UX Magazine

Defining and Informing the Complex Field of User Experience (UX)
Article No. 599 December 29, 2010

Select Country; Select Language

Developing a user-friendly global gateway



Medtronic's country selection controlThat's where the global gateway fits in.



Elements of the Global Gateway



  • Country codes
  • Geolocation
  • Language negotiation
  • The visual global gateway


Country codes: Local front doors


Country-specific search engines also tend to give preference to websites that support country codes and language-specific content. As shown here, a search on "Panasonic" on the Google Netherlands homepage brings up "panasonic.nl" at the top of the list, while "Panasonic.com" is much farther down.

Google.nl search results on Panasonic


Language negotiation: Greeting users in their preferred language



Browser language preference settings



Geolocation: Adapting content to location




Visual global gateways: What users see


The global gateway performs two important functions:

  • Displays the user's current language and/or country/region setting
  • Gives the user the ability to change this setting


  • The splash global gateway
  • The permanent global gateway

The splash global gateway

Ikea's visual global gateway



Splash global gateways only need to be used for visitors to global homepages, such as the .com and .net domains. Visitors who go directly to the country sites (e.g., www.acme.de) don't need to see the splash page at all.


The permanent global gateway


Global Gateway Best Practices


Translate the Gateway


Flags ≠ Languages



Don't play favorites (or favourites)



Icons speak louder than words

Icons can be very effective tools for communicating to an audience of people who speak a variety of different languages. Globe iconOver the past few years, globe and map icons have become the dominant visual devices for drawing attention to the global gateway. If the user doesn't speak English, "Choose your country" isn't nearly as effective as an icon of a globe.


Cast a Wide Net



User Profile


Add new comment


I am actually in the process of looking for a gateway/language template for a website that Im developing. Is there any direct link on how to create one for my website. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks, great article. Our biggest issue of late has been deciding between a country specific domain www.buysellrentspain.es or going with a sub domain of our main domain name www.buysellrentspain.com

@Ryan: the Apple gateway page is for country selection, not for language selection, so flags are actually correct here!

Flags are correct, in theory, for country menus, but they present a host of geopolitical challenges, as well as potential usability issues.

Long overdue, but I only discovered this page because of currently needed research.

Great article, thanks for sharing this.

While the world map works great for most western countries we have found out for previous projects that the developing markets sometimes do have trouble finding their own location on the map.

IP detection is great to help the user by e.g. highlighting their likely location it is not fail proof. There are plenty examples on the web that show people from various countries ending up being detected as UK, US or their bordering countries.

This might cause brand damage in conflict areas an even in places where people simply do not like to be identified as a citizen from a bordering country.

I decided to go with a different approach. I hate global gateways!!!! I'd rather use available technology and be smart. The server checks the request IP and responds accordingly (so that selection is already made) and at the same time, it checks the language of the browser. It'll serve the content in the browser's language INDEPENDENTLY of the country the user is in. If the language is unknown to the system it defaults to english. because we have customers in the whole world we have already divided our service centers for distinct regions around the globe so we applied the same rule to the website. So if someone feom Canada visits, but happens to have the browser in french, it'll automatically go for us-fr because the same service center tends to the US, Canada, and the Bahamas, but the content will be in french (when available, the site is in construction). The header serves as the gateway in case someone manually wants to change either language or location with no restrictions. In the CMS side, all content is in every language but we discriminate by country (promotions and default phone numbers for example)

One 'solution' not mentioned so far is that for many sites, the majority of visitors will arrive via a search engine.

If the site has good localised copy and reasonably optimised pages in each language, search engines should be listing the most relevant page (from a language point of view) in their search results.

For example, a google.com or .co.uk search for "Andalucia property for sale" lists our English-language landing page: http://www.kyero.com/property_guide/55531-andalucia-property-guide

A google.es search for "Inmuebles en venta en Andalucia" lists our Spanish-language landing page: http://es.kyero.com/property_guide/55531-andalucia-guia-inmobiliaria

This means that visitors will land directly on the best content page related to their language-specific search.

It's not a 100% solution, but worth throwing into the mix.

In these scenarios, asking a visitor to 'choose their language' via a gateway page, or guessing their preferences via IP or browser interrogation would likely be counter-productive since they implicitly 'selected their language' by their choice of search engine.

Thanks Talyah -- I love coming across new global gateways! I agree with Tim that the languages need to be presented in the native languages. 

I'm also not keen on flags. Consider the Taiwan flag. I've seen many companies experience issues with Chinese nationals who take issue with the Taiwan flag. It's a very sensitive issue to say the least. Avoiding flags helps you avoid the issue.


I kind of disagree about the PTC site. I still think that a change-language link should always be displayed in the language of the desired language.

Loved the article. Look at this site:

I think they did a good job in their language selection. There is no confusion in regards to which language is going to be used when selecting a particular country/flag.

Thanks Erin for the comments and links. 

Ryan, I agree that there's usually a better solution than a splash landing page -- geolocation and language negotiation fill in quite nicely (and are used by Google, Facebook, and a few others). But I wouldn't fault splash pages outright. In the case of IKEA, no cookie is saved to prevent the user from hitting this page repeatedly, but many sites do capture a cookie so users only see the landing page once. 

As for Apple, I believe they will eventually give up flags. I've written about this here: http://bit.ly/9zHiix 

As for the gateway in the footer, I'm clearly not a fan of the approach. Honestly, the gateway often gets stuck here less by design but because there is such a battle over header real estate. 

Thanks for the comments...

Now that I look more closely, Apple's breaking a lot of these rules. Their gateway page ( http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/ ) uses flags, including the flag of Taiwan.

Think different? ;-)

A couple casual observations:

- I know that every time I land on a "splash global gateway", I hate it. It feels like an extra step that jolts me out of mental context. In the IKEA example, I hit the site expecting to see furniture, not a huge list of countries that I have to negotiate before I can do anything else. Given most companies' emphasis on grabbing people and avoiding abandonment, I would argue that in 98% of cases, there's a better solution than the splash gateway.

- What do you make of the fact that Apple, an increasingly international brand and a high-traffic site, has their permanent global gateway at the bottom of the homepage, rather than in the header?

A couple more interesting sites -


John, interesting topic. NI.com is another good example of a global gateway, pairing an ever-present header link & icon with a map + text-based approach to locale and language selection.

Regarding your comment about using flags, you're totally right - flags do not represent languages. But at the same time, beware using flags for OTHER things. I know of a site that used flag imagery to promote it's GSA pricing, and found tons of abandonment from that path -- the assumption is that users clicked on the flag because they couldn't read the copy, but they assumed it was a language selector.

A map of the world, as Nikon uses, avoids text and allows a company to regionally segment product offerings.