Designing Websites with a Blend of Cultures

Designing a successful website is not a cake walk especially when you want it to represent the business identity

. Various factors such as layout and strategies for search engine optimization have to be taken into consideration. The website design should be such that maximum people, visiting the website buy the services or products offered by the website. So what should be done for this?

Go multilingual: If the website is in only one language, you are restricting the other visitors from knowing what you offer. Any website design should be understood by as many visitors as possible. For this the website needs to be multilingual. According to internet world stats if the website is in English only, the number of your web audience that are native speakers will be less than 1/3rd of the total surfers of the internet. For any online business the website must be multilingual. According to a research conducted by Common Sense Advisory, 85% of the consumers, despite being multilingual, want to read the product details in their native language before buying it from any website.

Local approach: This approach is about designing the website according to culture, language and aesthetic preference of various countries. The website should have the target country set through the Google Webmaster Tools. This has a dual effect; first it increases the credibility for the customers and the second it give a boost to the results of your SEO efforts.

Culture: Different countries have different cultures and this has an effect on the expectations of the buyers. This is the reason for the difference between McDonald's Indian site and its UK site. Same is the reason for the difference between the Coca Cola's Swedish site and its Japanese site. The meaning of colors differ from culture to culture and so the color combination has to be given due importance too. Some cultures want the navigation to be from left to right while others prefer right to left.

It is better to use CSS, a design tool, for separating the design from the content. This facilitates changes in the language. Unicode UTF-8 facilitates choosing from 90 languages.

Audience Specific Approach: The language of the target country has to be given due importance. At times mere translation does not work.

Sometimes word to word translation may change the meaning so drastically that it may convey something negative about the product. Coca Cola had a bitter experience of translation when the translation of their brand name in Chinese language resulted in "KeKeKenLa" which meant something altogether different. The tone of the sentences also plays an important role. If the web design is proved to be violating any law of a country it may be banned, for example the advertisement of Pepsi in India was considered to be glorifying child labor and had to be withdrawn. The keywords that are vital for SEO should never be directly translated.

It is better to avail the services of a professional web design company to have a website that suits to the various cultures of different countries.

Copyright 2010

Designing Websites with a Blend of Cultures

By: Bryan Bell

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