Managing a global website is a challenge for most companies. The more languages a site supports, the more complicated it is to translate and manage content. Finding the right approach to global site management is critical to minimizing frustrations and ensuring success.

1. Managing
Global
Websites
Finding
the Right
Approach

2. CONTENTS
Three Options for
Multilingual Website
Management
How to Find the Right
Option
Introduction 3
4
7
Summary
Who is Lionbridge
12
13

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Introduction
Managing a global website is a challenge for most companies.
The more languages a site supports, the more complicated it is
to translate and manage content. Finding the right approach to
global site management is critical to minimizing frustrations and
ensuring success.
In this eBook, we examine the three options available to
companies today. We then show you how to group your markets
into tiers to determine your true requirements, and then how to
select the best management option for each.
Let’s get started.

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Three Options for Multilingual
Website Management
There are several different ways you can manage your multilingual
website. Before deciding on the best approach,
let’s take a closer look at the three options.
Internal
This is the model most companies have in place today, with their
own employees working on the various web content management
platforms, updating content across all languages, and doing all
their own web publishing. This means they’re working with a
language service provider for translation. They prefer to use some
form of connector to make it easy to extract content from the web
content management system and translate it back. This is typically
a cumbersome process, and the management of translation
memories can go one of two ways:
OPTION1
1
2
Your Language Service Provider manages
your translation memories
Your company manages its own translation
memories

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Outsource
This is a situation where a company says,
OPTION2
I’d rather leverage my
employees to do more
value-added activities.
“
I’d rather get some
of the benefits from
offshore labor costs.
“”
”
or
So they outsource the web
publishing, including all English
content, to a third-party provider that publishes all of the
company’s content to its website. There are providers, like
Lionbridge, that offer an integrated process for both translation
and web publishing (aka web operations). This yields a more
seamless process that is ultimately less cumbersome than the
internal option discussed earlier. In this case, the language service
provider manages the translation memories.

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Translation Proxy
In this option, companies choose to manage their English content
and have a third party proxy all of their foreign language content.
Here, the translation process is fully automated and integrated
with the web publishing process, and the translation proxy
auto-detects changes made to English content and routes
them into a queue where they can be selected for translation.
Once selected, the system notifies translators who
then translate in-context with full visibility into
the web page design. This eliminates the
need for additional staging and QA, and
translation memories and glossaries are
fully integrated into the system.
OPTION3

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How to Find the Right Option
Organizing your markets by tiers can help you choose the right
approach to managing your global website.
Here’s an example:
Tier one represents markets that make up 60% or
more of your total revenue; for example, your home
market and maybe one or two key others. For these
markets, you’re probably managing the entire web
publishing process. If your company is larger, you
may have full-time marketing people in other countries
creating unique content for those markets. You
probably also have a content management system.
Approach: Internal or Outsource
Rationale:You have unique content creation
happening in your key markets, with significant input
and review from local marketing personnel.
TIER
1
Top markets that
typically represent
60+% of revenue
Standardized
WCM (Adobe,
Sitecore, etc.)
Internal or Outsource
Unique content
generated by market
with significant input
and review from local
marketing
• USA
• UK
• Germany
• France
• UK (3)
• Germany (1)
• France (1)
Description Approach Markets
(Example)
Market FTE
(Example)
WCM Systems
(Example)

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Your tier two markets typically contribute to the next
20% of your revenue. These are your faster-growing
markets, and you know you need local content to
be successful. But, you may not have dedicated
marketing people in those regions. Most of your
content for these markets will come from translated
corporate source content. Your challenge is to have a
local presence without a local staff.
Approach: Outsource
Rationale:You need local content to gain market
share, but don’t have local marketing resources to
create it.
TIER
2
Fastest growing
20%
Mix of legacy
systems that
will be migrating
over to the new
corporate WCM
standard
Outsource
Local content needed
to gain market share
but limited to no local
marketing staff
• Brazil
• Russia
• Japan
• China
• India
Few FTEs,
overwhelmed
by demand, OR
no dedicated
marketing staff
in any of these
markets
Description Approach Markets
(Example)
Market FTE
(Example)
WCM Systems
(Example)

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In tier three, you have the long tail markets, maybe
the last 20% of your revenue. Content here is always
100% generated from corporate, and there’s no
content creation happening locally. Typically, there is a
distribution of legacy platforms in these markets that
IT and Marketing are looking to terminate and migrate
to a new standard. This is a challenging tier for most
companies.
Approach:Translation Proxy
Rationale:You’re translating 100% of your content
and have no local content creation, so you don’t need
web content management. It’s most efficient to shut
down your legacy systems and use translation proxy.
TIER
3
Description Approach Markets
(Example)
Market FTE
(Example)
WCM Systems
(Example)
Long tail
of markets
representing 20%
of revenue
Mix of legacy
systems–hard
to cost justify
migration to new
WCM
Host
100% of content is
translated, no local
content creation so
no need for WCM.
Most efficient to host
and shut down legacy
systems.
• Spain
• Norway
• Sweden
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Greece
No dedicated
marketing staff
in any of these
markets
Most companies combine approaches to
address multiple tiers.

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Tiers Can Change Over Time
How you tier your markets is not a static
condition, and your company’s situation can
and will change over time. That’s why it’s
helpful to take a bundled approach, as we
illustrate in the following scenario:
1
2
But let’s say within a year or so,
Brazil is taking off, you’ve hired a local
marketing person, and you want to do some unique
things in that country with local marketing campaigns
and local content. It’s easy then to migrate to an
outsourced model where the content is migrated
over to the corporate standard WCM system, and
your local marketing person receives support from
a language service provider to get unique Brazilian
content onto the site.
Let’s assume Brazil is a tier three
market for your company, and the local
office in Brazil is on a legacy content management
platform that IT wants to retire. Currently, there aren’t
any marketing personnel working in that locale.
That’s a perfect candidate for a translation proxy. The
legacy system could be shut down and the proxy
version could be added, giving your Brazilian site the
same look and feel as your corporate site, but with
translated content.

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Eventually, your Brazilian site could move
toward an internal approach, if that’s something you
want; and the same thing can happen the other way.
You may have some tier two markets where you’ve
decided to step back from the local marketing
people, and it would make more sense to proxy your
translation.
3
These options form a portfolio of choice and flexibility. It doesn’t
make sense to try to do everything internally, nor
does it make sense to proxy everything. But
it does make sense to tier your
markets and select an appropriate
approach to multilingual website
management for each of your
scenarios.
Again, most companies use a
combination of approaches across
their different market tiers.

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Summary
How to Choose the Best Approach to Global
Website Management
Tier your markets to determine your true
requirements; one size does not fit all
Select the best management option for
each tier
Understand and apply best practices
as much as possible across tiers
Contact Lionbridge for help in scoping
and assisting with your company’s
situation

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Who is Lionbridge
We support our customers at every stage of the Global Customer
Lifecycle, helping them raise their online search profile, engage
their global customers with locally-relevant content, and translate
and test their products and applications.
Lionbridge brings together unique and proven program
management strengths and local market“crowd”expertise with
advanced cloud technology. Based in Waltham, MA, we operate
across 26 countries and enjoy thriving, trusted relationships with
more than 500 clients.
For more information on multilingual website management or any
of our global marketing solutions,
visit www.globalmarketingops.com.