Oh dear! If ever there was an example of how not to translate a website it must be the London Eye website. It would seem that the Merlin Group clearly don’t care about their international visitors…
Looking at the German website: http://www.londoneye.com/de/ (or any language for that matter), notice:
- It’s pot luck if the link you click takes you to an English or German page, there’s no warning if the page you’re about to visit is in another language!
- The text on the Flash is left in English – perhaps it was too much effort to get that text translated & give it to their designers
- Navigation – If they aren’t going to translate parts they could at least take it out of the navigation, or even alert users that the page they are about to visit is not translated
- Pricing in GB Pounds, no Euros please!
- Mixed language content on a key checkout page
- Validation in mixed language
- It goes on…
All in all, there has obviously been no usability testing on the multilingual sites. Personally, I wouldn’t trust them with my credit card details!
Compare this to another major attraction, London Zoo. With just a few pages translated all the key facts are accessible on an easy to use website, optimised to gain traffic in foreign search engines. Simple and effective.
If you’re thinking about getting your tourism website translated in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games, or if you just want more international visitors and customers, speak to us. We’ll make sure that it attracts traffic, looks good, reads well and that it compels international visitors to book online. Preparing for the Olympic Games well in advance is a good idea as many visitors will use the internet to research and plan their stay in London.
3 March 2010 14:05