Presented at RubyConf Taiwan 2015
international: of, concerning, or involving two or morenations or nationalitiesglobal: covering, influencing, or relating to thewhole worldsource: Collins English Dictionary
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from international toglobal@arnvald, RubyConf Taiwan, 2015
is anyone truly global?
global: available to all users of the Internetsource: me, for the purpose of this talk
language
English: ~28% of Internet usersMandarin: ~23% of Internet usersSpanish: ~8% of Internet usersArabic: ~5% of Internet users
English: ~55% of websitesMandarin: ~2.5% of websitesSpanish: ~4.5% of websitesArabic: ~1% of websites
Internet usersNon-EnglishEnglishInternet websitesNon-EnglishEnglishsource: internetworldstats.com
it’s great to have an app people canuse in their native language
you can get many more customers
people appreciate when you reach out to them
it’s difficult
it is hard to keep application fully translated
it is expensive
people will email/call you in their language
some languages enforce different design
Chinese: no bold fonts, no italics, no capitals
Arabic: right-to-left script
Spanish: different form of “you” (formal and informal)
payments
credit cards are enough?
people do not trust credit cards
people do not trust Paypal
people prefer to pay on delivery
China: ~50% online payments done with Alipaysource: chinainternetwatch.com
gem ‘alipay_global’
Indonesia: ~95% online payments with bank transferssource: techinasia.com
Germany: ~50% online payments with bank transferssource: ekosglobal.com
censorship
local media
Facebook-only registration?
China, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam, North Korea
Renren (⼈人⼈人), Taobao (淘宝) - Chinese OAuth
internet speed
how good is your CDN?
how good is your CDN if you stay in China?
how good is your CDN if you stay in South Africa?
how good is your CDN if you stay in Argentina?
source: aws.amazon.com
Johannesburg to:Amsterdam: 174ms New York: 253ms Sao Paulo: 437ms Singapore: 471mssource: wondernetwork.com
Buenos Aires to:Amsterdam: 242ms New York: 158ms Sao Paulo: 215ms Singapore: 384mssource: wondernetwork.com
where are your application servers?
where is your database?
mobile
native applications?
you need mobile-optimized website anyway
different design - more focused on content
limited transfer + unstable connection
mobile payments
Kenya: 70% of cell phone owners pay via mobilesource:pewglobal.org
going international is very easy
going global is still a big challenge