Japanese SEO,

Developing a fully automated Japanese/English bilingual ecommerce site is very complicated and costly.  For small or medium size businesses, there is a practical alternative.  It is to leave the shopping cart just in English but provide A) a comprehensive shopping guide section customized for the Japanese shoppers written in Japanese, and B) Japanese customer service to answer email inquiries in Japanese.

Here are two examples.

• http://www.hannaandersson.com
• http://www.sigzane.com

Let’s look at Hanna Andersson’s.  It’s one of the best I have seen.
Their Japanese shopping guide includes:

• About Hanna Andersson
• About Hanna’s fabric
• Privacy policy / security
• Return policy
• Back order
• Shipping and custom
• Clothing size charts
• Shoes size charts
• Order status (input order number)
• Online shopping guide
• Error messages
• Payment method
• Q&A
• Free catalog

Both of the sites listed above have a Japanese speaking customer service person who can answer email inquiries in Japanese.  This is a huge plus.  Imagine that you are trying to shop at a site written in Japanese.  If you can write email to them in English, wouldn’t that make you feel much more comfortable to putting your credit number down?  It is not necessary to hire a part-time person for this if you are just testing out the Japan market.  You can outsource it to an email translation service.  We can arrange this for you, so please inquire about it.

Shopping guide and customer service in Japanese (or in another language) are good things to have even if your site is equipped with bilingual shopping cart.  If you can afford it, that would be ideal.  The point here is that with a good shopping guide and customer service in Japanese, a majority of your prospective Japanese customers will be fine in shopping at your site, and you can save by not developing and running a bilingual shopping cart.

Someone asked me which CMS is best to build a basic Japanese / English bilingual ecommerce site that is relatively small in size of up to 50 products or so.  This person was inclined to use Joomla! .  WordPres, Magento, Drupal are among the possible options.

I spent hours researching on the net, only to find that there seems to be no definite answer at this point.  Joomla! does seems to be favored, if you have to pick one.  What surprised me is that I could not find ANY website developer who has experience in building J/E bilingual ecommerce site with Joomla!  I inquired some website developers, but none of them have.  There are some who develop such sites using their own custom made CMS, but I prefer open source CMS because with custom (not open source) CMS, you are at the mercy of the developer in upgrades, cost and support.

Our web design parter, Paul at Tokyo Web Designs says, “Ecommerce is a tremendously complex area, and rather than re-invent the wheel, my goal is to find out which open source platform works best and configure/customize that to match my project requirements.  So far I haven’t found one that I am really satisfied with.”

Maybe it is too early and we don’t have a winner yet for J/E bilingual ecommerce CMS.  I will keep my eyes on this.

A client asked me how they can increase traffic to their website, besides doing SEO (on-site SEO and basic link-building campaign) and running PPC campaigns.  How to increase traffic to your website - that is an ultimate question in the center of internet marketing.  What else can you do?  There is a lot of good articles on the net, and after reading many of them, here are the 5 ideas that I picked for my client for their Japanese website

1.  YouTube
I know, everyone is doing it but neither my client or I have.
Here is a good article.
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-to-use-youtube-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website-874385.html

2.  Hold a contest on the site
A classic link bait.  It creates a reason for potential customers - who may not purchase immediately - to visit your site.  Entering must to be easy and fun.  Prizes need to be attractive but not necessarily expensive.  Promotional goods such as logo T-shirt are good ones.  Local finds are possibilities.  Cross-promotion with a partner might work.

3.  Make lists
Make lists around your keywords.  For example, top 10 tips in buying (your product).  Top 5, 10, or any number will do.  When compiled, a list becomes a good resource on the subject.  Added on your blog, lists tend to rank well with search engines.

4.  Participate in forums
Most popular forum sites in Japan include: Yahoo Chiebukuro, Hatena and Oshiete Goo.  There may be other forum sites specific to your subject.  Be helpful and place no blatant advertisement.

5.  Comment on other blogs
To blog search, use Yahoo! Japan (Technorati Japan dissolved).

The last two are best handled by in-house staff.  It’s a labor intensive but sure way to add links on relevant content to your website.

If you want to sell your products or service to the people in Japan, and want them to fill in their names and addresss in your form, you might want to know the following.

Address is written from largest units to smallest units of areas, with the addressee’s name last of all. For example:
〒100-8799
東京都千代田区丸の内2丁目7番2号
田中　一夫

〒100-8799
Tokyo-to Chiyoda-ku Marunouchi 2-7-2
Tanaka Kazuo

Most people in Japan know to write it in reverse order when writing in English alphabet.

Kazuo Tanaka
2-7-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8799

Some addresses are quite long:

• Azachuodai 21-14, Oaza-ottozawa, Okuma-machi, Hutaba-gun, Fukushima 979-1301
• Oaza-hamanomiya 361-1, Nachikatsuura-cho, Higashimuro-gun, Wakayama 649-5314
• Osaka-cho 384, Karasuma-dori-Gojo-sagaru, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 600-8418

That being said, I think it is probably the best to keep your form simple and if possible, provide a sample of how to fill in.  You should ask to use English alphabet if no sample is provided.  Include:

• (full) name 氏名
• address (apartment /building name, room number)　住所（マンション・アパート名・部屋番号）
• address (street name and number)　住所（町名・番地）
• address (city, ward)　住所（市町村郡）
• prefecture　都道府県
• postal code　郵便番号