Cross-Cultural Web Design for Wider Audiences

This assignment analyzes the importance of cross-cultural considerations in web design. It examines cultural specific factors such as color, imagery, and language that influence website acceptability and traffic. The analysis covers high-context and low-context cultures, highlighting techniques used by organizations to cater to diverse audiences through coding, technology, navigation tools, and content.

Building a cross-cultural web-design for
a wider audience
Report: Activity 6
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Executive Summary
Internet technologies have added to advent of globalisation, as more and more companies are
offering their products online. While designing of a website there are several factors that an
organisation as well as its designers needs to cater to. While it is an accepted belief that internet
technologies have been converging the world making it a smaller place, English users have been
assessed to be gradually decreasing. This creates the need to analyse low context and high
context cross cultural specifics while designing of a website. The scope of this study analyses
cultural specific factors that are known to increase customer acceptability and attraction towards
a particular website increasing its traffic. Cultural specifics as color, coding, technology,
navigation and other factors are analysed in this.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Analysis...........................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Reference Lists................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
With advent of internet and expansion of globalisation, the world is gradually shrinking. The
world becoming a more homogeneous place is gradually going to online technologies with web
having Gumbo of multilingual pages (Wasson, 2009). The scope of the current study is an
analysis of “Building a Cross-cultural Web Design for a Wider Audience” by Christian Arno.
This article examines ways in which cultural parameters are influencing design and technologies
that are adopted for webpages across the world by multinationals for catering to their diversified
customers. The scope of this study analyses cultural specific parameters that can create a broader
target audience compared to others.
Analysis
The article goes on to analysing designs for different cultures, which allows people to process
varied types of information (Davidov, 2011). Organisations are making extensive studies
pertaining to cultural specific factors that parameters that can enhance acceptability of a brand or
company in contrast to others. There are making use of varied techniques for altering their course
of website and also adopting technology to increase customer experience. The relevance of high
context cultures and low context cultures are analysed in this study that website designing
companies along with multinational organisations are examining (Ellison, 2007). Factors as
color, imagery, explanatory information and interactivity can enhance customer engagement on
the website. Other factors as CSS and Unicode can enable more tools for changing images,
languages and content from design of the websites. UTF-8 has been adapted as an useful tool in
web designing for multiple languages. It creates acceptability of a website for an online
audience. Navigation is another factor which allows changing through languages and makes it
easier to switch directions in symmetrical manner (Jun, Retreived on 17th September 2017). An
appropriate content with a suitable tone allows for better attainability to targeted audience.
Websites needs to avoid slangs or use of colloquial languages at the same time attending to
cultural specific factors. Various website make use of automated translation tool as Google
Translate while others provide texts that are not too complicated for users to apprehend. An in-
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depth knowledge regarding culture of a specific country can yield a substantial benefit for target
country. Content checking is another factor that needs to be diagnosed with specific color
schemes that makes it appropriate. Allowing users to navigate in a horizontal manner compared
to vertical will allow creativeness, innovativeness and many other factors.
Conclusion
Organisations while developing their websites and its contents that can increase user readability
of a website. While content is an increasingly important factor that can enhance site experience,
translation of the same can lead to generating better effects. Apart from language, organisations
are attaching immense importance to coding, technology, navigation tools, colors and other
factors that are integral part of a website.
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Reference Lists
Davidov, E. S. (2011). Cross-cultural analysis: Methods and applications. Routledge.
Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of
Computer
‐Mediated Communication, 210-230.
Jun, C. A. (Retreived on 17th September 2017). Building a cross-cultural web design for a wider
audience. http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/06/22/building-a-cross-cultural-web-design-for-a-
wider-audience/.
Wasson, H. (2009). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. by Henry
Jenkins. Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home. by Barbara Klinger.
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