Are regional specific landing pages better than standard homepages?

When you visit Ikea.com, you are taken to a landing page that provides multiple regions and languages to choose from. Maybe this works for IKEA, but is this an unnecessary obstacle for first time users to smaller sites?

Is it better to have a base homepage with a language or region selector in the nav or is there another way that's even better than the two options I've listed? Better as in best converting.