What Your Website Needs Before You Launch in Japan

If you're launching in Japan, your website is often the first thing a Japanese customer checks. Here's what it needs before launch day. The list comes first, and the reasons follow.

The checklist

1. Japanese keyword research, done separately from your English keywords
2. Homepage, service or product pages and contact flow written in Japanese by a native writer
3. A company details page: address, founding date, capital, number of employees, representative
4. A greeting from the representative, if you sell to businesses
5. Proof from Japan: Japanese clients and reviews in Japanese
6. Forms adjusted for Japan: furigana for names, company name, phone number
7. A Japanese font, with line height and line breaks checked on every page
8. A URL structure for the Japanese pages, with hreflang tags
9. A test with a few Japanese users before launch

Start with the pages that win customers

You don't need every page in Japanese on day one. The homepage, your main service or product pages and the contact flow are where a new visitor decides whether to get in touch. Write those in Japanese for Japanese readers. Help docs, specs and legal pages can be translated. We cover the difference in translation vs full localization.

Research Japanese keywords on their own

The phrase people type in Japanese is often not the translation of your English keyword. Research the Japanese terms first, then write the pages around them.

Show that you're a real company

Japanese corporate sites list the address, founding date, capital, number of employees and the name of the representative. Western sites usually bury this or leave it out. In Japan, leaving it out makes people wonder whether the company is real.

A greeting page from the CEO or representative is also standard on corporate sites. Business relationships in Japan begin with introductions, and this page is the introduction.

Give people more to read

Japanese buyers tend to want more detail before they contact you: track record, process, how pricing is decided. A spare page with one call to action can feel incomplete to a Japanese B2B reader. You don't need to make the page busy. You do need the information to be there. I wrote about why in what designing for Japanese users taught us.

Fix the forms and the type

Japanese forms usually ask for furigana with the name, a company name and a phone number. In some industries, people would rather contact you on LINE than by email.

Japanese text also needs its own font, line height and line breaks. A heading that fits on one line in English can wrap badly in Japanese, so the layout gets adjusted for the Japanese text.

Set up the URLs once

For most companies a subfolder such as /ja/ with hreflang tags is enough. A .jp domain can help with trust for some consumer brands. Decide before launch, because moving later costs more.

FAQ

Do I need a full Japanese website before launching in Japan?

No. Start with the homepage, the main service or product pages and the contact flow. Add the rest later.

Can I launch in Japan with a translated version of my English site?

For a quick test of interest, yes. For pages that have to win new customers, a translated page still reads like a foreign company talking, so those pages are better written in Japanese.

What do Japanese visitors expect that Western sites leave out?

Company details, a greeting from the representative, proof from Japanese clients, and more detail on process and pricing.

Planning a Japan launch?

Skydea is a bilingual design team with HQ in Tokyo. Send us your current site and we'll tell you what it needs for Japan. See how we design for the Japanese market.