A completely unique site or a parallel version of your general market site? Or a completely different approach?
I imagine that the answer from many experts on this topic is going to be "It depends..." but I wanted to throw this topic out there for discussion and get feedback from the experts and anyonline Hispanic users that want to share their opinions, so please feel free to respond with your thoughts and ideas.
Prior to focusing my energies on Bixal Solutions, I had the opportunity to work on Sprint Nextel's Hispanic site where the approach was to essentially create a parallel Spanish version of Sprint's English site from start to finish. Sprint highlights certain phones and offers that are more relevant to the market, but for the most part the Spanish-language site runs in parallel with the English experience throughout the browsing and shopping experience. Sprints talented HispaniceCommerce group take English site updates and both translate and transcreate as necessary to produce a Spanish-language site for the U.S. Hispanic market.
Kraft Foods, in contrast, has opted for another approach, which I suspect might be more effective based on my understanding of theonline Hispanic market. Kraft has developed a separate fully bilingual site specifically focused on content and recipes that are relevant to the Hispanic / Latino audience, essentially creating a bilingual culturally-relevant experience.
Being that I don't have access to the data on site traffic and revenues, I can't validate my conclusions though and that's why I'm writing this blog spot / question.
I am sure there are a variety of reasons for opting for either approach and that there are many other approaches being used. I am sure though that the best approach should be based on a strong understanding of your specific audience.
I am very interested in getting feedback from those who have data, insights and/or opinions to share on this particular topic, including my dear colleagues at Sprint, and am hoping that this feedback will be useful to all.