We will take a look at the top three ranked google search engine results for the search term ‘plastic surgery’ in English and Japanese and then do some contrasts and comparisions between US and Japanese landing pages from a marketing, design and cultural context.

Top 3 US and Japanese Landing Pages for Plastic Surgery

Landing Pages in US	Landing Pages in Japan

With some of the horror stories about failed medical procedures out there, the message is trust.  In the US, trust needs to be earned by the consumer.  If you look at the ‘plastic surgery’ landing pages, the persuasive elements answer the basic questions in the consumers mind -Why Dr XYZ?, Why should I go to this clinic? and How safe is the procedure?

As far as the design is concerned, we see simplicity and organization.  Many experts promote simplicity – wide open design, common and conservative colors, no moving flash elements.

The pages are very professional, with the picture of a medical professional front and center on the page almost somewhat sterile.  Social bookmarking is probably more common to keep bringing people back.  The strategy is to drive people deep in the bowels of the web site so a site search engine is common.

These landing pages are for rich and famous to look young and pretty and the prices more than confirm that.

As with the US, most of the Japanese plastic surgery audience are women.  In contrast to the US, the Japanese audience is targeted towards the average every day woman and affordable prices. The audience appeal is about how happy and beautiful you are going to be after the procedure is done. Many average-looking models are used to convey this message so that the consumer can identify with them.

Discounting campaigns are very common to motivate the Japanese consumer with tiered package deals and discount coupons.

The Japanese landing page design is quite bright and efficient.  The use of pastel colors with every space of the page is common.  Many moving flash elements are used and this is considered fun and happy for the Japanese consumer.  The Japanese expect their websites to be interesting.

The Japanese header has more information because the Japanese are an information society.  They want tons and tons of informantion in one place and with the Kanji you can do that. In a few kanji characters, you can convey a very complicated thought – no need for site search engines.

Speaking of Kanji, another thing that complicates the look of the Japanese landing page is the ‘kanji’ characters.  Kanji characters can have up to 23 strokes as opposed to English characters which have at most 4 strokes.  This also gives the appearance to the western eye of busyness.

Thanks to btrax staff members, Reina and Tai on collaborating on the content on this article.

The BizTechDay was held on October 22 and 23 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.  The theme of this event was how to utilize the present web technology for the business success.  The seminars were held to introduce various tactics to boost the sales of small to medium sized businesses. There were several known faces such as Justin Kan of Justin TV and btrax CEO, Brandon Hill participated as a genius of Asian markets and presented the current web trends in Asia.

Btrax  held a booth next to Google, WordPress, and Elance, and we provided free website analysis. To our surprise, we received many inquiries. And all of them had some factors to improve. People are drawn more towards “look and feel” than to ”functionality”. And it seems like they are satisfied by having sites up even if their websites are not fully functioning, as a tool of internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been a buzz word for a while, but that is not the whole story. Since new web marketing methods are created such as using social networking services (SNS), search engines are not the only things to be considered. It is true that people are more likely to click the link to your company if your company name appears on the top of the search results. This will surely increase the hit numbers of your site. But if the site does have any information a user wants, he is likely to navigate away. Thus the bounce back rate increases. In order to make people to take action such as contacting, buying, or sending an inquiry, people need to search through your website. The key is to keep them for longer.

How do we achieve that goal? It is crucial to improve usability of your website. How well people can locate and discover needed information depends on usability. The book When Search Meets Web Usability by Shari Thurow and Nick Musica says good usability makes a website effective, efficient, easy to learn, memorable, error preventive, and satisfactory for a user.  If you have more graphical and textual sense of information on every page, people follow the lead. I highly recommend this book for its strategies and advice for people looking to increase the usability on their sites.

People will stay longer searching your website and once they find what they were looking for, they will move on to next action. How long do visitors stay on your site? Isn’t it time to review the usability of your website?

Photos by Tim Wagner

Webのローカリゼーションとは単にWebコンテンツの語学翻訳ではない。効果的なローカリゼーションとは、ターゲットとなる市場の人々が好む配色やデザイン、さらに彼らにとって意味深な言葉を使うことが必要だ。日本語を他の言語に置き換えただけでは、Webページを訪れてくれた相手を引き止める効力はない。

SoCal のSalt Creek Beach

さらに、もう一つローカリゼーションを複雑にする「人の心象」、つまり、平たく言えば、「人が持つイメージ」という代物がある。例えばよく聞く話しだが、南カリフォルニアこそカリフォルニアだと、（制約の無い場合は）好んで住居を南にする日本人が多いという。彼らの頭には「カリフォルニアは椰子の木、太陽、海、そして、サーフィン」というイメージが出来上がっていて、そのイメージに合わないとどうも居心地が悪いらしい。

それも分からない訳でもない。なぜなら北と南カリフォルニアは全然、別物。Northern California をNoCal 、Southern Californiaを SoCalと略して呼ぶ。（リンク先の半ばあたりをご参照下さい。） The O.C.に代表されるSoCalはご存知のように、（ちょっと古いが）映画「ビッグウエンスデー」のイメージそのまま。きらきら白く輝くような金髪の日焼けしたサーファーたちが照り付ける太陽のもとサーフボード片手に、わくわくしながらビーチに向かって椰子の木の下を走っていく姿を頻繁に見ることができる。

一方、NoCalに椰子の木はそう多くないし、11月くらいからは寒くなり雨も降る。そんな中、金髪のサーファーの代わりに”Frisco”たちがアップルのパソコンを開いてマシンガンのような音を立ててキーボードをたたく。霧のサンフランシスコと「Nerd」のメッカ、シリコンバレーを中心とするNoCalは、前述のSoCalのイメージを強く持つ人にとっては、カリフォルニアとしては認識されにくいようだ。イメージなんて簡単に修正できると思ったら、甘い。「心象」は小さい頃から見たり聞いたりしたことの積み重ねが基になっているから、そう簡単に覆すことはできない。

NoCalのPalo Alto市

そうなると効果的なローカリゼーションには、自分がターゲットとする市場の人々の心象やイメージを把握して、それに沿ったサイトを作成することも含まれてくる。立ち上げたサイトが、もし相手のイメージと大きくかけ離れた場合、サイトの訪問者は誰ものれんを押して中を覘いてはくれない。そうなっては、現在流行りのSEOやSEM以前の問題となってしまう。ああ、ローカリゼーションも楽じゃない。

Photos by Yuka Ogino

“Fine Ceramics Innovation” keynote speech by Dr. Kazuo Inamori (founder of Kyocera)
& “On the Future of Innovation: An Emerging New Role for Japan?” Panel Discussion:
Paul Saffo, Futurist and Technology Forecaster
Masa Ishii, Founder and Managing Director, AZCA, Inc.
Richard Dasher, Director, US-Asia Technology Management Center
Japan Innovation Center event hosted at Stanford University

“資金も信用も実績もない小さな町工場から出発し、頼れるものはなけなしの技術と信じあえる仲間だけ”で、京セラを現在30,000人の従業員をかかえる大企業に育て上げてきた稲盛和夫会長の貴重で感動的なお話。

人の無限の能力を信じ、協調性、忍耐力、そして常に改善・革新に向かって努力する姿勢と、実現させたいという強い“思い（心）”を持つことが経営成功への重要な鍵のひとつとおっしゃる稲盛会長は、“不況だからこそ新製品開発の絶好のチャンス”、と一言。

1973年に現在のような深刻な経済不況に直面したとき、受注が10分の一に減る中、“人 ”を会社の財産として考え、従業員を一人も解雇せず、逆に不利な状況をチャンスにしようと従業員を皆セールスにアサインしたそうです。顧客にどのような新製品が存在したらお客様のビジネスにとってベネフィットがあるかなどを聞いてまわり、そのお客様の声を尊重し柔軟性をもって新製品開発に挑んでゆくことで不況を乗り越えてきたと語られる姿に、京セラがいかに多様な分野において革新的な製品を生み出すことに成功してきたかの歴史をリアル タイムで見ているように感じました。

If you’ve ever dived into doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website, you’ve probably discovered the fuzzy (and frustrating) nature of it – which is not likely to get simpler. The goalposts are always shifting thanks to search engine algorithms tweaked daily to combat SEO tricks – Google’s goal is to nail what users want, not necessarily what you want.

Some SEO people have only worked in certain industry’s where a niche strategy might work wonders. Ask five people you’ll get six answers. The answer should be what is right for you – someone who doesn’t know your industry or audience isn’t in the best position to give advice.

Anyone can do SEO – just like anyone can build a car from scratch. The question is whether it will move traffic. Getting up to speed on all the strategies and then matching your objectives to the right ones is time consuming. Not to mention keeping on top of the changing field (both engines and competitors).

And things change fast – up until a few weeks ago we would have advised to limit Flash usage, unless for a small graphic or game. Best practices aren’t in place yet, but the game has changed for Flash.

Inbound links are worth highlighting because most people don’t give them enough respect. Mostly this is because it takes more effort than other SEO strategies and most SEO professionals have a hard time selling people on the expense, no matter the effectiveness. If you’ve ever had your link mentioned in a national publication or other site Google highly values, you know its impact can beat most common strategies comobined.

The irony is that big names that have the budget for SEO don’t need it as much – the web is already talking about them (comments, posts, links, etc.). That volume of inbound links is powerful. Small companies can’t compete unless they carve out a specific niche for a specific city/region. Mid-size companies that do well online tend to throw someone specifically on SEO or contract outside for ongoing SEO work.