Standard Global Site Templates Beat Asia-Specific Design
MarketingSherpa reader Britt Hult of EF Education wrote me from her office in Hong Kong in response to the Case Study we published on VistaPrint (see below).
Turns out her company also tests VistaPrint’s idea of using a translated version of their standard template for each country versus very different Web design for each country.
She said, “We manage a Web site that has a standard template for worldwide use and about 40 different localized country versions.
“One of the most time-consuming conversations in the company is the extent to which the look and feel of this template is appropriate for each local market, with country managers always claiming that the site needs to have a more local look and feel.
This is despite the fact that we have standardized our offline brochure design worldwide for years. The only country we have tested this on is Korea, where we implemented a ‘Korean’-looking homepage to appease the country manager and found it had no impact on conversion.”
Britt is going to share the VistaPrint results with her team to see if it helps build internal consensus. In the meantime, she asked that we write more Case Studies on international marketing.
So, if you’re marketing outside the US and have fascinating test results to share, please do let me know! Maybe you’ll appear in a MarketingSherpa feature story.
P.S. Here’s that VistaPrint story mentioned above: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2943
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