How to design websites that appeal across cultural divides
July 14, 2010 by Christian Arno · 16 Comments
When you’re designing websites for a global audience, you need to be aware of cultural differences that will affect the way they are viewed in different parts of the world. You cannot expect the exact same website to be well-received around the globe. You need to adapt your websites to allow for cultural differences and make sure they are equally effective in whichever region you are targeting.
Take your web content global
Content is the most important part of any website. The old saying ‘content is king’ still rings true. There are three main factors you need to consider with regards to your content:
It must be relevant and useful to your target audience. By ensuring that your content is well-written and relevant, you will not only be maintaining quality, but you will also ensure that it can be more effectively translated into other languages.
You need to make sure it is as universally understandable as possible. With 79% of web users not speaking English as their native language, at some point you are going to have to get your content translated if you want your websites to be truly accessible across different cultures. The best way of achieving this is to use a professional translator, but if your budget is tight, you may also consider an online machine translation tool, like Google Translate.
It should be appropriate across many cultures. This applies especially to visual content – you should be aware that some images may be perfectly acceptable in western cultures, but could be offensive in other parts of the world. For example, pictures of scantily-clad models may cause offence in some countries. Even a simple image of someone relaxing with their feet up, which is perfectly OK in most parts of the world, may cause offence in Thailand, where it is unacceptable to show the soles of the feet.
Keywords in a Foreign Language
Even if you decide to use an online translation service to translate the bulk of your website’s content, you should not rely on this method of translation for your keywords. Nor should you use direct dictionary translations. Your keywords are too important to entrust them to these methods of translation – they are just not accurate enough.
To ensure your search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are successful in other languages, you need to work with a professional translator to develop a good list of foreign-language keywords. This will save you a great deal of time and money in the long run, because you can be sure that you are targeting the keywords that people are using to search for your product in any market – there’s no point in building a great website if no one can find it.
CSS spans language barriers
Make sure to use CSS as your design tool when building your website, because by doing so, you are keeping the content separate from the design. This makes it far easier to develop versions of your website in different languages – it’s a simple matter of substituting the different translated text into your pre-existing CSS templates. You should also use Unicode UTF-8 character encoding because it is compatible with the widest range of language scripts.
Planning the layout for a global design
You can improve the cross-cultural accessibility of your website by carefully considering its design and layout. One of the main issues here is the fact that not all languages are read from left-to-right. This can impact on the usability of side navigation and sidebar content. For example, a left-hand navigation structure may not be very convenient for someone who reads from right-to-left.
The same principle applies to the theory that the eye is naturally drawn to the top-left area of a web page. For an Arabic reader, it may be the top-right. You can avoid usability issues with your navigation structure by employing a horizontal top navigation, which will be more universally usable.
Choosing colours for a cross-cultural audience
Colour is a very important part of web design, as it can affect the way your websites are perceived by different cultures. Most designers are aware of colour theory, which tells us that different colours can have different psychological effects on the people viewing them, and that the psychological impact of colour is strongly influenced by cultural factors. Put simply, colours mean different things to different people depending on their cultural viewpoint.
For example, in Islamic countries green usually has an important religious significance, whereas in Western cultures it may be more suggestive of environmental issues. In Korea, a name written in red indicates that the person is dead. You should examine your use of colour carefully to ensure you don’t make any cultural faux pas.
Put simply, cross-cultural web design is about being aware of the possible pitfalls highlighted here, and ensuring your websites are accessible to as many cultures as possible, a sensible move to take considering the increased internationalisation of the internet.
About Christian Arno
Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localisation specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their projected turnover for 2010 is £6.3m.
I have read your writing with great attention Christian, on other blogs too..you really know what you’re talking about. Cheers mate!
nice post i like it
Really cool, I bet this can be used a lot in creating multiple language blog platforms!
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Interesting! I’ll keep this all in mind when creating a website I want to be viewed by people from different countries.
Cool post, it really helps!
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Interesting article! I will think about this topic
maybe it will help me increase my website visitors!
Hi. It is great that you have decided to post something about trans-cultural websites. These are the most fascinating ones. Their role is to re-unite people with different cultural backgrounds. Nice post. I really like it. Good Luck.
I just start online. Really believe that your article will help me. Thanks for sharing.
There are three other key concerns when developing projects for a global audience that this article doesn’t cover:
1) Byte Width and Encoding
Many Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean, use double byte characters. This can cause many challenges in not only store data in databases but also in transmitting that data via xml, form submittal etc. Going UTF-8 might seem like an easy solution, but that isn’t always the case if you want to target and rank high organically in certain regions.
2) No such thing as a “Global” interface
When globalizing websites developers often identify text resources and localize them via a translation company or with automated software. This is horribly unprofessional and immediately identifiable by the end user in the target culture. Take addresses input fields in forms for instance. Some countries don’t have citizens that memorize their zip code (South Korea), others have a different address structure that street, city, political division (Japan) and other countries may not even use romanized addresses in certain regions (PRC).
3) Every Culture has its own online landscape
Google would like us to think that they are all you need Globally, but that really isn’t the case. Facebook also has had a hard time in certain regions catching on. If you want to be effective in a region, you have to know what search engines, social networks, browsers and online lifestyle is popular in that region. Orkut is much more popular than Facebook in Brazil, Google isn’t even in the top five search engines in Korea, and there are huge restrictions on foreigners advertising online in China. The best way to get to know an online landscape is to spend time using that culture’s websites, meeting people in that target nation and even traveling there.
Developers would like to think that the internet makes the world smaller and brings down cultural walls. In reality, in order to be effective in a foreign culture online you need just as much research, knowledge and experience with that culture as if you were going to be opening a storefront over there.
Also, CSS doesn’t really “span language barriers”. Many text styles have entire swaths of cultures that they don’t apply to (font variants and font weight are great examples). Also, legible text size varies greatly from language to language, as well as font faces that meet user expectation. Sans-serif fonts are perceived as very outmoded looking in Japan for example. LTR and RTL reading directions also change the way CSS behaves greatly, especially considering things like floats and the concept of text alignment. Line breaks are also huge in certain languages for CSS as not all languages separate words with spaces or use discernible punctuation to terminate sentences.
Truth be told, following the method in this blog will only get you exposed to foreign internet users that probably already understand enough English and about western culture to just switch over to your primary language website anyway. If you stick to western “romanized” languages and cultures in Countries very similar to the English speaking nations this advice might help, but to the other hundreds of millions of internet users that don’t have western friendly romanized languages, not so much.
Thanks a lot Christian Arno, Really a very helpful post !
Great post. I never even thought about using keywords in other languages.