Cross-Cultural Strategies for Web Design

People from different cultures favor web pages characterized by the values of their culture and, therefore, tend to prefer different characteristics of a website according to their cultural values in terms of navigation, security, product information, customer service, shopping and design tools. For a company aiming to globalize its market it is useful to implement country specific cultural interfaces and different web sites for countries with different cultures. This paper, following the conclusions proposed by two models of Hall and Hofstede, and the studies of Marcus and Gould, defines, through an empirical analysis, the guidelines of web design for both the Scandinavian countries and Malaysia.

Authors:

• Armando Calabrese
• Guendalina Capece
• Michele Corbò
• Nathan Levialdi Ghiron
• Matteo M. Marucchi

Keywords:

• Cultural dimensions
• cultural markers
• Hofstede
• web design
• web marketing.

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