It’s not called the world wide web for nothing. The Internet truly has become a global phenomenon and has changed the way we communicate. In theory your own little corner of cyberspace is just a mouse-click away from any visitor with an Internet connection, whether they live in Baltimore or Bangalore. In reality, designing a website that can both reach and appeal to a cross cultural audience can take a little effort and a lot of forward planning.
Using the right tools
Using the right tools from the beginning can save time and effort if you wish to adapt your website for different target markets at a later date. The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows the content to be kept separate from the design, meaning that content can be easily adapted or translated for different markets without having to remake each page from stretch.
The direction of text can also be easily switched for written languages such as Hebrew or Arabic, that read from right to left. It may also help if you use horizontal navigation bars. Vertical navigation bars are usually placed on the left for languages that read from left to right such as English. Horizontal bars, placed across the top of the page will not need to be relocated if you do switch to a right to left script.
You will also need a good character coding tool. Compatible with over 90 written languages or scripts, Unicode UTF-8 is ideal, allowing you to easily switch to non-Latin scripts (again, such as Hebrew and Arabic) as well as non-standard Latin characters such as the Scandinavian æ and ø.
Hold the Flash
There’s no doubt that fancy graphics and Flash animation can enhance the look of your website, but there are inherent problems as well. Even if you’re looking at a page with a designer’s eye, you have to keep in mind the ultimate purpose of a site, and that is to hook a visitor into the actual content.
When dealing with cross cultural web design, it’s also worth bearing in mind that not all territories have equal access to high speed broadband. Finland might have been the first country to declare that broadband access is a fundamental human right, but not all countries are quite so progressive in this area and a website that takes an age to load on slower connection speeds can be seriously off-putting. Additionally, text embedded within Flash (and indeed within pictures and other graphics) cannot be easily translated.
Color coordination
Some aspects of color usage in website design are more or less universal. Using green text on a yellow background, for example, is going to cause eye-strain and very likely a quick exit from your site, whatever culture a user is from.
When designing a site for a particular culture, however, or one intended to have cross cultural appeal, you should be aware of the various aspects of color symbolism within those target markets.
For example, in the Western world white tends to symbolize marriage and purity, while in much of Asia it has more funereal connotations. This isn’t to say that certain colors cannot be used or that they will always be immediately linked with a certain concept, but colors can certainly influence the tone of your website in your visitors’ eyes and color that all-important first ‘scanning’ impression.
Cultural faux pas
You should always ensure that your images do not inadvertently cause offense in cultures and territories you are targeting. Scantily clad holidaymakers, for example, might be fine for the website of a western hotel chain but might not go down well in other, less liberal cultures. A ‘thumbs up’ sign, meanwhile, universally means ‘okay’ in the west but is considered an obscene and highly insulting gesture in parts of West Africa, South America and the Middle East.
Sometimes, people can miss things that seem glaringly obvious to onlookers, even when using their own native tongue. Just ask the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin, who were previously the Wisconsin Tourism Federation until someone pointed out what the acronym WTF stands for in common Internet parlance.
The enduring story of the disastrous Brazilian launch of the Ford Pinto (‘pinto’ being Brazilian slang for the male genitalia) is, unfortunately an urban or at least online myth. The car was never launched in Brazil at all, but the tale certainly illustrates the importance of understanding how your products and content will translate. Acronyms and slang can easily catch out the unwary and, even if you use a machine translation program for your content, you should always run the results by a native speaker before going live.
There are many issues to consider when it comes to cross cultural web design, but a little planning and forward thinking can help the process go as smoothly as possible, and the rewards in terms of new and expanded markets are worth going the extra mile.
About the author
Article by Christian Arno, the Managing Director of Lingo24, Inc.. Follow Lingo24, Inc. on Twitter.
