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Talkin Bout Lead Generation

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Webinars don't s-s-satisfy (Talkin' 'bout lead generation)
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If you're in Europe or U-U-UK (Talkin' 'bout lead generation)
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Leadgeneration

Technorati Tags: Citrix,GoToWebinar,lead generation,marketing,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,web marketing,online marketing,online seminar

Webinato And Multilingual Webinars

This is part three in a series of posts about running multilingual webinars. Today I will look at the approach taken by Webinato (the recently rebranded name of the company and product previously known as omNovia).

I have a great deal of familiarity with Webinato, as I have used it quite a lot with various clients. The company doesn't do much (any?) advertising, so it is not as well known as other names in our industry, but it has been around for more than a decade and has a great deal of functionality and flexibility.

Webinato first announced the availability of multilingual operation in August 2010. The fundamental approach is much the same as I wrote about in my last post… Designated interpreters have the ability to listen to one language channel in their computer headphones and speak into a mike that is broadcast to listeners of an alternate language channel. Interpreters can choose to listen to the presentation "floor language" or to a translated stream to act as a pivot language for relay interpretation.

There is no provision for alternate viewing materials… All participants see the same slides, movies, white boards, or other content. So if you want participants to be able to follow along with translated materials, you need to make the documents available in the online "downloadable documents" folder in the conference room and invite participants to open them for independent viewing while they listen.

Webinato offers full-featured front end and back end registration and administration features for webinar participants, which means lots of screens and lots of text prompts sprinkled around the system. Depending on how an administrator configures their account, people may be able to see a list of upcoming events; see detailed descriptive information for a single event; register with a combination of standard and custom fields; invoke payment processing for fee-based webinars; receive confirmation, reminder, and follow-up emails (in text or HTML); login for a webinar; and see greeting and prompt messages inside the conference room.

Webinato has attempted to make all these features accessible in a number of languages. Users find a language selection list in the upper right corner of registration and login pages.

There seems to be a randomness to the sort order and I know just enough Russian to know that the translation for that language name is incorrect (they spelled out "Russia" instead of "Russian" as in the language).

What happens next for non-English languages is wildly inconsistent. I get the definite impression that alternate languages have not been a priority area of concentration for Webinato and have not been tested in a comprehensive and methodical manner. Depending on the selected language, some phrases are translated and others remain in English. I found login prompts that actually mixed alphabets in the same sentence ("Enter as an Посетитель").

I tried to see what would happen when selecting Hebrew, which reads from right to left. It didn't work very well, but that may be because my computer was not configured for Hebrew as the language of operation. I think things like input fields might be controlled at the operating system or browser level, rather than directly by the Webinato interface. My input boxes still showed typing progressing from left to right. I did notice that Webinato switched the label/field order so the labels showed on the right of the input fields, which was proper positioning for that language.

When I tried to enter the conference room in Hebrew or Arabic, nothing ever displayed in my browser window… It was completely blank. Other languages showed the display area correctly, but with random and inconsistent combinations of English and selected language. For instance, it seems bizarre to me that the cancel button would be translated to my German selection while the phrases differentiating reloading the webinar room from exiting the webinar remain in English:

Emails in Webinato are completely customizable, and administrators could copy and paste any text or alphabet they want - but all registrants see the same email. So if true language-specificity is your goal, you would probably need to build web pages in each language with the desired text and instructions, and then send out a multilingual email with links to each language's page. Note that Webinato adds a few things in English, no matter what… Emails come from "<your company> Events" and get an English language "Add to calendar" and footer message that you can't override.

The fact that Webinato allows language selection and multiple interpretation streams for attendees is great. They need to spend some more time going through all their languages and all their text on screens throughout the system to make them consistent before I can recommend it unreservedly as a multilingual business tool. Something is better than nothing, and I'm sure audiences appreciate the fact that they can at least listen in their desired language. By the way, Webinato will add an additional language upon request, in return for a customization fee. They provide a list of phrases for their master database and it is the requesting company's responsibility to provide translations.

 

Technorati Tags: Webinato,omNovia,multilingual meetings,webinar,web seminar,online seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,web meetings,online meeting,simultaneous interpretation

VoiceBoxer Streamlines Multilingual Presentation

My last post looked at the many considerations you can face when planning a multilingual webinar. Vendors can struggle to make their technology platforms fully multilingual, and the complexities of customizing all associated content for different languages adds a lot of work for webinar administrators.

VoiceBoxer is a relatively young webinar technology platform that was created with the express intent of simplifying multilingual presentation. I spoke with cofounder and CEO Sergio Llorian, who told me that he comes from a background as an attorney and legal counsel, working for many years with a professional translation and interpretation services company. He saw a need for better and easier presentation to multilingual audiences, so he got together with a technical team and set about to create a conferencing system appropriate for the task. They are now in production with version 2 of their platform.

VoiceBoxer definitely emphasizes ease of use in operation. It eliminates many of the more sophisticated features found in other webinar applications in favor of a design that allows for "pick up and use" simplicity. The software runs in a web browser as a WebRTC application. That means no downloads or installs, but restricts presenters and attendees to browsers compatible with WebRTC. Sergio is enthusiastic about the video and audio quality they are able to provide for audience sizes of up to 2500.

Visual materials are accepted as PowerPoint files. The VoiceBoxer team uploads the slides to your conference room as a service -- there is no Do-It-Yourself provision. Slides are converted to static images for display… You cannot retain PowerPoint animations, builds, or transition effects. Navigation through the slides is strictly sequential. You move forward or backward one slide at a time. That all sounds very simplistic, but it allows for a feature that is completely unique in my experience: Synchronized alternate visuals.

You can translate your slides to other languages and save a slide deck for each language. The VoiceBoxer team uploads each deck and associates it with the corresponding language audio channel. Now when an attendee selects a language to listen to, they see the slides in that language as well. The simplicity of the slide navigation makes it easy for the software to coordinate the decks and move them forward and backward simultaneously.

Audio is provided through the browser as part of the WebRTC stream. Presenters speak into a computer microphone. Interpreters can listen on headphones and speak the translation into an alternate language channel that can be selected by attendees for listening. The software also allows for relay interpreting, where an interpreter listens to a translated channel as his/her source, rather than the speaker's "floor channel." This is sometimes necessary when there is not an interpreter available for the desired source-target language combination. VoiceBoxer also allows for two-way interpreting, where the interpreter can switch source and target to provide a translation back from a participant to the presenter.

There is currently no provision for translating typed chat, questions, or messages. Sergio said they are investigating the use of automated text translation, since it is hard for human text translators to keep up with typing translations into a chat stream, and the context of the written word lets people cope with and accept the small errors that automated translators inevitably produce.

VoiceBoxer does not yet include event registration (although that is on the roadmap), so they have not had to deal with the issues I raised about translating registration pages, input fields, and confirmations. At this time, all on-screen commands and prompts appear only in English.

It's worth mentioning another innovative aspect of VoiceBoxer, which is its pricing model. The most common vendor practice in our industry is to charge different amounts based on the maximum number of participants allowed in a web meeting. VoiceBoxer always allows you to include as many participants as you want (up to their 2500-person technical limit). They charge based on the number of "language hours" you consume. So a 60-minute event offered in three languages would be charged for 3 language hours. Customers who license the product for multilingual use are allowed to hold monolingual web meetings at no additional charge.

Sergio tells me their "sweet spot" so far has been with very large international organizations offering internal and external training as well as with Non-Governmental Organizations offering public outreach and education.

In my next post I will compare VoiceBoxer's approach with another vendor offering multilingual webinar support.

 

Technorati Tags: VoiceBoxer,Sergio Llorian,multilingual meetings,simultaneous interpretation,webinar,web seminar,web meetings,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online seminar,online meeting

Planning A Multilingual Webinar

I'm working on behalf of a client who plans to present a series of webinars for audiences in the country of Georgia. The presenters speak English. Attendees will mostly speak Georgian, but there will be some English speakers as well. So we need to accommodate both languages. I have had to think through a lot of issues and look at specialized features to support these needs. As a public service, here are some of the big ticket items…

1) Platform commands, prompts, help - Web conferencing software is overwhelmingly English-language oriented. A few technologies offer alternate languages of operation. Make sure you know the following:

a) Are your desired target languages offered as options?

b) Is the language of operation automatically selected based on the accessing computer's native language configuration, or do attendees select their language from a list? If a list, are languages presented in the language of selection, or is the list all in English?

c) Can the vendor create a new language of operation upon request? What is the fee to add a language?

d) Which items appear in the alternate language? Vendors might translate primary display commands, but not translate popup tips or help text.

2) Registration - Are registration pages available in your desired target languages?

a) Does the vendor translate standard field labels such as First Name, Last Name, and Email?

b) Does the vendor let you add custom fields in another alphabet?

c) Is there a provision for right-to-left languages? Can label and input field swap positions? Can text input show from right to left?

3) Emails - If the vendor creates standardized confirmation/reminder emails, can that text be translated? If you can customize all text in the email, can you copy and paste alternate alphabets? Does the vendor add their own footers that will appear in English? Can you customize/translate the subject line of your event emails?

4) Visual Materials - Is there any provision for displaying slides in the attendee's choice of language? In other words, can you translate your PowerPoint deck and show English slides to English attendees and Spanish slides to Spanish attendees? Will all languages advance in sync automatically, or do presenters need to manually control each display language slide deck individually?

5) Audio - Does your vendor support simultaneous interpreters and separate audio tracks for different languages?

a) Can interpreters listen to the presenting language and transmit to the alternate track for listeners? Can they listen to a translated language from another interpreter and interpret that to a third language? (This is referred to as relay interpretation using a pivot language.)

b) If your vendor offers integrated phone and streaming audio, are both supported in an interpretation scenario?

c) Is interpretation one-way (presenters to audience only) or two-way (you can open attendee lines and have the interpreter translate back to the presenters' language)? If two-way, is there provision for a single bi-directional interpreter or for two one-way interpreters?

6) Chat/Q&A - Is there a way to involve one or more text translators to translate typed chat, announcements, or questions between languages? Are all messages seen in all languages, or are there dedicated text streams for different languages?

7) Speaker Preparation - In addition to the above technology planning, you should plan to work in advance with your presentation team to make sure they understand how to make their presentation style work better with interpretation. Slow down the pace a bit. Make sure to give a moment before switching to a new slide to let the interpreter finish up on the existing slide. If using annotations or highlighting individual points on a slide, pause between pointing out different items so there is no confusion as to which one you are referencing when the interpreter is translating. Work on reducing the use of contractions and colloquialisms that might not translate well or convey the same meaning in another language. If at all possible, do a run through with your presenters and your interpreter so they have a chance to get familiar with the speech patterns, context, and content you are presenting.

I will follow up this post over the next few days with a look at two webinar technologies that try to accommodate the special needs of multilingual webinars. You will have a chance to see how they differ in their approach and where the inevitable trade offs occur.

 

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online seminar,online meeting,web meetings,simultaneous interpretation,multilingual meetings

Webinar Registration Still Sadly Lacking

It's a new year and time for a lot of webinar technology vendors to make some resolutions to help their customers. By the way, I'm looking squarely at you, market share giants Cisco and Citrix!

I have written many times over many years about the importance of registration pages for webinars. Layout, cosmetics, and functionality of a registration page have a direct and tangible impact on its performance in collecting leads and encouraging signups for a web event. Anything that lessens the success of those objectives harms the customer. Vendors who lock in poor registration page practices should be ashamed. Customers who have to put up with counterproductive limitations should be up in arms and demanding enhancements.

I'll just reiterate some of the most important design elements that I find missing in far too many webinar products:

• Mobile Accessibility: Pages should reorient appropriately for portrait vs. landscape layouts, work without additional app download for iOS and Android, and ensure that things like dropdown menus fit on the screen.
• Branding: Not just a case of allowing the host to slap their logo on the page, this also includes the ability to customize colors to match the hosting company's website and more importantly, getting the webinar vendor's branding OFF the page.
• Override Standard Field Names: Don't force me to use your labels for standard fields. Let me change your "First Name" and "Last Name" to "Given Name" and "Family Name" if I want to. Let me change "Title" to "Position" or "Function." Let me change "Company" to "Organisation."
• Conditional Fields: In this day and age, why is "State/Province" still a static field on the page? If a registrant selects "USA" then show the dropdown for "State." If they select "Canada" then show the smaller dropdown for "Province." If they select another country, don't show that field!
• Arbitrary Text: Allow me to add a line of text on the page just as I add custom fields so I can put instructions or explanations where I feel they would help.
• Layout Order: Don't force your standard fields to appear first, followed by my custom fields. Let me choose the order for everything that appears on the page.
• Submit Button: Let me change the label, color, and size of the "Register" or "Submit" button. This has been experimentally proven to affect performance. Let me test what works best for my audiences.
• Contact/Help button or link: Allow administrators to add a single click way for registrants to communicate with someone who can help them or answer questions.

Webinar users and customers - If your vendor allows you to have this sort of customization, consider yourself lucky and let them know how much you value it. If your technology limits you in these areas, raise a stink about it! Vendors make their product development plans based on complaints and requests from customers. If you don't let them know it's important, it will never change.

 

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