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.

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