Every now and then I keep wondering what is wrong with site designers. Once in a while I land upon a site that detects my location and eagerly attempts to feed me localized stuff. I appreciate their concern and their efforts in guessing my interests, but it has to be done lightly and politely without forcing it on me.
I remember seeing this tactic on many sites. I never liked it. If done wrong it is a usability catastrophe. It disrupts the browsing experience by forcing an unsolicited decision on a user in the very first dialogue between the system and the user.
What is strange is that even big sites do it. The ones which are supposed to be one of the best out there. The ones that probably employ a team of designers and usability experts. Those experts who make me feel sad at my every visit to their creations.
This is what I observe every day.
When I visit YouTube it tries to force me to accept this filter selection to narrow down to only German content. Sorry, but I don't want that. I'm not interested in German content at all. I don't understand this concept at all. I've only known one YouTube in the last years. I want my single YouTube back.
Reluctant, I made it to read what the message said. Seems that the deal is to click the cancel button to tell the system not to apply any localization filter. It should work. Unfortunately, it does not. The next day when I open the browser and visit YouTube again I see the exactly same message. And the day after that. Yes, you heard me correctly. I'm forced to answer the same question again and again every next day. Looks like it remembers the answer per IP address per day because if I visit the site from another browser shortly after having made the selection, it sticks.
What's that supposed to mean? Can't you remember my answer permanently? There's the cookies thing, you know, you could put my answer there. It would just be a single integer value or two-characters country code. Why do you try so desperately to make me accept the premade selection? If you want to play smart, you can observe my answer for a week and then save it being sure that's what I really want.
I'm not sure if you thought about what impression it would leave on the user. No, probably not. Do you want to know what message I get when I see this banner every day?
"Choose your ghetto quickly and get over there"
Nice. Do you expect me to appreciate that? I may not be a usability expert to tell you this is wrong. No, wait, I'm actually the best usability expert there can be. I'm an end user. And I can tell you, it sucks.
YouTube is not the one who does it. Here's another hero.
So Amazon detects my location and asks me to leave for that local place. I can't remove this message. It sticks even after some time spent browsing on the site. Apparently you need to find a proxy located in US or another country not occupied by Amazon local forces to browse without seeing this message at all times. Or better remove yourself from this place. I very much dislike that. Would you like to know how it feels?
It feels like there is a sheriff watching me and silently communicating this message:
"Hey there, stranger. You've trespassed onto out territory. We'll try to keep civil and tolerate you here but you know you shouldn't be here, right?"
Why do you want me to go away? Don't you need another customer?
There are many more examples how the sites force their localization on me. This has achieved quite wide penetration already.
If I visit any Blogger-based blog, I see menus on top in German. I can't change that.
When I visit Microsoft search (Bing) or Google search it will automatically open the local search page, until I switch to worldwide option. It will remember for some time but lose it and show me local page again once in a while.
Visit the Skype site, it will detect your location and show a localized site. The good thing is that it remembers my selection permanently.
I fail to understand why do you decide on localization based on my geographical location? I may be living in Germany but I'm not interested much in local content. There are lots of people living all over the world who only want to see the unrestricted English version of their favorite sites. And the opposite, there should be many people living in US not interesting in English content but rather in Spanish, Italian or French.
Actually, your browser allows you to set your preferred culture. This information will be communicated to any online place you visit. You can read it from the request headers (Accept-Language). This should take prevalence over any IP-geolocation. I currently have the "en-US" culture setting in my browser and it seems to be completely ignored by any site I visit. That's very wrong.
Respect the users. Listen to what they tell you about the language and culture they prefer. Fix your broken sites.
P.S. I've just discovered that the problem has been actively discussed already. Here is a couple of links to similar discussions.
How should sites (Google and/or you) treat Accept-Language header?
Good to see I'm not alone.
