As the economy has globalised, more domestic companies are in the import and export trade, and an export website has become the card they hand to overseas buyers — the thing that carries both the marketing and the brand. But companies building one often overlook details that quietly cost them enquiries.
1. A clean, restrained design
Compared with domestic sites, an export site should be plainer. Overseas visitors are there for the text, not for decorative layout. Simple, clearly structured and practical: the design should follow the reading habits of the audience rather than the taste of the local market.
2. UTF-8 encoding
An export site serves an international audience, so it should be built on UTF-8 rather than the domestic GB2312. That is what prevents the garbled characters a visitor sees when the encoding does not match.
3. Typeface and size
Most domestic sites default to a Chinese serif. For an export site, set a Latin typeface and keep the body around 10 to 11 points, because the reading habit overseas is to take in as many words as possible at a glance.
4. Opening links in the same window
This is the one most often got backwards. Domestic users are used to links opening in a new tab; overseas users expect the link to open in the current window, and a site that keeps spawning tabs feels broken. Follow the audience, not the local habit.
5. Real translation
Accuracy of language matters more on an export site than on any other kind. A lot of companies run their Chinese copy through a translation tool and publish the result. It reads as unprofessional, it is sometimes incomprehensible, and it loses the visitor — who assumes, reasonably, that a company which will not invest in its own words will not invest in the order either. Have the site translated by someone who can write English.
6. Browser compatibility
Domestic teams test in the browsers they use, which usually means IE. Overseas visitors are far more likely to be on Firefox and Chrome. Export sites break in Firefox with some regularity — layout shifting, elements misaligned, information not loading — and the visitor leaves without telling you. Test against the browsers your actual audience uses before launch, not after.
7. Where the server sits
Server location decides access speed more than any other single factor. Put the host where your users are: that is what keeps the site responsive for them, and what stops a slow or unreachable site from costing you the customers you already have.
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