For businesses that want to export globally and attract international clients, owning a website that is internationally and culturally friendly is extremely important. These websites are powerful because they allow you to push through the language barrier and reach a much larger audience – no matter what country your business is situated in.

However, just because the internet gives a business the power to reach many people all over the world in many different cultures, doesn’t mean those people are always able to understand or engage in the message that your website presents to them.

When it comes to Australian businesses designing and developing websites, it’s easy for them to fall in to the trap of designing with a westernised gaze – that is designing your website with the aesthetics and qualities that people in westernised countries have become accustomed to in regards to text size, text direction, colour, style and spacing.

Below are some tips organisations can use to make their website more culturally and globally friendly:

Create individual international web pages
At the top of your website make it simple for an international visitor to translate your page into their language.

Some thought should go into this process. If you want these pages to be effective, the text should not be the only thing to change. The whole design of the page should change to fit in with the cultural wants and needs of your international visitor.

Do some research into how each culture like their websites designed and follow that structure. For example; in Australia websites are spacious, quite simple with colours and text and set out their advertisements in a subtle way.

However, in Asia – websites are extremely colourful with lots of flashy lights, advertisements that are placed right in the middle of the page and no space is left untouched. To an Asian audience Australian websites are boring.

Internationally friendly ecommerce
If you have a shopping cart on your website and offer international shipping it is always good practice to have the option of currency conversion. Not only does it make it easier on the customer but it also gives you a great way to measure exactly where the majority of your client purchases are coming from.

Also, it just doesn’t make sense to include international shipping and not include a currency converter.

Check your website’s load speed
Ensuring your website loads quickly and efficiently is extremely important especially when you are trying to reach a global audience.

If a website takes more than a few seconds to load or start showing content, most visitors will give up and go somewhere else – which is definitely not ideal! When targeting an international audience you must keep in mind effective internet connectivity options and also take a look at how you are showcasing your content.

A good system to try to optimise on internet speed is to try a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is basically a collection of servers that are located in different areas globally – these servers allow web content to be loaded in a much more efficient way as the data will be transferred through the user’s closest server.

CDN’s can be expensive, however, you can boycott the costs slightly by opting to use them only for certain types of data such as videos and images.

Do your research before you choose a default colour
Symbolism through colour can make choosing a default colour for a culturally friendly webpage quite challenging.

Many colours have different connotations depending on the culture and each meaning must be taken into consideration. Think about who exactly your target audience is going to be and then do some research into the colours you have chosen for your local page.

And it’s not just background colours, but colours used in photographs or in text that may give off a meaning that isn’t suitable for your brand.

For example; some Asian cultures consider white to be the colour of death and red to be the colour of wealth and prosperity where as in Australia white is considered to represent peace and red symbolises anger.

Check for legal complications
Exporting and selling goods internationally can sometimes attract government and legal requirements depending on what you are selling. In the case of many rural and agricultural goods and services – government export regulations must be complied with in order to be sent overseas.

If this does apply to you be sure to address these restrictions or regulations on your website – and be sure to have them set up in different languages. If you use ecommerce on your website you may need to program your software to restrict sales on any product that may require certain licensing or regulations.

Be sure to always be clear with your clients – especially when it comes to legal and government notices.