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I just visited the TransferWise site from here in Germany after reading the article. Was disappointed, like I often am these days. I was promptly redirected to

I just visited the TransferWise site from here in Germany after reading the article. Was disappointed, like I often am these days. I was promptly redirected to the /de/ area of the site with no obvious way to switch to English. Why don't websites realise that language and country are two different things! Not everyone living in Germany is fluent in German, especially not expats who I assume are the main target users for sites such as these. I have seen only a handful of sites that will allow you to navigate to a English language site if they have one while also acknowledging that you are in Germany.

ProxCoques 10y ago
I am a designer who had a hand in the UX of how hotels.com geolocates its customers. They use a combination of browser language and IP location, cookie or URL to decide which version of the site to show, with browser language being the main weighting (eg if you have DE as your browser's primary language setting but are geolocated in Switzerland, they show you the DE site).
- devnonymous 10y ago
  That's cool. Yeah, that possibly makes most sense. As a general case tho, I think while trying to automate the process of selecting the most useful language is good design, sites should ultimately allow for visitors to choose their language. If one trusts user's abilities to actually navigate one's site and use it, one should also give them the benefit of doubt that maybe they can figure out how to select a language as well.
germanier 10y ago
FWIW the site has a language switcher right next to the logo. It's not most most obvious one as it just says "Deutsch" which is the German word for "German". It also didn't respect my browser's language setting. Most if not all multilingual websites have such a language chooser but sometimes it's well hidden.
- devnonymous 10y ago
  Thanks. Yes, I just checked it out again and realised that the language option is missing on their mobile site, which is what I visited earlier in the day. I've installed the app though and it looks interesting. I will definitely give this a try.

ProxCoques 10y ago

I am a designer who had a hand in the UX of how hotels.com geolocates its customers. They use a combination of browser language and IP location, cookie or URL to decide which version of the site to show, with browser language being the main weighting (eg if you have DE as your browser's primary language setting but are geolocated in Switzerland, they show you the DE site).

devnonymous 10y ago
That's cool. Yeah, that possibly makes most sense. As a general case tho, I think while trying to automate the process of selecting the most useful language is good design, sites should ultimately allow for visitors to choose their language. If one trusts user's abilities to actually navigate one's site and use it, one should also give them the benefit of doubt that maybe they can figure out how to select a language as well.

germanier 10y ago

FWIW the site has a language switcher right next to the logo. It's not most most obvious one as it just says "Deutsch" which is the German word for "German". It also didn't respect my browser's language setting. Most if not all multilingual websites have such a language chooser but sometimes it's well hidden.

devnonymous 10y ago
Thanks. Yes, I just checked it out again and realised that the language option is missing on their mobile site, which is what I visited earlier in the day. I've installed the app though and it looks interesting. I will definitely give this a try.