Do colours really have an impact on conversions when it comes to web design?

Is there a 'British' web colour palette, or a Chinese one? Have web users from around the world adjusted to a Western led approach to colour and is it standardised? Within this blog, these and other questions will be assessed by GlobalMaxer’s cultural conversion expert Joe Doveton. [caption id="attachment_29592" align="aligncenter" width="531"] Source: Visibone[/caption] From feeling blue to shaking off a black mood, phrases can express a linguistic synaesthesia of emotions, commonly shorthand for an experience articulated through colour. By no means is this limited to English either, with most languages having their own such as the German’s 'blauer Montag' (a day off work), the French 'une peur bleue' (a morbid fear) and the Swedish 'sväva på rosa moln' (to be in love). So, how important are the cues of colour in web…

Culture and conversion Part 1 : 5 tips for designing for the culture of site visitors from different countries

Ever wondered why your baskets are bulging in Belgium but spring a leak in Spain? Why your checkouts are chock-a-block in Chile, but empty in Egypt?

Whether you are B2C or B2B business, cultural preferences play a big part in how people respond to your web design. This blog looks at how culture affects your online performance and what you can do to effectively manage an online presence globally.

'Just as nine-tenths of the iceberg is out of sight and below the water line, so is nine-tenths of culture out of conscious awareness. The out of awareness part of culture has been termed deep-culture.' – Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture

Managing Global web design assets

Managing global web design assets is not an easy task. No matter…

A new report from eBay mapping the flow of international sales

Value to retailers: [rating=4]

Recommended link: eBay cross-border Ecommerce sales report

eBay commissioned Nielsen to conduct a research study on the importance of cross-border / International Ecommerce sales in six key markets around the world – the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, China and Brazil. The output is this interesting infographic which shows the main flows of traffic (click to enlarge).

The report makes the analogy of cross-border Ecommerce with the Spice routes of the past between Asia and Europe. The report certainly provides support for investing in approaches to localise Ecommerce merchandising to market needs. Just within these six markets:

Cross-border online shopping will be worth $105 billion this year with 94 million consumers regularly buying from overseas websites.By 2018, this will increase nearly 200%…

Examples of the cultural customisation needed for international retail sales

Our friends at Practicology recently held an event looking at approaches to customising Ecommerce for local markets. We thought it would be useful to share the presentations for marketers working on tailoring their proposition to increase international sales. We highlighting the retail e-commerce case studies from Clarks and Debenhams, along with multi-channel research from Amplience.

In their presentation, they shared '6 strategies in play' for e-commerce:

1. Do nothing: Don't allow anyone to buy from overseas.2. Standardisation: Switch on the buy button only.3. Adaptation:  Localise some aspects.4. Localisation: Fully localise the customer proposition online.5. Multi-channel market entry: Lead with online, open stores.6. Lead with stores; then localise online.

Clarks case study : Going Global with e-commerce

Head of E-commerce for Europe at Clarks, Dave Elston shared his experience on Clark's global e-commerce strategy and…

Reaching global customers through your Wordpress blog or company site

Wordpress is a popular blogging and content management tool now used by many businesses for their blog or main site. It's now used by over 60 million websites worldwide according to Forbes, including up to 15% of Alexa’s 'Top 1 million sites'. Builtwith.com, a competitor analysis and business intelligence tool providing technology adoption and usage analytics for the internet, has reported that Wordpress usage has continued to increase in the past year.

Further analysis of the top 100,000 Wordpress sites by builtwith.com shows that while the platform is being used for almost every type of internet activity, Wordpress is an extremely popular tool for business – accounting for around 17% of distribution.

…

Global Advertising Trends by sector

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Nielsen Adspend by Sector Quarterly survey Nielsen have published their quarterly survey results this month, to share their global findings on 'ad spend' by sector. You can download the full report at their site. We thought we'd alert you to these, since they help show the significant changes in media spend by sector. Naturally regional changes in ad spend occur based on the economic prosperity of different regions. There was a 14% increase in Middle East and Africa. yet it's decreased in Europe as we would expect. This chart showing change in media spend by region with year on year trends, is just one of their findings.

…

How today's Global Digital Marketing Leaders can get closer to their customers

There’s really no better way for global digital marketing leaders to learn about marketing to a new international market, or emerging market than by living in one, or two, or by visiting. I noticed that Marc Benioff of Salesforce has recently kicked of a Company Customer Tour and last year visited hundreds of customers worldwide Although The Internet, makes doing business in an international context far easier than ever before there is still a need for close customer understanding from personal contact. Having recently moved from Egypt, Cairo, to Qatar, Doha, previously having lived in the UK and working virtually with counties in Latin America, Russia, Central Eastern Europe and Asia, as part of a multinational marketing team, I have a few year’s experience of…

Applying the Ebocube B2B Digital Marketing model for international market development

Emerging markets are countries experiencing relatively recent industrial, political and technological change resulting in rapid economic growth. Emerging markets cover more than the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), however; these countries are amongst the buoyant emerging giants. Large populations generally characterise these markets, as is obvious with China and India. They tend to be dominated by young populations and rising middle classes. As business revenues plateau in saturated, developed markets, expansion into emerging markets is a popular means for reaching new growth targets. Although these countries are affected by the global recession, many remain in robust growth positions.  The endeavour of international business involves uncertainty and risk, however; this can be mitigated by the internet .

Bringing the Next Billion People Online

Developed countries have long defined the Internet, however, at least 500 million new users of the Internet are expected to come from emerging markets from…

7 key strategy considerations for expanding into new markets using the Internet

One of the many benefits the Internet has unlocked is the ability to expand into new markets.  The lack of palpable borders means customers around the world shop across countries and continents without so much as noticing where their latest purchase will be shipped from. E-commerce giants realised several years ago that accelerating growth meant increasing the focus on their international operations. They started offering tailored experiences to customers around the world, carefully studying the so-called ‘BRIC’ markets, and developing local operations where it made sense.  Today, Amazon has dedicated sites in 9 countries, including Japan, and smaller players often consider international operations from the onset. But what is a blessing can become a curse and international expansion needs to be planned and thought through carefully.  Offering products or services…

Is in-house management or outsourcing the best model?

This is the third and final post from Karen Nielsen in her series on localising marketing for international marketing. In her first post she reviewed the opportunity from international marketing and in the next she recommended how to plan and deliver a successful location strategy. This post gives guidance on the pros and cons on the different models available to manage your strategy, a reminder on what can go wrong and how to measure your localisation strategy. Generally speaking, I find that companies give localisation very little thought until such time as growth begins to stagnate and they are forced to look at alternative revenue streams. So what happens when you have exhausted the potential in your domestic market? Since creating innovative products and services can be an expensive, high-risk strategy; it is not surprising that the majority of companies…