How Will a Multi-Language Ecommerce Site Approach Web Design?
The
internet may be global, but the same cannot be said for web design. From Camden
to Canada, it takes a lot of effort to ensure your site appeals to different
cultures and audiences. Even if one is intending to start out by targeting the
home market, it is essential to consider the wider picture while designing the
site, so it is essential to consider cross cultural factors.
- Differences in Colour Connotations
Research
has shown different colours have different connotations across different
cultures. White is associated with purity, weddings and celebration in the
West, but mourning and funerals in the East. Red is the colour of purity for
Indians, celebration for Chinese and danger or passion for Western web viewers.
Colours like blue are considered safe globally as having a universal positive
connotation. Therefore, choosing the colour theme for your website is also a
matter for crucial consideration.
- Differences in Meanings of Images
Just
like the impact of colour, one needs to consider if images are appropriate
across cultures. Symbols and images, for example, may not be culturally
relevant. Studies found that users in other cultures showed resistance to
products with Western metaphors as opposed to products localised as per
cultural idioms and customs. Choose appropriate images for your site keeping
this in mind, or be prepared to use different images in separate website
versions.
- Differences in Layouts
Building
your website design using CSS templates is important. A table-free design means
content needs to be separated from design and one will not need to start from a
scratch while adapting pages for different markets. Using a UTF-8 character
encoding in the Unicode standard increases flexibility and permits future
adaptation. It has a catalogue of over 100K characters compatible with 90
scripts, which means non Latin languages like Chinese and Japanese are includes
and vital symbols in European languages such as cedillas in French or
Portuguese or umlauts in German can be incorporated using the Unicode standard.
This is why leading MNCs like Apple and Google have adopted this standard.
- Differences in Messaging
It
is equally important that the message should be carried over to different
languages. Machine translation tools may be quick and cheap, but to capture the
nuances of the language, you need a local copywriter who speaks the language
natively. As the internet has gained popularity all over the world, people
increasingly look for communication or business online. For web design the key considerations are not just colour or layout, but also formatting and navigation. Such
features attract and engage users across cultures and languages. Only 22
percent of web surfers are native English speakers, so language needs to be
used powerfully to make your website truly multicultural.
Thus,
fancy colour schemes or cool graphics may promote your site, but cross-cultural
web design factors must be considered for effectively reaching out to the
internet consumer. It is also important to conduct in-depth website design
research regarding different target markets in a given country and their
preferences. Different groups have differing preferences and expectations.
Customs of social behaviour or linguistic differences can play a major role in
website design, and each business that values its ecommerce customers across
multiple cultures and nations needs to remember that.