Articles
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Apr 29 2022
Japanese Brand Design - 3 CRO Tips for Foreign Brands
Optimising your website for conversions in Japan isn’t always easy. If you’re focused on turning your hard-earned traffic into sales or qualified leads, there’s no doubt that Japanese cultural differences and specific market considerations make it necessary for you to adapt the way you do things here. In this post, we explore our top 3 CRO tips for foreign brands hoping to incorporate Japanese brand design and improve the performance of their websites in Japan. TABLE OF CONTENTS Make Design Choices Based On Your Audience Make Considerations for Age Balance Informational with Aspirational Make Design Choices Based On Your Audience The biggest mistake foreign brands make when designing or adapting their websites for Japan is not understanding how local preferences and motivations should inform decisions when it comes to branding and visuals. If you’re simply translating your text and not going through a full localization process (which includes your visu
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Apr 28 2022
Yahoo! Ads Japan - Top 3 FAQs
Search ads are an important way to reach potential customers and make sales in Japan. For many foreign brands first launching their products here, it’s a vital first step to generating revenue that will sustain future activities. However, Yahoo! Ads is also an important platform to consider, given its significant user numbers, naturally lower competition (compared to Google), and, importantly, the fact that many older Japanese individuals with higher disposable income choose Yahoo! as their search engine of choice. We explore some top questions and answers relating to the use of Yahoo! as a viable platform for launching search ads in Japan as a Western brand. TABLE OF CONTENTS Should I Approach Yahoo Ads Differently? Which Keywords Should I Target? Is Success On Yahoo Ads Difficult to Achieve? Should I Approach Yahoo Ads Differently? Google and Yahoo! use a similar algorithm to review and summarize web content into ranked search results, making a logical c
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Apr 28 2022
How to Sell on Amazon Japan in 2022
Getting started on Amazon Japan is admittedly more straightforward than using some of the country's other popular ecommerce platforms like Rakuten or Yahoo! Shopping. Customer service and fulfilment support allow merchants to accelerate their growth without worrying about some of the hard stuff. However, even with the platforms accommodating services for foreign brands who want to sell here, there’s much you still need to know and prepare for before you can start driving high volumes of sales through Amazon. This is our full guide on how to sell on Amazon Japan in 2022, including market insights, go-to-market guidance and practical steps on how to set up and start selling. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Japanese Ecommerce Landscape How to Sell On Amazon Japan - First Steps Making Preparations Setting Up Your Account Building Product Listings Ship And Fulfil Managing the Day-to-Day How to Build Powerful Product Pages On Amazon Japan Marketing Your Products
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Mar 02 2022
Branding in Japan – A Guide to Adapting Western Brands for Japanese Audiences in 2022
We’ve seen a shift in the attitudes and behaviour of Japanese consumers over recent years, prompting many previously held assumptions to be reconsidered. For instance, the willingness to pay high prices for luxury products from recognisable Western brands (while still significant) is not as strong as some companies might hope, with consumers now presenting a higher level of price consciousness. Whether it’s the influence of globalisation, the economy, digitisation, maturing consumer tastes, climate change or Covid-19, Japan’s middle class has become increasingly complex and segmented, with individual groups driven by a number of different motivators. For new entrants to the market, success here relies on an up-to-date and in-depth understanding of who your audience is so you can make a call on how to adjust your branding in Japan, whether this requires an overhaul or simply a slight adjustment of what you’re doing in other markets. Table of Contents What Role Doe
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Mar 02 2022
How to Sell on Rakuten in Japan - 3 Insider Tips
It wouldn’t be a mistake to consider using Rakuten to sell your products in Japan, given its popularity in the country and its share of the total ecommerce market. However, it would be a mistake to do this without knowing what you’re getting into. For anyone wondering how to sell on Rakuten Japan (a platform that is different to Amazon in many fundamental ways), we’ve pulled together our top 3 most important insider tips which should also serve as a glimpse into the platforms’ major strengths and weaknesses. Table of Contents Don’t Do It Alone Invest Only When It’s the Time Is Right Treat Rakuten Differently to Amazon How to Sell On Rakuten Japan — Parting Advice Want to See What the Japanese Ecommerce Landscape Looks Like? Don’t Do It Alone Under the ‘requirements’ section of Rakuten’s seller information page, it states merchants must be highly proficient in Japanese in order to handle the following tasks: Customer support P
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Mar 02 2022
Top 3 Japanese PPC Best Practices
When trying to build traction in the Japanese market, PPC is probably the most effective tool you have at your disposal — especially if you’re new here. Whether you’re trying to drive immediate sales in a competitive product segment through Google or build brand credibility among niche demographics, as part of your localized social media sales funnel, getting your approach to Japanese PPC marketing is something all brands must get right. In this post, we outline three of our most important tips for PPC success! Table of Contents Work with Up-to-Date Japanese Customer Personas Build Fully Conversion-Optimized Landing Pages for Individual Audiences Warm-Up Cold Audiences with Video Content Final Tips for Japanese PPC Work with Up-to-Date Japanese Customer Personas It was once assumed (and hoped) by Western brands that the middle class was largely homogeneous, responding well to the advertising that promoted quality and luxury. However, while there i
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Feb 01 2022
How to Sell On Amazon Japan Successfully - 3 Golden Rules
Amazon offers a similar kind of experience to sellers, no matter which market you’re selling in. Its familiar interface, seller support network, advertising tools and dominant market share makes it a logical choice for merchants choosing a platform to sell on when they enter a new market like Japan. However, this doesn’t mean brands don’t need to localize their strategies or pay special attention to things like sales velocity — an extra vital part of gaining traction here. In this post, we outline our three golden rules for how to sell on Amazon Japan. Table of Contents Prioritize Sales Velocity Get Legitimate Reviews Leverage Amazon’s Advertising Options 1. Prioritize Sales Velocity Amazon defines sales velocity as the number of transactions made (and revenue generated) during any given month by an individual seller. The more sales you make, the higher the Amazon algorithm will rank you, meaning you’ll appear higher in search results for terms that
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Feb 01 2022
The Virtual Shopping Mall Experience - What Makes Ecommerce Websites in Japan So Different?
The popularity of the virtual shopping mall experience among ecommerce websites in Japan is something that often surprises foreign business owners working on their strategy for the local market. Although Amazon’s approach to ecommerce is incredibly popular here too, other platforms such as Rakuten (the nation’s second largest ecommerce platform after Amazon) relies on a slightly different model that presents new opportunities and challenges to sellers. Table of Contents What Is the Virtual Shopping Mall Experience? Why Is This Model So Popular? Benefits and Drawbacks of the Virtual Shopping Mall for Sellers What Kind of Ecommerce Website Should I Sell On in Japan? What Is the Virtual Shopping Mall Experience? Many ecommerce marketplaces, like Amazon Japan, allow customers to browse hundreds (if not thousands) of related products when they enter a search term such as ‘headphones’, or a brand name like ‘Bose’. This process will populate all relevan
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Jan 28 2022
Japan’s Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2022
An ecommerce platform can be judged on many different factors. As well as its general functionality and ease of use, aspects such as available fulfillment options, marketing features, upselling initiatives, audience demographics, and brand suitability also contribute significantly to a platform’s overall profile. For merchants with a mind to enter or expand within the Japanese market, we evaluate the best ecommerce platforms in Japan for doing so — making this process of evaluation slightly easier as you navigate the country’s growing list of ecommerce websites. To help inform your decision on which marketplace to choose, we also offer one of our most comprehensive overviews of the ecommerce sector, covering many of the things we believe should frame any localized ecommerce strategy. Japan’s Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2022 TABEL OF Contents Overview of the Japanese Ecommerce Market in 2022 Forecasted Ecommerce Growth What Types of Ecommerce Platforms Do Japa
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Jan 24 2022
How is the Japanese Luxury Fashion Market Being Impacted by Digital Marketing Trends
Being the number three market in the world for luxury goods, Japan offers plentiful opportunities for your luxury brand to capture market share. This post was assembled to support the needs of luxury fashion brands in the Japan market, whether they are new to the market and seek to build awareness, or have already established a reputation with Japanese consumers and want to improve conversion. In the Japanese luxury fashion market, simply localizing a global marketing plan and learning about customer behavior is not enough. Your brand must also become familiar with Japan’s digital and social media landscape. This point is underscored by the rapid growth of online sales, especially in the Japanese luxury goods market, which is expected to reach one third of the total overall consumer spending over the next few years. The following market overview and digital marketing tactics can both aid in building an approach to marketing in Japan and improve your existing activities. Ta
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