Designing for global audiences: how language and design affect engagement, conversion and retention

A business decides to grow into a new market. The website gets a translated homepage, the ads start running, and visitors arrive. Then very little happens. People land, look around and leave. The product hasn't changed and neither has the price. What has changed is the person reading the page.

Language and design decide whether someone in a new market understands you, trusts you and comes back. This article covers what the research says, where websites usually go wrong, and the order we would tackle it in.

People buy in the language they think in

The largest recent study on this comes from CSA Research. In 2020 it surveyed 8,709 consumers in 29 countries. 76% said they prefer to buy products with information in their own language, and 40% said they never buy from websites in other languages.

Speaking good English doesn't change this as much as you might expect. In the same study, 65% preferred content in their own language even when the quality was poor. A European Commission survey of internet users in 23 EU countries found much the same thing: about nine in ten always choose a website in their own language when they're given the choice.

Engagement: translation is only the start

Translating the words is necessary, but it isn't the same as speaking to someone. Localisation covers everything a reader notices without thinking about it:

• Formats. Currency, dates, times, units, phone numbers and addresses written the way they are written locally.
• Tone. How formal to be. Many languages have a polite and a familiar way of saying "you", and choosing the wrong one changes how the whole brand sounds.
• Examples and references. Case studies, place names and comparisons that mean something to the reader.
• Proof. In CSA Research's study, 73% wanted product reviews in their own language, if nothing else. Reviews and testimonials from people in the same market carry more weight than any number of translated claims.

It's also worth knowing that 66% of the consumers CSA surveyed use online machine translation. If you don't translate your site, many visitors will run it through a translation tool themselves, and you won't control how it reads. A translation checked by a native speaker is the minimum for the pages that matter.

Design: layouts that survive another language

Most problems we see on multilingual websites are design problems that only appear after translation.

Text grows. IBM's guidelines, quoted by the W3C, put the average growth from English into European languages at 200 to 300% for words and labels of up to ten characters, and around 130% for passages over 70 characters. Buttons, menus and headings are the first to break, because they were designed around a few short English words. Flexible containers, no text baked into images, and a test with the longest language early on will save a lot of rework.

Some languages read right to left. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu don't just reverse the text. The whole layout mirrors: navigation, the direction of arrows and progress steps, and where the eye starts on the page. Numbers and many brand names still run left to right inside that text. If the Middle East is on your plan, build the site so it can mirror from the start, rather than retrofitting it later.

Typefaces have to cover the script. A brand font that looks perfect in English may not include Arabic, Cyrillic or Devanagari characters at all. Chinese and Japanese text usually needs a different way of adding emphasis, because italics don't work in the same way. Choosing a type family with a matching design for each script keeps the brand looking like one brand.

Colour and imagery carry meaning. White is linked with mourning in parts of East Asia, while red is a lucky colour in China. Photographs need the same care. People should see others like themselves, in settings they recognise, dressed in ways that feel normal where they live.

Culture shapes what feels easy to use

There's good evidence that a design adapted to its audience simply works better. Researchers Katharina Reinecke and Abraham Bernstein tested an interface that adapted itself to each user's cultural background, adjusting things such as how much information appeared on screen, how colourful it was and how navigation worked. Their 41 participants came from 25 countries. With the adapted version they completed tasks 22% faster and made 69% fewer errors, and two thirds preferred it overall.

It was a small study of one application, so it isn't a rule for every website. But it points the same way as our own experience. People in different markets expect different amounts of detail, different levels of directness and different routes to the same answer. Design that respects those expectations feels effortless, and effortless is what keeps people on the page.

Conversion: trust is local

When someone is ready to enquire or buy, small signals decide whether they go ahead. In a new market, these are the ones we check first:

• Prices in their currency, with taxes and delivery shown the way local shoppers expect.
• The payment methods people actually use there. Cards dominate in some countries; in others, bank transfers or local payment apps do.
• Forms that fit local names and addresses. Not everyone has a first name and a surname in that order, and not every address has a postcode.
• A real way to talk to you. A local phone number, opening hours in their time zone, and calls arranged at times that suit them.
• Legal and delivery information written for their country, not copied from your home market.

Retention: the relationship continues in their language

Winning the first sale is only half the job. CSA Research found that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from the same brand again if customer care is in their language. That means the parts of the journey after the website matter just as much: confirmation emails, onboarding, invoices, help pages, support chats and follow-up messages.

A common pattern is a beautifully translated website followed by an English-only welcome email. The customer notices the switch, and some of the trust you built drops away.

Being found in each market

Search engines need to understand your languages too. Google recommends a separate address for each language version of a page, linked with hreflang tags so the right version appears in the right search results. It also advises against automatically redirecting people based on where they seem to be. Let them choose their language and remember it. And translate the whole page, not just the menu around it.

Going global online isn't about having every page in every language on day one. It's about making sure that, for the markets you choose, the people you want to reach feel the website was made for them.