With talk of going multi-lingual at work, when I saw the latest
alum news from SFU mentioned a study by a prof (Dianne Cyr)
entitled "
Design and E-loyalty Across Cultures in Electronic Commerce"
(10pg PDF) it caught my eye.
The study posits a few hypotheses and find agreement /
disagreement. The survey size may be small, but I still took away a
few general learnings:
- Website visitors are more likely to buy from a local website
than from a foreign one.
- Visitors will "identify" more with a local website and
"understand it in a more homogenous manner" than a foreign website
(ok, I'm paraphrasing a lot on this one)
Both of these are succinctly summarized in the conclusion:
"Different preferences for the local sites do surface,
indicating that savvy [web] designers will ideally incorporate
culturally specific design elements into websites - especially if
they are to be appealing to diverse clients."
Nice, tidy take-away. Sweet.
Dianne Cyr's website: http://www.diannecyr.com/
Dianne Cyr on SFU Business: http://www.sfubusiness.ca/homes/index.php?employeeID=10010