Site Owners, Question about Site Navigation
 

As far as site navigation, I have noticed that many sites use graphics buttons instead of html text. I always thought that html text was for people that wanted to "translate" the site to their particular language.

This was a common practice a couple of years ago. I am just wondering if you have translation friendly front ends on a separate html page, or... no

I am going to be launching http://www.pantyhosedfetish.com in a couple of days and just looking for feedback on this. Also wondering if I am leaving a ton of money on the table if I am not offering my surfers the chance to translate pages. I know the answer is yes, but just looking for feedback and your reasons why you do not offer translation friendly pages, if this is the case...

Whats your opinions?

If you are concerned about SEO and do not how to manipulate things on a bigger scale, then you should use text. If you know how to work things on and off your site for SERPS. Do not worry about it and use images.

The key is your navigation is simple and straight forward for user experience.

no no, basically, if I am french and don't know english, if I see a translation link, i would expect that I could go to google tools, for example and translate whatever websites page. The main reason for this is that about 1/2 fetish traffic is european... fuck it, I am going to try html text. It will look amateur, but...

That is very true.

For most of my time in adult, more than 50% of my sales, no matter the site, are from Europe. It's always been that way. That said, I have never had an issue in regards to translation. But I concede your point.

That said, I can't speak for ALL of the EU... but I know in a lot of countries they know 2-3+ languages.

yeah that is true. I had another very extablished nylon fetish site owner say that the reason he did not translate was that if they did not know how to navigate english sites, they most likely were much less likely to convert in the first place.

Oh yes, fetish european traffic is chic as fuck, and they know their fetishes, that is for sure! most europeans do offer translation as well

It's not particularly my area of expertise, but why not throw in a little script that detects browser language, and translate your own page for them? There's some relatively affordable translation services online. You could cover the basics and get up a spanish/german/french/english version of the site.

thats actually a great idea AJC :thumbsup

True dat Sigalicious.

...and 2k posts baby!, since 2007!

that would make a great bubblegum brand

I use graphics for navigation in most of my sites but also put the menu across the bottom of each page in small text links. Doesn't really take too much away from the design. That's not only for translation convenience but for my blind surfers that depend on verbal cues.

yes, that is what i do for beautifulfeetonline.com, and your right, it does not take away from the design at all. This will be a good opportunity for me to test out different tours, as I am launching this site with my extra beautifulfeetonline content.

I am also launching http://www.justfootworship.com this summer. I am going to start shooting exclusively for each different concept this summer as well. :pimp

If you use dynamic css you can call different graphics for different languages/regions, especially if you're on PHP with a MySQL db...

:D

I was in Japan in 1980, they told me if you get lost, ask a kid, they all speak english. So I figure now, you go there as well as other countries, they speak english, it's a shame the US isn't like that, but our education system sucks

Text is better, it loads faster and can translated but more important you need the site to look professional, if you can do that with text then it's better.

Yes, I'm liking the gui right now, short, simple, sweet. same format as beautifulfeetonline but a much simpler version, not social networked all to hell. They will be interlinking concepts.

Sure, texts instead of graphic buttons are better for SEO purposes and they also allow the text to be translated.