Japanese website for foreign companies – built for Japanese buyers

How Japanese buyers judge a foreign brand's website

A Japanese website for a foreign company has one job above all: to show that you are a safe choice. Japanese customers tend to research carefully, and with an unfamiliar overseas brand many look for company details and support information before they even look at prices.

So the site needs to give reassurance as much as it sells the product. These are the things visitors look at:

• Natural Japanese: literal translation or awkward politeness levels cost trust immediately
• Detail: clear specs, sizes, pricing, lead times and warranty terms
• A local point of contact: inquiries in Japanese and a stated reply time
• Local context: photos and usage examples that fit how Japanese customers live and work

Whether you add a Japanese section to your global site or launch a separate site for Japan depends on your product and your setup in the country. Our page on multilingual website development explains how to run several languages on one site.

Trust signals your Japanese site needs

Information that every Japanese company site shows is often missing from foreign brands' Japanese pages, and its absence makes visitors leave. Check these before launch:

• Company profile: legal name, address, representative, year founded and business scope, plus your Japanese entity or distributor if you have one
• Specified Commercial Transactions Act notice (tokusho-ho): for online sales to Japanese consumers, a page with seller name, contact details, prices, shipping, payment methods and return terms
• Privacy policy: how personal data is handled, including any transfer to servers or group companies overseas
• Prices in yen, tax included: consumer prices in Japan are normally shown as the total including consumption tax
• Shipping and returns: delivery time to Japan, who pays duties and import tax, where returns go
• Contact options: a Japanese form, email, phone or LINE – channels Japanese customers already use

The exact disclosure requirements depend on your business model and can change, so check the latest official guidance from the Consumer Affairs Agency and ask a legal advisor where needed.

How a website for the Japanese market is built

Decide what to tell Japanese customers first, and the translation needs far less rework. A typical project runs like this:

• Market and audience: your first target customers in Japan, local competitors and why buyers should choose you
• Structure: the pages Japan needs, what carries over from the global site and what is new
• Japanese copy: rewritten from your English source for Japanese readers, with fixed spellings for product names and terms
• Design and build: your brand look, adjusted for the density and readability of Japanese text
• Pre-launch checks: mobile view, forms, Japanese line breaks and character encoding, tracking tags

It helps to have ready: your brand guide and logo files, the global site URL, product or service materials, Japanese pricing and shipping terms, and the person who will answer Japanese inquiries. Register the domain and analytics accounts in your company's name so your head office can access the data too.

Getting found in Japan: SEO, Google Ads and Maps

After launch, Japanese customers need a way to find you. Google is widely used in Japan, and Yahoo! JAPAN search results are powered by Google's technology, so optimizing for Google covers most of the market.

• Japanese keyword research: the words Japanese buyers type are often different from translated English keywords
• hreflang and URL structure: tell search engines which page serves which language so Japanese results show your Japanese pages
• Google Ads: search ads put you in front of existing demand while your brand is still unknown, and show which terms convert
• Google Business Profile: if you have a store or showroom in Japan, set up the map listing (MEO) and reply to reviews

If you want reports and account access in English, see Google Ads management with English support. Planning to sell online? Read about Shopify stores for Japan.

Common mistakes when entering Japan online

When a Japanese site underperforms, the cause usually goes back to early decisions. Review these points before launch:

• Machine translation published as is, with unnatural phrasing and politeness
• Japanese text poured into the global design, leaving pages cramped and hard to read
• An English-only contact form that Japanese customers hesitate to use
• Prices in dollars, with no clarity on shipping costs or duties
• No one assigned to update the Japanese pages, so they fall behind the global site

The last point is especially common for foreign companies without Japanese-speaking staff. Decide early who will keep the Japanese site current after launch.

How UNANOBO builds your Japanese site: a free demo first

Before you commit to anything, UNANOBO builds a free demo of your Japanese site, based on your brand and your global site's content. You click through the structure and Japanese copy on a computer and a phone, and decide whether to go ahead once you like what you see.

The process is simple: free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, from the first demo to search and ads after launch. Everything runs by message, in Japanese or English, so your head office can talk in English and your team in Japan in Japanese – with the same single contact.