usability - What is the best mechanism for language and country selection?

I need my users to choose their country to use my site. The French version has a totally different setup to the English version, for example.

I'm The trouble is, if I merely ask the user for their country, it doesn't necessarily imply what language to use. For example, the Swiss speak English, French and German depending on the region. Also, a Dutchman living in the UK may prefer to see the site in Dutch.

My manager is saying I should make the user click again, to select their prefered language. But I'm keen to avoid making the user click twice. Especially since, most of the time, the user will be happy with the default language.

I can think of three options:

1. Always make the user choose two things- Country and langauge


2. Make the user choose a country, assign the default language for that country and let them change it within the site.


3. Make the user choose a country, attempt to work out their language programmatically (although this is not 100% reliable) and let them change it within the site.

What is the most user-friendly mechanism? Would users be confused or irritated by being asked their language as well as their country?

Answer

I've been in a similar situation with a client once. The country was important because the services and products available were based on that. The language was important because languages spoken in certain areas of Europe don't match the countries (parts of Germany and Italy speak either, you've got Switzerland, etc.). So, really, language and location are separate concepts that are only looses related in practice and you need to offer them as such.

This doesn't mean you have to overwhelm your users with choices. In many cases you can make a pretty good guess based on the location, which you can guess by IP adresses among other things. You can look at language settings, but do not use the language settings to determine location. The client I mentioned did that in a previous version of their site and it would send me to their US website because that's how my computer/browser are set up (apparantly, I never made any conscious choices there).

So, you could have a default match (Netherlands -> Dutch) or a short list of options (Switzerland -> German, French, English). This tends to be sensitive so be careful in picking a default language. If unsure, I'd say default to English but ask your user for their preference.

I figured, let's see how the big guys handle this. Well, it ranges...: