, 1999
Every column since August, 1997
