Impact of Business Cultural Values on Web Homepage Design That May Hinder International Business

Introduction

The extensive use of the Internet service all over the world has enabled websites to become a preferred means for companies that want to sell their products and services abroad. People of different countries can have access to them. In fact, many websites like Amazon, Ebay, Taobao, Ebid, Overstock, and Baidu are just such examples. However, having a website for business is not enough. Companies must make sure the web designer does a good job in creating a website that meets customers’ needs in terms of their domestic values and conventions. At the same time, companies may also have to realize that their effective website may no longer be so when they use them for international business simply by translating the whole website into the language of the target country without any necessary adaption of their web content, layout, and graphics to fit the needs of their customers’ culture. This is because in international business, there are two iron rules: (a) the seller is expected to adapt to the buyer, and (b) the visitor is expected to observe local customs. Failing to do so will result in unwanted responses from the intended users and cause the business to stumble. Take Walmart for example. It lost its market in Germany because of failure to adapt to the German culture in the following aspects:

Some of the American employee management practices just did not fit in the German context. For instance, each employee before the shift had to participate in a morning exercise, which could be seen as harmless, but the best thing about this practice was that they had to do it chanting “WALMART! WALMART! WALMART!” In America, such practice could be used to boost morale and inspire loyalty; however, in Germany, it was looked upon with annoyance, to put it mildly.

Definitely, this is an undesired situation for Walmart, but it is an inevitable consequence because of Walmart’s overlook of the German customers’ cultural expectation.

Unfortunately, such an unwanted situation also exists in websites designed for international business, which still hinders or may hinder companies from conducting overseas business smoothly. To solve the problem, this article tries to identify the specific issues in this respect through case study and explanation of the causes for these issues so as to help web designers to be aware of the areas in which cultural adaptations must be made in the design process. Normally, these issues were caused by web creators’ unawareness of the necessary cultural adaptation.

Here is an example in the web design situation:

Ebay, a very popular online shopping website, was no match for its counterpart Taobao in China because it failed to accommodate Chinese customers who wanted to be able to see a seller’s online status and communicate with them easily—a function not seamlessly incorporated into eBay’s China system. Despite eBay’s seller rating system based on feedback from past buyers, the Chinese customers still prefer to develop trust through their own interactions with sellers rather than acting on other users’ ratings.

EBay also struggled in Japan because the company did not adjust its strategies and purchasing methods according to local preferences. For example, buyers had to input their credit card information in order to make a purchase, a practice that was not popular in Japan at the time. The company did not offer a cash-on-delivery service, which Finance Elements asserts would have made a significant difference in how it was received. (Stevens)

Consequently, understanding business cultures of different countries will be the priority measure to eliminate such problems. To reach this purpose, a discussion of the differences between the American business culture and the Chinese business culture has to come first as this study focuses on the business websites of both countries’ companies and enterprises. With the business culture differences clear in mind, it would be easier to identify problems with those websites used for international business.

Business Cultural Values

Richard Gesteland holds that countries of the world mainly fall in two business cultures: formal culture versus informal culture and relationship focused versus deal focused. The differences are that a formal culture tends to be organized in steep hierarchies that reflect major differences in status and power. Formal business deals with how serious and formal the behavior of business must be to the owner or employer. In other words, everything concerning business has to be formal: words used, dresses, social courtesy, formality, serious places of meetings, salutations, respect, equivalent social status communication, expensive gifts, ceremonious procedures, feasts, and so forth. An informal culture values more egalitarian organizations with smaller differences in status and power. Hierarchy is absent. Addressing each other is in a casual way. There are few ceremonies, procedures, feasts, or gifts exchanges. In short, everything is not so formal or ceremonious. Countries of the formal business culture include most countries in Europe, Asia, Mediterranean region, Latin America, and the Arab world. The informal business culture includes Australia, Denmark, United States, Canada, Norwei, Sweden, and New Zealand (Gestland, 1999).

The deal-focused culture includes countries like France, Britain, United States, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Spain, Belgium, Australia, and Canada, which are characterized by their being open to do business with strangers; willing to contact potential customers or business partners directly; getting down to business at meetings after a few minutes of general conversation; expecting direct, frank, low-context communication; emphasizing clarity of understanding in communication; and relying on written agreement rather than personal relationship.

In contrast, countries of the relationship-focused culture are characterized by their reluctance to do business with strangers, making initial contact indirectly, using meetings a lot to build up trust before getting down to business, emphasizing maintenance of harmony, disliking conflict and confrontation, preferring to indirect and high-context communication, and relying on close relationships rather than contracts to resolve disagreement. Most Asian countries like China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, and India belong to this culture.

Since this article focuses on American and Chinese websites to see how they were impacted by the respective business cultural values, it is necessary to specially mention these two countries’ business cultural values.

As readers can see from the earlier discussion, China and United States fall within different business culture categories. China’s business culture values relationships, group harmony, long-term orientation, formality and social courtesy, social status, power, hierarchical conception, and the most important concept of face, which, in business, is to be constructed through respect, powerful status, economic strength, technological strengths, awards, compliments, status-commensurate treatment, glorious history, powerful leaders’ concern, luxurious decorations, and high-class reception and entertainment, grand occasions, achievements, sumptuous feasts, decent dress, generosity, good-looking appearance, broad social relationships, popularity, rich resources for all occasions, great wealth, and so forth. It tends to avoid uncertainty in doing business. Acquaintance, or good familiarity with a potential business part, or introduction through a reliable third part is necessary before starting business. Confucianism’s creeds such as allegiance, filiality, etiquette, credibility, appearance and comportment, harmony, and so forth are the roots of most of these business values.

In contrast, the U.S. business culture falls within the opposite category which is deal focused and is an informal culture. To be more specific, American business culture values individualism, quick results, equality and fairness, privacy, hard work, facts and figures, competition, independence, present and future consideration, rule of law, and customer and time emphasis. Business is business; no irrelevant things should be involved. It does not mind risktaking business opportunities and is willing to do business with anyone interested in doing business with it.

These differences are important for managers to remember for not knowing them may cause unnecessary misunderstandings in doing international business. Normally, relationship-focused businesspersons may find deal-focused businesspersons pushy, aggressive, and offensively blunt while deal-focused businesspersons may find relationship-focused counterparts dilatory, vague, and inscrutable. Similarly, high-status businesspersons from a hierarchical formal culture may find the breezy informality of an egalitarian culture offensive as informal people of an egalitarian culture may find the status-awareness of formal people offensive (Gestland, 1999). The aforementioned differences are just cultural factors and should not be mistaken for offensive manners or behaviors. Otherwise, unwanted situation may result.

Now, with these business cultures in mind, a reader may want to know how they may impact the web design for international business or affect international business. In the next section, contrastive analysis will be made of some websites created by Chinese companies and American companies.

Contrastive Analysis of International Business Websites

In the following sections, analyses will be made of some Chinese websites that are not well localized for their intended American readers in contrast with some similar American companies’ websites, which show how American people would design their websites for their business. Through the contrastive study, the reader can see how a business website is influenced by cultural values on the homepage design and will realize the importance of web localization in light of the intended audience’s business cultural values.

Normally, websites consist of these elements: verbal information such as text, labels on buttons, and headings; visual information such as images, graphics, animation, and video clips; and the ways these two types of information are organized on each webpage (layout) and how all the webpages are organized into different layers of the website (web structure). By examining these elements, the author will demonstrate how each of them is used differently by companies of different business cultural values. The focus will be on some important enterprises’ websites of both countries because they are more representative of the countries’ business cultural values. In short, the analysis will be on verbal information, images, and structures. In each case, comparison and contrast will be made between two similar websites of the two countries.

Image Analysis

As a homepage is the most important webpage of a website, the analysis will focus on it and try to identify problems in light of the business cultural values in the aspect of graphical use.

First, look at the homepage screen shown in Figure 1 (ChinaVanke, n.d.). As mentioned earlier, Chinese business culture is characterized by its being formal and emphasis on having face. These characteristics are clearly reflected on this screen, where the readers can see a picture in which a group of VIPs of the ChinaVanka, a No.1 real estate developer of China, were standing in half a circle in celebration of a successful conference with American real estate developers on real estate business. Here, the face is earned through the presentation of many VIPs, successful business, and the grand closing ceremony which is set off with a large pendant red pennant and a table covered with red cloth and decorated with a bouquet of flowers. Red is regarded as auspicious, victorious, and celebratory in the Chinese culture. The formality is also reflected by the serious atmosphere, standard business clothing, contract ritual, and seriously decorated table. The likely impression of a Chinese may have for this company when viewing this picture is this: This is an outstanding company of great achievements because it has American partners and has developed business in the United States, and the business is successful. And this impression or the company’s image is just what the company wants to impress upon the reader, for the impression and formality give the company a glorious face. This face is an indication of trustworthiness, an important guarantee, or a door opener for business with others. Then there is also a human image with a label of Neighbors, which indicates China’s business Culture values personal relationships with other business partners. OPEN IN VIEWER

However, to an American reader, this picture may not be so effective if she or he is trying to find a Chinese partner to do real estate business with because it does not give him or her a clear idea of what business this company is engaged in. So do other pictures that rotate with this one as animation (for convenience, the author copied them and pasted below the screenshot) because these pictures are hardly relevant of real estate business. The first small picture underneath is about two men standing on a snow peak, the second a lady jogging, the third some buildings, and the last a man formally dressed in a China Central Television (CCTV) studio. Although the third one appears to relate to the business, because of the three pictures’ irrelevance of real estate business and their decorative nature for the website, this third image’s informative feature of real estate business is lost or reduced to a decorative feature also. Thus, the reader still finds no affirmative clue for real estate business. In this case, she or he might switch her or his search to some other websites since her or his initial attention to the website brings her or him no expected information and thus is not retained.

Now, a reader may wonder, since the other pictures are irrelevant of real estate business, why they are still used on this website for real estate business. The answer also lies in of the impact of the Chinese business cultural values. It is mentioned in the foregoing section that Chinese business culture values hierarchical concept, which means people take it for granted that power is distributed unequally among social members and that decision makers are to be more autocratic and paternalistic and should have special privileges and status symbols that announce their leadership role (Zahedi & Song, 2001). The first and the last small pictures just reflect this concept. The first small picture shows the company president (right) on a snowy peak, which means he possesses unusual power to conquer, and the last shows the president being accorded the tile of “Economic Person of the Year 2012” (also a very unusual quality) by China Central Television (the most important No.1 governmental TV station). These are the glorious deeds that show the outstanding quality of the president and are the very symbols of his superior leadership. Certainly, they are worth praising and deserve publicity. Naturally, the website has them on the homepage to add more radiance to the face of the company and to show that, with such a brilliant leader, the company definitely has the credibility and trustworthiness to do business with. The picture of the jogging lady symbolizes the call of the president that company members need to do physical exercise to improve their health and work more energetically for the company. It is the number one person’s call; it requires an active response from employees and must occupy an important place in the mass media, thus needing to be advertised on the company’s web, an allegiant practice among hierarchical societies: subordinates following superiors closely.

Consequently, the picture occupies a place on the web. However these pictures, which are so much emphasized on the homepage as to cover 80% of the space, are not effective means to advertise the business in the eyes of a Western developer who holds that business is business; no other factors should be involved. So, these apparently irrelevant images will cause him or her to consider ChinaVanke.com is not a real estate business website as no related imagery clue appears there. Unfortunately, the verbal information does not offer much relevant information either as far as a reader can see in the screenshot. It only gives information about Milan Expo 2013, about their neighbors, and the company’s microblog (which is also a way to emphasizing the establishment of personal relationships by the way). In this case, the developer may consider switching to some other relevant websites for business as the homepage fails to retain her or his attention by providing apparently irrelevant graphical information. As a result, the company loses an opportunity for business. In conclusion, ChinaVanke needs to culturally customize its website and make it more deal focused by providing relevant images, and to do this, it may need to refer to some of American real estate business websites as guidance.

Now, look at the homepage screen shown in Figure 2. This screenshot (Zillow, n.d.) shows how American real estate developers design their business website, which typically mirrors American business cultural values. The homepage is obviously business (deal) focused. No other irrelevant information is found. Rows of houses in the background picture immediately catch the users’ eyes, and they seem to say, “Hey, guys, we are here for you to select among different styles, types, and prices.” This big picture rotates with other four pictures that show houses of different types and styles (for saving space, the author copied and pasted them as small pictures at the bottom). And right in the center, there is a search box for the user to find the house of his or her preferred location and type. Needlessly to say, it is a real estate business website as the user gets such messages simply by viewing the pictures. OPEN IN VIEWER

Everything there on the screen is so self-evident. It is definitely business focused. In addition to this, the user can immediately create an account there and obtain all the necessary information about house purchasing. Therefore, it strikingly reflects the American business-focused values. So, if a Chinese real estate developer like Vanke wants to design a website, the aforementioned website should be the right example to follow if the company wants to ensure the effectiveness of its international business website.

Verbal Information Analysis

Definitely, influence of business cultural values also exists on the verbal information presented on the homepage that aims at international business.

Please look at the screenshot shown in Figure 3. This is the homepage of Datang International Power Generation Cooperation, a very large and important power company of China (Datang International Power Generation Co., Ltd., n.d.) and is obviously designed for English readers like American, British, Canadian, and Australian users. All these countries belong to deal-focused countries, which means websites localized for them need to be business oriented. However, as seen from the screenshot (Figure 3), the verbal information presented there is still so much influenced by the Chinese business cultural values that it is no longer effective to the readers of aforementioned countries. The six tabs atop the main picture are labeled “Home,” “Into Datang Power,” “Operation Develop,” “Social Responsibilit,” “Investor Relations,” and “About Us,” respectively. Viewing these tabs, a user can infer that “Into Datang Power” is probably about the structure of the company and other related information such as history, human resources, and assets. “Operation Develop” (by the way, this is neither a correct English phrase nor a correct English sentence) may offer information about the company’s business development or managerial progress. “Social Responsibilt”(a typo here) concerns how the company fulfils its obligations to the society, the general public or the community, and “Investor Relations” will describe the company’s partnerships with investors. The final tab “About Us” may contain overlapped information found by clicking the first tab. In other words, the user has trouble locating the information about how to do business with company if she or he wants to use the power generated by this company because all the tabs seem to offer information about the company from different perspectives. They praise the company’s glorious history, eulogize the achievements of its operation, extol its extensive partnerships, or compliment its service to the society. In brief, all tabs contain information serving to boost the company’s face so as to win more credibility or trustworthiness for future business. Other verbal information includes stock information on the lower left corner with a picture of a successful contract signing ceremony, and temporary announcements in the middle on financial adviser’s advice, supplementary notice of 2015s first extraordinary general meeting, proxy form for use on the 2015 extraordinary general meeting, and the company’s connected transaction and continuing connected transactions, none of which is of any real importance to a potential customer. Below this part of the information are the regular reports on overseas regulatory announcements and inside information of the 3rd quarter of the year, 2014 interim results, and announcement of 2014 interim result. On the right column, there are the company’s political slogans such as “Pragmatic,” “Dedicated,” “Innovative,” and “Enterprizing.” These types of information may be of interest to the domestic people who invested in this company or might be of significance in delineating a good image (or face) for the company, they are by no means of any good to a customer who wants to know how to do business with the company. But they are the inevitable result of the impact of Chinese business values that prioritize face and business relationships in case a company overlooks the customization of the verbal information to meet the needs of intended customers. OPEN IN VIEWER

Again, to avoid such a phenomenon, the Chinese company needs to study a website created by the target audience before starting its own.

Figure 4 shows the screenshot of Duke Energy’s homepage (Duke Energy, n.d.). The verbal information a user finds on the screen includes tabs for “Residential Business,” “Business, Large Business,” and “Doing Business With Us.” On the top, there are headings for a customer to click for account information through mobiles, for contacting the company, and for investors to obtain investment information. At the bottom, five columns of informational links are provided for getting all kinds of services offered for residents, standard business, large business, and persons who want to do business with the company, such as billing, payment, saving money and energy, special assistance, storm and outage information, online service, electrical rates, understanding bills, and energy efficiency service for each category of the customers. They are actually the content of each vertically aligned button atop that a customer sees when clicking that button. But for immediate effect, the web designer has displayed them at bottom, which also reflects American business value that time is money and that expects immediate result. For other people like suppliers, architects and builders, engineers developers, property managers, realtors, and persons who do home services and assets recovery, a relevant link is provided for each of them to click in the last column. Although the company does have a column to introduce itself from different aspects, this part of the information is much de-emphasized in terms of the space and amount it occupies on the screen. Plus the two small icons also designed for business like signing up for an electronic proxy delivery, almost 90% of the verbal information is about business, services, products, investment, and customer help in contrast with that of Datang Power Generation Co., Ltd., which has almost 85% of information about the company or for its employees’ reference rather than for the customers or potential business persons. In short, the cultural values’ influence on verbal information is obvious. Datang’s website emphasizes face boosting and business relationships while Duke emphasizes business, services, and products for its users. Even images or pictures used on both websites can also serve to rejustify this point. Datang’s use of elegant power generating devices on a beautiful scenery background, a grand ceremony for signing contracts, and imposing glass building to boost the face, but Duke uses different types of bulbs to illustrate its business scope, a river to show ash management, and a letter pad to show signing up for an electronic proxy delivery, thus very much business oriented. OPEN IN VIEWER

Layout or Structural Analysis

Three types of analyses will be done in this section: a syntactical positioning (one dimensional) of a business buttons, page layout positioning of business information (two dimensional), and vertical hierarchical arrangement (three dimensional) of business information. Two homepages were selected for this purpose: the homepage of China National Petroleum Corporation and that of American Hess Corporation. Both are big important companies from the two countries. Through contrastive analysis, the impact of cultural values is demonstrated in the presentation of information in the navigation guide bars, page layouts, and structural levels of the websites. But first, look at the homepage of China National Petroleum Corporation shown in Figure 5. OPEN IN VIEWER

On this screen (China National Petroleum Corporation, n.d.), the focal point of a reader’s initial attention is the big picture showing the imposing high rise of the company, which is more of a face booster for the company rather than a business-forecasting signboard of the company. That is to say, the most important cut-in point to the website is not business oriented, which could be a potential road bump for the company’s international business.

Next, the navigation bar atop is not effectively designed either. On this navigation bar, the most important guide for viewing the web, headings are displayed in buttons like “About CNPC,” “Press,” “Environment & Society,” “Products & Services,” “CNPC World Wide,” and “Human Resources,” which are the syntagms that form the syntactical pattern of the navigation bar. According to Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913), a German psychologist, the beginning and ending positions of a sentence are of great importance, for information in these two positions is likely to be remembered by a reader because of the primacy effect and the recency effect. So a writer will normally put the emphasized messages in these two positions. In other words, a reader can tell what information is prioritized in a sentence by looking at the two positions and the information there. But, when looking at this navigation bar, a reader notices that the least important position, or the middle position in this bar syntax, is occupied by the product and services information while important positions or the beginning and end positions are occupied by CNPC and press information. That is to say, most important business information is not prioritized. Instead, human resources information and CNPC and Press information are emphasized, a typical reflection of Chinese business values because the press button provides news about important conferences, VIPs’ speeches, and overseas business relationships; and the human resources button gives introductions to managerial personnel and outstanding figures of the company, together with some training information. So, the website is still business relationships and personal relationships focused, which definitely falls short of the expectation of deal-focused businesspersons.

Furthermore, browsing the information in different sections of the page layout also leads to the same conclusion. Under the signboard picture, there are two colmnns: the left column and the right column. Needless to say, the left column is more important than the right one since a reader starts reading with this one according to the reading pattern of English readers. Naturally, the writer will put the most important information in this column if she or he wants to prioritize it.

However, as the screenshot shows, CNPC only puts some news in this column, which should not be of priority to potential clients compared with product and service information. Even on the right column, still no production and services information is displayed but only some continued news with pictures about the company’s business progress, R&D progress, and 2013 annual report. So, the company is still saying, “Hey, get to know me before doing business with me,” a typical manifestation of relationship-focused business culture. In short, product and service information simply does not appear on the primary level but on the secondary level of the web structure, if a three-dimensional term is used to describe this presentation. Consequently, CNPC failed to do a good job in its web localization for deal-focused countries, and in this case, its international business may stumble.

Now, in order to avoid the impact of cultural values and design a well-localized international business website, CNPC needs to have a clear idea of how an American petroleum company designs its website like that of Hess. Please look at the screenshot shown in Figure 6. OPEN IN VIEWER

In this screenshot, Hess (Hess Corporation, n.d.) also has a large signboard picture, a navigation guiding bar, and a four-column design as the page layout. Analyzed in the same way as earlier, the website is seen to communicate a typical business- or deal-focused value of American culture. First, the signboard picture forecasts the company’s business operation scope like offshore oil exploration, a much business-oriented and effective cut-in point to the website. Second, the syntax of the navigation bar has operation scope and investor information put in beginning and end positions: important positions that prioritize business information, thus still deal focused. Third, in terms of the page layout use, the first and second columns are used for the company’s business information. They are complementary to each other in providing the company’s new operation information, serving the same purpose. In terms of the website structural use, company’s operations (business scope) do appear at the primary level, unlike CNPC whose products and services (business scope) appear at the secondary level. In short, this website is a deal-focused website and should be the sample for countries of relationship-focused business culture to follow in web localization.

Similarly, countries with a deal-focused orientation like United States need to refer to their counterparts’ websites to localize their websites for international business. Otherwise, ineffective web design may still result. Look at the screenshot (Figure 7) of website localized for Chinese people by American IBM Company (IBM, n.d.). OPEN IN VIEWER

Undoubtedly, IBM is a world famous company. With such a top-class company of the world in mind, a Chinese reader is likely to expect that its website is a magnificent one: pictures of superb buildings with wonderful decorations denoting the economic strength of the company; advanced facilities and equipment showing the company’s strong technological strength; awards of all kinds mirroring the company’s successes and achievements; president’s speech inspiring the employees; international conferences reflecting the company’s important status; grand contract-signing ceremony embodying the vigorous business expansion; variety of products shining the employees’ wisdom; experts and technicians working at the sophisticated instruments marking their contributions; and all types of verbal information telling the glorious history, business developments, international business relationships, investors’ news, services and products, career prospects, and so forth.

However, viewing the screenshot (Figure 7), the reader finds nothing of the kind showing but only a few messages like “Clouding Computing Experience Week of 2015” (biggest one on the blue background), “Lets together build up a globe of wisdom,” “Find nearby online IBM branches,” and “Questionnaire for enterprisal mobile application survey & formulation of special schemes for enterprisal information technology” for the three small icons below. At the bottom part is seen the conventional information like “About IBM,” “Supplies,” “Special topics,” “Contact us,” “Shopping,” and “Links.” There are no special face boosters, both verbal and graphical, to distinguish the company from others. So, the reader would not think the company or the owner of the website possesses much trustworthiness or credibility provided that she or he is not familiar with the company. She or he only thinks the company to be an averaged one. In other words, if this reader is finding a suitable business partner or trying to purchase something, she or he may switch to some other companies as her or his knowledge of the company from this website fails to meet the expectation.

The same can be said of Dell’s Technical Support website (Dell, n.d.). Look at the screenshot shown in Figure 8. OPEN IN VIEWER

Even though Dell is such an important company internationally famous, nothing special on this website like the visual design and verbal information appear to match the status of the company in the mind of a Chinese reader. On the screen, readers see tabs like “Family & Personal Products,” “Commercial Products,” “Technical Support,” and “Account Registry” on the top. The middle part shows images of personal office products, commercial products, and their solutions together with verbal explanations to these products as show in the green-head and blue-head boxes. At the bottom, readers see information about Dell, laws (which are also a typical manifestation of the U.S. business culture value and are rarely found on a Chinese company’s website), communities, and district selection and their subcategory information. No face boosters to display the company’s economic strength, technological strength, brilliant international status, glorious history, and business success. Obviously, the website is straightly deal focused, typical of American business culture. However, such a homepage design is not effective to Chinese people who emphasize the social status, economic and technological strengths of a company and expect to see face boosters in these aspects as evidence so that the company wins its trustworthiness and credibility. If not, business cooperation may not be possible. Therefore, any American company who wants to do business with a Chinese company needs to pay adequate attention to establishing relationships before starting business. The relationships are obtained through constructing the company’s face by means of using face boosters graphically and verbally as aforementioned. In other words, the company needs to overcome the impact of its own cultural values on an international business homepage design and customize or localize the website in light of the cultural values of the target country. Only in this way can the success of its international business be ensured.

Conclusion

The foregoing discussion has pointed out the impact of business cultural values on homepage design that may hinder international business. The impact is reflected mainly in the visuals used, types of verbal information included, and the ways these elements are laid out and structured on the website. The impact becomes negative when two major different business dimensions: deal focused versus relationship focused and formal versus informal conflict. China belongs to the former and the United States belongs to the latter. Companies’ web designers need to be aware of their own business cultural values and those of their target users’ in order to well adapt their international websites for use by their target users. Normally, people from relationship-focused cultures tend to be formal and require acquaintance with or good understanding of the potential business cooperators or partners before formally starting business. Ceremonial procedures, meetings, gifts, banquets, respectful salutations in writing, polite addressing the other side with his or her professional rank tile, ceremonious behavior, and formal clothing are often necessary. In contrast, deal-focused cultures tend to be informal. People from this culture do not emphasize all kinds of ceremonies and etiquettes on general occasions and are willing to do business with whoever willing to deal with them. They tend to call people by the first name and do not want to involve unrelated things in business. They emphasize time efficiency, expect immediate results, and respect customers’ interest. These differences are very apparent in the case of China and the United States.

In web design, China companies like to use images and verbal information to boost their face. Common images include superb buildings and advanced equipment to show economic strength and technological strength, president and VIPs to show relationships and outstanding leadership, conferences and contract signing ceremony to show business prosperity, experts and outstanding employees to show quality human resources, awards to show excellence, and so forth. Verbal information also contributes to the same effect. They use layout and structures to give prominence to these elements that add radiance to their face and win trustworthiness and credibility for business opportunities. Business information is not prioritized.

In contrast, on American business websites, business information is prioritized in terms of its location in the homepage layout or the structural level of the website. Images are closely related to products, services, and operation scope. So is the verbal information. Customer service is also an important part of American companies’ websites which includes dynamic or interactive features like online chat, rating activity, feedback form, tutorials for products, online help, customer forum, payment method, financial aid, how to do business with us, and so forth. They are very user centered, which is not so common in Chinese companies’ websites. All these characteristics reflect a deal-focused orientation and are worth relationship-focused countries’ notice.

In web localization, only adequate attention to these business cultural values can prevent companies from designing an international business website free of cultural influence and ensure effective and successful international business operation.