Web Design for Global Market

Web Design is more than just the feel and look of your website. Web designing for global markets encompasses many other essential features like functionality of the website, the audience it caters to and engineering of your sites framework.

It is requisite to know about your key audience and their statistics such as:

• Age demographics
• Kinds of media they like or enjoy
• Type of web browsers used
• Other sites visited

While designing the website for the global market, a website is ought to be versatile and visible on other platforms and all browsers. Also, a website should be multilingual, which is an art in itself. Like if you are creating a website with an objective of just operating a nonprofit blog then you should preferably use English as a mode of communication because 1.5 million people speak English. Adapting your website according to different cultures and languages will require a translation at some point of time. There are three easy steps by which you can create your website as per global standards:

Smart navigation :

• Keep navigation and common links in repetitive locations. A smart navigation is keystone of a well designed website. For an effective website presentation, signposting is a crucial part that should be clearly and smartly done.
• While designing a website as per the global standards, a web designer must keep in mind that not all the languages are read from left to right. Many languages are read from right to left such as Arabic. So, having a menu on the left side of the site can become a trouble for your website. One solution for this can be switching the menu on the other side of the page for RTL languages. And for ease, you can opt for a horizontal menu bar across the top.

Script compatibility :

• There is an industry standard called Unicode that allows computers to display text in most of the world's writing system. Being supported by many other common operating systems and web browsers, it has been adopted by many IT and technology industries such as Apple and Microsoft. As Unicode is compatible with over 90 scripts, it incorporates over a hundred thousand characters.

Presentation

An effective presentation is a must for any website to appeal globally. Presentation is inclusive of the format, color of the website, background etc.

• Color : It is very important for a web designer to get the color scheme of the website right. Your color scheme should also be decided taking into account for which country or culture, the website is targeted. Like for western cultures where red can denote danger, the same color in India is an indication of purity and good luck in China.
• Background : It would be very difficult for a reader to read if the color of the text will be too close to that of the background. Also, avoid using flashy background colors.

Therefore, to avoid redesigning of your website, be clear about the presentation in which you want your website to appear.
So, while designing a website for global market, keep into consideration the above mentioned points. These simple features can surely help you to effectively cater the diverse markets.