Websites Must 'Speak' 16 Languages To Go Global

A recent study done by the research company Common Sense Advisory, claims that if you want your website to go global it needs to 'speak' 16 languages. According to their report, in order for businesses to have a more widespread audience around the world, their websites must have language access for at least 16 languages and not just the world's most spoken languages (in order of number of speakers) which are currently Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese and Russian.

According to CSA's calculations, websites employing 11 languages can potentially engage with 80% of the global population, while sites in only one language generally attract around 25% of the world's internet users.

The study by the Common Sense Advisory puts Google as number one for language access (to 16 languages or more) with Facebook and YouTube coming in second and third respectively. Interestingly, global giants Samsung and Blackberry weren't far behind them.

Read more about the study done by the CSA and why websites must 'speak' more than 16 languages to go global>>