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TL;DR refers to the language selector checklist
In my experience, when asked to change a country or language, a vast majority of users will immediately head to the header of the page first, and if they can’t find it there, they’ll jump all the way to the bottom of the page and scout the footer next.
I find this rule true in my experience:
We can’t confidently infer users’ preferences without asking them first.
While polite nudging is reasonable, automatic redirects are not.
As a rule of thumb: let the user choose between language, country and currency.
For example, if you want to purchase sneakers on Adidas from Germany but deliver them to your friend in Poland, you need to be able to make sense of the Polish language when checking out.
Moneses shows two tabs in the right upper corner of the header. Users can switch between language and country, defining preferences for each separately. [...] We can allow users to customize further parts of the UI, from currency and auto-translation to units of measurement and date formatting.
Preferred customization:
- shipping location
- preferred currency
- units of measure
- time/date formatting
- time zones preferences
- level of experience
Modal windows are often dismissed. So, In the mock-up above [with a modal on the bottom right], the important content isn’t blocked by the modal.
- display most languages/countries in their local format . It avoids the assumption that the user needs to understand English.
- breaking options down by tabs, either horizontal or vertical ones
- provide users with poignant autocomplete suggestions. But Sometimes the fine-tuning of making autocomplete work for many different languages might be an effort way too underestimated and way too time-consuming.
- Use the globe or translate flags to indicate the choice of locales
On Atlassian, if the user with a different browser language preference enters the site, it suggests changing the language at the very top of the page, with a globe icon appearing there, too.