Why cultural preferences should be considered when one is designing a website - Essay Example

Why cultural preferences should be considered when one is designing a website? Internet is a big source of business for entrepreneurs all over the world. Internet has facilitated the sales in numerous ways. A product is as accessible to a customer in India as it is to one in America, and same holds true for all other countries of the world. However, it is noteworthy that having the users across the world linked with one another and the service provider or producer does not remove their differences.

This newly introduced medium often known as “Global” and “World Wide” frequently becomes localized because of the constraints of culture and design limitations (Barber and Badre, 2001). No matter what the case, the cultural differences among individuals sustain. Business entrepreneurs that prefer to choose the World Wide Web as a means of marketing and business should realize the fact that preferences and habits of consumers vary from culture to culture. Possible response of different target markets must be carefully assessed prior to the commencement of the designing of a website.

Colloquial and slang language in the websites should be avoided because of the fact that such languages are often only known in particular regions and do not have a broad range of speakers. For instance, in America, every day language is full of such slang words as home run and slam dunk that are often not known by people even from many English speaking countries other than America. Websites often make use of famous celebrities and politicians for advertisements and other purposes which can not be regarded as a very rational practice given impression of such famous personalities on people varies from culture to culture.

The website designers should evaluate assumptions with respect to their likelihood of gaining universal acceptance, particularly in the world of business. Different cultures maintain different opinions and conceptions of values, norms, trends, traditions, etiquette and ethics. It is a useful practice to study the websites owned by successful companies in different countries. It allows a website designer to assess the needs and preferences of audience in a certain region. Some steps that may be taken to design a website while respecting the norms and values of a culture are as follows: The website designer should select specific domain names for each target market.

Although it does remain cost effective to retain one domain name for each of the target countries, yet “having dedicated in-country domains helps Google to rank each site on its country-specific search engines, and will therefore boost your rankings” (Christian, 2010). The website designer should consult the selected web service providers and ensure that the server is maintained in the country targeted. In a multicultural world, it is extremely important to acknowledge the cultural differences while formulating a visual interface design (Tong and Robertson, 2008).

Web site designers should respect cultural preferences while addressing the concerns of audience in specific regions. “Designing such a web site-one that draws customers, builds trust and loyalty, and is invulnerable to competitive marketing actions…” (Singh and Pereira, 2005, p. 2). References: Barber, W, and Badre, AN 2001, Culturability: The merging of culture and usability, viewed, 12 March, 2011, . Christian 2010, A Five Step Guide To Cross-Cultural Web Design, viewed, 12 March, 2011, .

Singh, N, and Pereira, A 2005, The culturally customized Web site: customizing web sites for the global marketplace, UK: Elsevier Butterworth. Tong, MCA, and Robertson, K 2008, Political and Cultural Representation in Malaysian Websites, International Journal of Design, vol. 2, no. 2, viewed, 12 March, 2011, .