1. Colours

Red is lucky in China, synonymous with beauty in Russia, and used for prices in France.

However, if you make your prices red in the UK, consumers will tend to assume a discount is being offered.

Green means go in Britain but death in Brazil (something to do with the mysterious green expanse of the jungle).

In Japan, the word for blue is often used for colours that in English we would describe as green, such as a go traffic light. Many bantu languages don’t distinguish between green and blue; this can be anglicised as ‘grue’. It leads to descriptions of ‘leaf grue’ and ‘ocean grue’.

Joe’s top tip: use orange in Holland, the Dutch love it; but avoid red, black and gold in Germany, as the Germans are sometimes uncomfortable with these colours.

2. Payments

In Germany, invoice is preferred by nearly half of consumers, with micropayments also favoured (transactions for small amounts of money, often used to buy media online).

In Islamic countries, the charging of interest is not permitted; Sharia compliant finance must be offered.

India sees cash on delivery as the favoured payment method for many online shopping experiences. This can obviously lead to difficulties and potential losses for the retailer.

Joe’s top tip: 51% of Germans wouldn’t go back to a retailer that didn’t offer their preferred payment method. 

3. Website layout

Many Arabic scripts read right to left and are right aligned. How will this affect your site?

Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Traditionally, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are written vertically, however some have started to be used horizontally, which makes sense for reading of a screen, rather than a paper scroll.

Joe’s top tip: Asian readers are more comfortable scrolling down a long page.

4. Calls to action

Skeuomorphism may have been rejected by Apple, and is slowly phasing out online in the West, Eastern web users may be more reluctant to let go.

In Globalmaxer’s tests, although colour can have an effect, the style and text of a button is most important to conversion rate.

5. Faces

IKEA Saudi Arabia received criticism for airbrushing a woman from one of their catalogues.

Although there are less women featuring in advertising in Saudi, the market isn’t so strict that images should be removed altogether.

Having familiar faces in your marketing is important.

Ensure that context is considered if the subject or market is sensitive.

6. Copy

Joe gave the brilliant case of Italian’s searching for low cost flights. By far the most popular search term is not ‘voli economici’, the literal translation, but ‘voli low cost’. This drives a circle of OTAs having to optimise for this phrase.

There are examples in German, too, with work shirts being searched for with the phrase ‘business hemden’, only one word of the phrase being German.

The web is full of what Joe calls ‘webenese’, and you must be aware of how it affects your customers’ journeys.

7. Technology

IE6 has over 24% of browser share in China, so you can’t afford to ignore it.

Flash sometimes has problems with Arabic script.

Joe gives the top tip, for those going into the Russian market, to use big online marketplaces to introduce yourself, before launching a standalone ecommerce operation.

8. Context

Japan has a predilection for the cute (kawaii), and for the busy web page. Germany on the other hand prefers simple web pages and messaging.

See Joe’s slideshare here.