An interview with Byte Level Research’s John Yunker

McElroy Translation recently had the privilege of interviewing a top web globalization consultant about the state of web globalization today, and where it is headed. For E-Buzz readers unfamiliar with who Byte Level Research is and what they do—Byte Level researches hundreds of websites on a regular basis to pinpoint what makes a global web site truly successful and shares this information through reports, benchmark services, and the monthly publication: Global by Design. Their goal is to help marketing and Web teams create Web sites that truly speak to the world, across languages and borders.

McElroy Translation: Your website says Byte Level Research started in 2000. How has the climate of U.S. companies doing business globally changed since then? Did the end of the dot com boom have an impact on how the importance of web globalization was perceived?

John Yunker: During the dot com years, Web globalization was hot, but prematurely so. I say prematurely because Internet penetration globally - particularly broadband penetration - was still in its early stages.

After the dot com bust, Web globalization spending virtually froze for a period as companies took a much-needed reality break. But over the past two years, companies have been spending robustly – and, thankfully, realistically on Web globalization. If anything, most companies are now too cautious in their Web globalization investments, running the risk of missing out on opportunities in many emerging markets.

What we are now witnessing on a large scale are companies transforming themselves from “domestic companies serving foreign markets” to “global companies serving local markets.” Many companies now generate more than half of their revenues from outside of their domestic markets and the Internet has played a large role in this evolution.

McElroy: Byte Level Research has evolved since 2000 as well, with the breadth and depth of content continuously expanding. In the past seven years, what have you learned that surprised you the most?

Yunker: The most surprising development would have to be the success of Wikipedia. Before Wikipedia, you would have been hard-pressed to find a content-rich Web site that supported more than 20 languages; today, Wikipedia offers content in 250 languages. And the fact that this is user-generated content is amazing; I believe there are valuable lessons that corporations can take from Wikipedia in regards to transparency, global consistency, and decentralized content creation and management.

I also think it’s important to recognize Unicode for how it has helped Web sites like Wikipedia easily support so many different languages. In 2000, Unicode was not well supported on the Web or in software applications. As a result, it was very difficult to work with languages of various encodings, such as Japanese, Russian, and Arabic. Today, Unicode is (almost) everywhere and it has dramatically improved the lives of those who work in this industry.

Unicode is a truly spectacular achievement – and the volunteers and companies that have championed it have played a major role in creating a truly global Internet.

There are still challenges ahead, namely the domain name system, which does not support Unicode. There are many security risks inherent in doing so and ICANN is trying to come up with a viable solution.