Review: The Culturally Customized Web Site
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson,
Wilson Internet Rocklin, CA
Jun 6, 2005, 18:27
The Culturally Customized Web Site:
Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace
Nitish Singh and Arun Pereira
Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005
Paperback, 163 pages, ISBN 0750678496
It’s one thing to develop a website in your own country. But what if you want to expand to countries in Europe or Asia or South America? What if you’re an international marketing VP for a multi-national company? What if you’re an Aussie wanting to tap into the US market? How do you design a website that fits the culture so effectively that visitors will feel right at home -- to the degree that they will purchase from you? Until now the localization guides have been helpful, but not specific enough, and not really grounded in sound cross-cultural theory.
The Culturally Customized Web Site is written by a pair of marketing professors in US universities who specialize in cross-cultural marketing. They cite research to back their assertion that "websites that are customized to specific countries enjoy strong advantages compared with those that are not." They classify websites into five categories of website globalization: (1) Standardized -- the same content for domestic and international users. (2) Semi-localized -- with contact information about international subsidiaries but little else. (3) Localized -- including country-specific webpages with translation wherever relevant. (4) Highly-localized -- with country-specific URLs, translations, and high levels of country-specific information. (5) Culturally-customized -- a complete immersion in the culture of the target market. The authors cite a study of Fortune 900 companies which determined that, of the nearly 600 company websites trying to target international customers, only 24% were "highly localized." Nearly 57% of the websites were not localized at all. And not one had reached the level of "culturally-customized." When it comes to increasing effectiveness abroad, most larger companies have a long way to go.
The authors emphasize "patterned ways of thinking" and "shared values" as important in defining a culture, specifically perception, symbolism, and behavior. Perception of one’s world is affected by such things as color and the structure and vocabulary of one's language. Rather than rigid (and often misleading) word-by-word translations from one language to another, concepts need to be translated dynamically, often using different word order than the original text, local idioms, and the comfortable way of speaking that only native speakers can adequately render into their own heart language.
Symbolism also needs to be considered in developing a culturally-customized website. Colors have different symbolic meanings in different cultures. Visual metaphors, religious symbols, animal figures, taboo words, graphics of hand gestures, aesthetic codes, and forbidden food all figure in. If something isn’t culturally "right," web visitors from that culture will sense something is wrong in the same way that Americans wince at product instructions written in a rigid Chinese rendering of English. Both perception and symbolism have direct application to website design.
Perhaps the most helpful sections of The Culturally Customized Web Site, however, are the authors’ explanation of the behavior elements of culture. They draw on the typology of G. Hofstede (1980) and E.T. Hall (1976) to examine in detail five dimensions of a cultural values framework, and their implications for website design:
- Individualism-Collectivism Continuum. Some country cultures stress the importance of an individual’s goals (such as in the US and Australia). Others stress the importance of the group (such as in China or Central America).
- Degree of Power Distance. Some cultures stress a belief in authority and hierarchy (high power distance, such as in Malaysia and Mexico). Others believe that power should be more equal (low power distance, such as in Austria and Israel).
- Tendency toward Uncertainty Avoidance. Some cultures stress predictability, structure, and order (high uncertainty avoidance, such as in Greece and Portugal). Others stress risk-taking, less structure, and allow for some ambiguity (low uncertainty avoidance, such as in Singapore and Hong Kong).
- Tendency toward Masculine or Feminine Values. Some cultures stress achievement, assertiveness, and ambition (masculine, such as in Japan and Switzerland). Others tend towards a belief in nurturing and caring for others (feminine, such as in Scandinavian countries).
- Extent of High-Low Context. In cultures with a high contextual component, most information is embedded in the context or internalized among the members of the society, exhibiting politeness and indirectness, a soft-sell approach, and attention to aesthetic details, etc. (such as in Japan, China, and Korea). Cultures with a low contextual component, on the other hand, are more straightforward, detailed, and unambiguous, with a more hard-sell approach.
For all but the last of each of these dimensions the authors include a research-based ranking for 50+ countries. For all dimensions they offer specific ways that websites can be designed to appeal to the culture’s particular behavioral ethos. The book is liberally sprinkled with color webpage examples illustrating each of these dimensions. While the book tends to be a bit pedantic, it clearly achieves its objective. Non-university-trained website designers may find the concepts difficult to understand, but then making a true culturally relevant translation has never been a task for the poorly-prepared or the faint-hearted. The authors' work is an extremely useful handbook that will, doubtless, provide sound theoretical basis and practical suggestions for thousands of cultural-customization projects in the years to come. All web teams engaged in website globalization efforts will welcome this book. Smaller businesses and organizations, too, can use its insights to increase their reach to countries and regions where they presently have little market penetration. Strongly recommended.
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