Our organization has a many international region websites based on the same core content. Many pages are localized for that region, but much content is the same for each region. So, we will have information about a service available at, for example:
www.companyname.com/productname (worldwide site)
www.companyname.com/us/en/productname (US)
www.companyname.com/ca/en/productname (Canada)
and so on for several English-speaking regions.
Without printing brochures specific for each region, how do most people direct customers to specific web content? Do you direct to the Worldwide content and mention there may be specific info on your regional site? Do you say ‘go to productname on the companyname web site’ and let them navigate to it? Do you say ‘go to companyname website and enter a keyword in the search box’? Or some other strategy?
###
You don’t want to make the user “work” to get information. You want them to have an easy experience getting what they need quickly.
Here are some different techniques:
- Use subdomains that have an .htaccess file that forwards to the relevant page. canada.companyname.com/product would go to www.companyname.com/ca/en/productname
- Determine what country the user’s IP address is from as a clue and default to that country.
- Have on all product pages a popup (upper right of the page) that allows them to switch the country. This would be akin to changing languages.
- Buy more domain names: companyusa.com, companycanada.com, etc. The generic company.com website would ask (or default to, see #2) for the country of interest, then jump to the companycanada.com site. Bookmarks that the user would place would take them to the proper country.