Japan Digital Marketing Insights

– Facts and tips of digital marketing and business in Japan by a leading digital marketing agency, Mahana Corporation

  • The Mystery of Downtime Due to Heavy Access

    The Mystery of Downtime Due to Heavy Access

    Recently, I tried to access a popular ticket reservation site right when bookings opened, only to encounter a screen stating, “We are currently experiencing high traffic and have difficulty connecting. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please wait a while and try again.” Despite repeatedly refreshing the page, clearing the cache, trying different browsers, and waiting

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  • Direct Naming of Products

    Direct Naming of Products

    One of the coffee shops near our office has a morning-only menu called “Quick Serve Coffee” As the name suggests, they pour the coffee into a cup and serve it right away, making it perfect for those busy mornings when you’re short on time. The name is straightforward —it requires no explanation and is easy

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  • The Key to an App is its Ease of Use

    The Key to an App is its Ease of Use

    It’s the same deal with apps and websites. How easy they are to understand and use really impacts their quality. Lately, a lot of people have mentioned being pretty disappointed with the memo app on their phone that they’ve used for years. It used to be a simple way to jot down notes. One would

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  • The Purpose of an EC Site is Not Just Sales

    The Purpose of an EC Site is Not Just Sales

    The main goal of an e-commerce site is obviously to get customers to buy stuff. If it can’t do that, then what’s the point? But there’s actually another purpose: using the site to drive traffic to a physical store by showcasing a wide range of products. It’s pretty rare for a typical store website to

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  • WordPress Takes a Long Time to Load

    WordPress Takes a Long Time to Load

    This is a pretty common experience with WordPress. WordPress is a free tool for building websites, and it’s great for keeping corporate pages or personal blogs up to date. However, one downside is that it can be slow. The quickest fix is to use a paid plugin. There are tons of options out there, so

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  • “Merchandise Never Arrived” E-mail Scam

    “Merchandise Never Arrived” E-mail Scam

    One of our customers, who operates an online store in English, received an email from an overseas user stating, “I paid for my order but haven’t received it. Please investigate.” Upon reading it, the message described completing the purchase process on the online shop and reaching the confirmation screen, but no further communication was received,

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  • Services Unable to Keep up With Rapid Growth

    Services Unable to Keep up With Rapid Growth

    We heard a conversation like this: “I signed a contract with that company that does TV commercials because their sales are enthusiastic, but their support afterward is terrible!” and it really hit home. Over a decade ago, a service from the United States made a huge splash in Japan and grew rapidly. We had a

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  • International and Domestic Image

    International and Domestic Image

    Japanese companies often tout their “international” status by prominently featuring images of blondes and white people, much like the example above. We see this approach used frequently, especially by firms involved in international trade, across their clients’ websites, brochures, and even in pre-Internet era TV commercials. On the other hand, how do Western companies approach

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  • Is it Advantageous to Use .jp?

    Is it Advantageous to Use .jp?

    Sometimes, overseas clients ask us whether it’s beneficial to use a .jp domain when creating a Japanese website. They also inquire if hosting the website on a server in Japan is necessary for a .jp domain. Firstly, using a .jp domain doesn’t provide any advantage or disadvantage in terms of search engine rankings in Japan.

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  • For Some Reason The Number of Input Fields on Forms Keep Increasing

    For Some Reason The Number of Input Fields on Forms Keep Increasing

    It’s widely acknowledged in web development that the fewer input fields a contact form has, the more inquiries it tends to receive. We learned this early on and always emphasize it to my clients. We know people often give up on forms with an excessive number of input fields the moment they encounter them. Sometimes

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  • An Era in Which AI Will Read Explanations Written by AI

    An Era in Which AI Will Read Explanations Written by AI

    Recently, major online auction sites have implemented systems where sellers can upload product photos, enter the product name, choose a category, and AI automatically generates a suitable product description. Some platforms even employ AI to craft attention-grabbing product names. Even in our operations, though not fully automated, we utilize AI to draft advertising copy, create

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  • Excluding Your Rival’s Brand Name

    Excluding Your Rival’s Brand Name

    This gets a bit technical. When you search on Google, the links labeled “sponsored” at the top are paid ads that we pay Google to show. It works like this: you choose a keyword when placing an ad, and your ad appears when someone searches for that keyword. You get charged when someone clicks on

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  • Mail Magazine Common Knowledge and Not So Common Knowledge

    Mail Magazine Common Knowledge and Not So Common Knowledge

    Sending Frequency Doesn’t Affect Unsubscribe Rates You might think that sending an email newsletter every day would annoy recipients and lead them to unsubscribe. However, according to a survey*, the unsubscribe rate remains the same whether you send emails once a month or 30 times. Even the open and click rates don’t change significantly. This

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  • Should You Include The Date?

    Should You Include The Date?

    The same applies to new information, blogs, customer testimonials, and so on. Including dates is obviously better—it’s common sense. However… That’s true only for those who can update content frequently. If updates aren’t feasible, it’s preferable to omit dates altogether. If the latest post in the “latest information” section is from three years ago, it

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  • Deliberately Aiming for a High Ranking in a Niche Field

    Deliberately Aiming for a High Ranking in a Niche Field

    When you sell on a major online shop, you can choose your category. If you simply list your book as “business books,” it will be challenging to achieve a high ranking due to intense competition. However, if you narrow down the category of business books further, the competition decreases significantly, making it easier to achieve

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  • The Necessity of Marketing

    The Necessity of Marketing

    It’s quite common in Japan for many companies to have sales teams but no dedicated marketing teams. Even among large companies with 1,000 employees, it’s not unusual to find 100 sales staff but no marketing department. At most, there might be a “public relations” department responsible for press releases and advertisements. Interestingly, website production often

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  • A Company’s Domain is a Sign of Trust

    A Company’s Domain is a Sign of Trust

    Until recently, there were situations where you needed to provide a landline number instead of a mobile number for certain applications. The rationale was that mobile numbers were considered less trustworthy. The same scrutiny applies to company phone numbers. Even if a company’s website appears reputable and large, having a phone number starting with 090

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  • Native Doesn’t Mean Expert

    Native Doesn’t Mean Expert

    We often have American contacts review the English we’ve translated or written to ensure its accuracy. Anyone involved in international business has probably encountered this situation at least a few times. If English is written by someone who hasn’t lived in the United States, it might include expressions that native speakers wouldn’t naturally use, even

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  • Personal Appeal

    Personal Appeal

    When translating websites for Western companies, we often notice some interesting differences. The other day, while working on the executive introductions for a certain American company, we observed that unlike in Japan, they not only detail their professional roles but also share insights into their personal philosophies and private lives. Similar to Japan, they include

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  • Content is King

    Content is King

    In the US SEO industry, there’s a popular saying: “Content is King.” This phrase emphasizes that for a website’s SEO (Google optimization), nothing is more crucial than the quality of its content. This concept predates Google’s current emphasis on content. Tactics like keyword stuffing or aggressively building external links are seen as superficial in SEO

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  • Mistaken Ways of Creating a Website

    Mistaken Ways of Creating a Website

    Who among these individuals can effectively create a website that attracts customers? 1. Founding CEO 2. Fashion designer 3. IT staff 4. Sales staff The answer is… none of them. To begin with, a founding CEO often tends to be too emotionally invested in the company’s narrative, focusing on its struggles, success stories, and history—topics

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  • Creating Your Own Brand

    Creating Your Own Brand

    A few years ago, Google started prioritizing the actual content itself as a key factor in determining search rankings. They also began considering the authority of the author as a measure of content quality. For instance, when it comes to articles about topics like dieting, content written by professionals such as doctors and nutritionists tends

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  • Why is Digital Marketing Work Enjoyable?

    Why is Digital Marketing Work Enjoyable?

    What we find fulfilling about working in the digital marketing field is the tangible results of our efforts, quantifiable through clear metrics. Take SEO, for example. We implement SEO strategies on our clients’ websites and monitor how the keywords perform in rankings. Initially, a keyword might rank below the 100th position, but seeing it climb

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  • A Surge in Digital Fraud

    A Surge in Digital Fraud

    When a friend was locked out of his Facebook account and forced to start anew, he was immediately bombarded with fraudulent messages. This scenario is not uncommon; often, right after we update our information or make changes online, we become targets for scam emails. These scammers employ a myriad of tactics. One common ruse involves

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