Our statistican wanted us to to note that the data sample was divided among too many languages to be statistically significant. However, the concept is a no-brainer -- people won't buy what they don't understand (except mortgages, time shares, and BMW iDrive). And while we found none of WordBank's findings surprising, they do offer one more datapoint that confirms what all of us know to be true.

In May 1998 Don DePalma wrote in a Forrester report called "Strategies for Global Sites" that "besides our 50 interviewees, we spoke with six early adopters that have localized their sites or are planning major globalization efforts. These ambitious firms report that their work translated into one or more benefits: 1) Visitors linger twice as long as they do at English-only URLs; 2) business users are three times more likely to buy when addressed in their own language; and 3) customer service costs drop when instructions are displayed in the user's language."

That text appeared under the heading of "Localization Done Right Can Mean More Eyeballs, Revenue, and Lower Costs" -- and bits and pieces of these few dozen words have appeared in print and in more PowerPoint presentations than we can count. WordBank's research is one more proof point and likely to be as widely quoted. We only hope that corporate marketers and budgeters are paying attention.