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Doing business with Japan

How to build a website for Japanese customers

By the Hanabuddies team · · 2 min read

A website that works well at home often underperforms in Japan. Japanese customers look for different signals of trust and expect more detail. These are the changes that make the biggest difference.

Show who you are

Japanese visitors look for proof that a business is real and established. A company information page (会社概要) with your registered name, address, representative, founding date and contact details is expected. A clear privacy policy (個人情報保護方針) helps too.

Give more detail, not less

Minimal, image-led pages can feel vague to Japanese customers. They tend to want specifics before they get in touch: what exactly is included, how the process works, prices, FAQs and examples. Organise the detail well, but don’t leave it out.

Get the formats right

  • Dates: 2026年10月4日 or 2026/10/04.
  • Names: family name first, with a reading in katakana for forms.
  • Addresses: postcode (〒) first, then prefecture, city and street, from largest to smallest.
  • Prices: prices shown to consumers in Japan must include consumption tax.

Design for phones and Japanese text

Many visitors will arrive on a smartphone, so design for small screens first. Japanese fonts contain thousands of characters and can be slow to load, so use system fonts or a well-optimised web font. Check that line breaks don’t split words awkwardly and that headings still fit after translation.

Offer the contact methods people use

Alongside email and a contact form, consider LINE, the messaging app most people in Japan use every day. For online shops, offer the payment methods customers expect, which can include convenience-store payment as well as cards.

Write it in Japanese, not translated English

Direct translation sounds stiff and can get the politeness level wrong. Copy written or localised by a native speaker, in a polite and clear tone, builds trust much faster.

Help people find you

Google is the main search engine in Japan, and Yahoo! JAPAN search results are powered by Google, so the same SEO basics apply. Research the Japanese words your customers actually search for rather than translating your English keywords.