The statistics are compelling. According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 40 million native Spanish speakers live in the United States. By 2010, this number will well surpass 50 million. Hispanics are not only the dominant minority group in the United States but also the fastest growing. And when it comes to the internet, US Hispanic internet users outnumber the total online populations of many Spanish-speaking nations.

So, it comes as no surprise that American-based companies and organizations are responding to this trend with Spanish-language websites. From Nextel to Toyota to major league baseball, Spanish websites are becoming a much more common sight. (See “Who’s Speaking Spanish?”)

Despite the increasing number of Spanish-language websites, however, standard practices are still emerging, and best practices are still elusive. This article takes a close look at one of the recently launched Spanish websites and recommends a few best practices for all Spanish websites.

Southwest Airlines Says “Vamonos”
On June 30, 2004, Southwest Airlines became the first major US airline to launch a full-featured Spanish-language website, and it is not likely to be the last. The new site, called Vamonos, is much more than a Spanish-language brochure for Southwest Airlines; it is a full-featured Spanish-language flight reservation website.

The Vamonos home page

While Southwest Airlines could have taken the approach that many companies take when first entering the localization waters — translating a handful of static web pages — Southwest tackled the most challenging localization project first, the online booking system. “We wanted to go that extra step,” said Edna Ruano, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines. “Customers can make online reservations in Spanish from start to finish.”

Southwest Airlines flight reservation screen, English

Southwest Airlines flight reservation screen, Spanish

Southwest Airlines turned to an outside vendor, Ion Global, to help them manage the translation and localization process. According to Simon Mathews, head strategist at Ion Global, the project consisted of translating 75,000 words that were embedded throughout the web application — from help screens to error messages. “We worked with the Southwest team to identify the content to be translated within the code and then returned the code back to them with the translated content included,” said Mathews.

In addition to translation, Ion Global assisted Southwest Airlines in modifying the layouts of the online booking system to be more usable to the target audience. For example, in the two reservation screens, notice how the date column falls in front of the month column on the Spanish-language page. Details such as these make a big difference in the success of localized websites.

Research and planning for the Spanish-language website began two years ago; actual development took about four months in all. Now that the site is complete, Southwest Airlines has one full-time employee in its interactive marketing department who manages Spanish content and functionality.

The website is just one element in a much larger Spanish initiative for Southwest Airlines. Phone-based customer support is equally important, so the airline is providing Spanish-language reservation agents. The airline is promoting Vamonos across a number of media, from television ads on Spanish-language television programs to online banner ads on Spanish-language websites. Southwest Airlines has also hung banners in its terminals to promote the site.

Emerging Practices and Best Practices
We are still in the very early stages of Spanish localization within the US market. As a result, there are relatively few major websites to benchmark against and even fewer sites that demonstrate what I believe to be best practices. Here are a few recommendations to ensure that your Spanish site leads the pack.

URLs: Keep It Simple
URLs for Spanish-language websites range from the obvious to the Byzantine. And there appears to be no web address consensus among Spanish websites currently available. Consider the following URLs:

http://espanol.vzwshop.com/gw (Verizon Wireless)
http://www.hrblock.com/es (H&R Block)
http://www.lowes.com/spanish (Lowe’s)
http://nextel.com/espanol (Nextel)
http://www.southwest.com/enespanol (Southwest Airlines)

There is a trend toward companies adding espanol at the end of their URLs. But this is hardly an elegant approach because the limitations of the domain name addressing system prevents the inclusion of accent marks. Hence, español is not permitted. However, using espanol is a far better choice than using spanish. All too often, web developers fail to provide the links to language-specific websites in the native language. Southwest Airlines takes a much more creative approach to its URL, but one that will only succeed with prominent advertising and placement on the English-language home page.

I recommend using an es extension, which is the ISO code for Spanish. It makes for a shorter URL and avoids the character limitations of the current domain name system. That said, if we find in the years ahead that most companies adopt the espanol standard, it may become the standard by default. Fortunately, servers can be configured to handle multiple extensions, which may ultimately be the wisest approach.

Navigation: Make It Easy to Find
Once a Spanish-language website is launched, the next great challenge is driving traffic to the site. Unfortunately, many companies fail to make the links to their Spanish sites prominent enough to ensure clickthrough traffic. While there are plenty of other ways to promote the Spanish site, from advertising to e-mail marketing, including a highly visible link on the US home page is an important (and free) first step.

Let’s compare the US home pages of Nissan and Honda. As shown in the graphics, Honda positions its link down the right-hand side of the home page, while Nissan places its link at the very top of the page.

	Honda home page (gateways circled in red)
	Nissan home page (gateway circled in red)

While the link on the Honda website is buried among English content, the link to the Nissan Spanish site occupies a “sweet spot” for global navigation.This location is ideal not only because it is easily seen, but also because an increasing number of companies are locating their global gateways in the upper right-hand corner of the web page. This trend reflects the growing importance of localized websites and an appreciation for global navigation. As more and more sites position their “global gateways” in this sweet spot, I believe it will become a global standard.

Content: Make It Worth Their Time
One translated home page does not a localized website make. Consider the Spanish web page of telecommunications carrier Qwest (http://www.qwest.com/espanol). While similar carriers such as SBC and Verizon offer a depth of translated content, Qwest offers just one web page in Spanish. Qwest makes no claims to offering a full-featured Spanish language site, but it could do a great deal more in light of its competitors.

Companies that aren’t willing to invest the resources in creating a truly useful Spanish website are probably better off waiting until they can make such an investment. First impressions count, and nothing is worse than announcing a brand-new Spanish site that attracts millions of new visitors who are quickly disappointed in the lack of content.

Spanish No Longer a “Second” Language
As the demographics of the United States continue to skew in favor of Spanish speakers, we will see fewer executives debating the return on investment of Spanish-language sites. Spanish-language websites will be viewed as being as essential to doing business in the United States as English-language websites.

John Yunker is president of Byte Level Research and author of the new report, “Web Globalization and the World’s Largest Companies.” He can be reached at jyunker@bytelevel.com

Copyright MultiLingual Computing, Inc., 2004, all rights reserved. This article appeared in issue #67 of MultiLingual Computing and Technology.

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