I'm working on a multilingual WordPress driven web site running the WPML plugin. WPML offers a language switcher widget which is pretty neat.
However, the layout of the page I'm working on is very artistic, calm and minimalistic. Apart from being a bit difficult on mobile devices, the language switcher adds visual clutter that I'd like to avoid. I'm currently debating removing the widget from all pages except for the main page, so the main page would be the only place where you can switch languages any more (short of manipulating the URL directly).
Is this wise from an usability point of view? Are there pressing arguments for having a language switcher on every page of a web site? I would imagine users are usually interested in one language only, except for exceedingly rare exceptions like people trying to find additional information that isn't available in their own language, which will not be a problem in my case.
Users coming from Google and skipping the front page might be a concern, but this shouldn't be a real-world problem when the page's language is clearly declared using the lang
attribute, correct? The search engine shouldn't be directing people to resources that aren't in their own language.
accept-language
header and the TLD used, for one. In an age where Google gives you local results for some queries, you can definitely assume it optimizes results towards the user's (supposed) language as well. And it's a general point as well: people doing searches in languages they don't speak is going to be the rare exception in most cases. Still, @Pieter has a point, of course... it's well possible that this doesn't apply to languages that are smaller in size than their neighbours.