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Would you be interested in selling your items in Japan?

Japan has the third-largest ecommerce market in the world, excellent logistics infrastructure, and a domestic population with significant purchasing power. But this doesn’t necessarily make selling online in Japan easy.

Some of the real challenges merchants face when operating here are only overcome with diligent research and planning, realistic expectations, and a willingness to adapt your process to the unique requirements of the Japanese market.

In this post, we bring you five of the most important rules you must follow when trying to bring your products to market through one of the country’s popular ecommerce platforms.

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A Glance at the Landscape

We’ve gone into great detail about the Japanese commerce landscape, including its growth trajectory in years to come and the main opportunities open to foreign merchants. Before you go any further, we recommend taking a look at our complete overview: Getting into Ecommerce in Japan? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.

But if you’d rather push ahead, here are some of the basics:

Amazon is typically where most international sellers begin their journey into Japan. This is because the interface and functionality are familiar and the platform has the biggest market share among ecommerce platforms.
Rakuten, Japan’s homegrown ecommerce giant, is the second biggest platform in Japan. It has over 49,000 virtual shops on its platform and caters to a quarter of Japan’s total ecommerce market share. It’s a little harder to use if you don’t speak Japanese or have limited resources in-country, but it’s an incredible vehicle for reaching a diverse network of Japanese consumers.
Yahoo! is still thriving in Japan, with its online shopping division, Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auction. It caters to millions of shoppers each month and benefits from an online ecosystem of multiple channels, including Yahoo! News, the most popular news platform in Japan.
Smaller, domestic ecommerce platforms offer increasing opportunities to reach a wide section of Japan’s population. If you want to target niche groups, platforms like Mercari, ZozoTown or DMM could offer you better returns.

HB Pro Tip: Japanese platforms present a number of challenges to foreign businesses who don’t have extensive local language support and capabilities, due to their more demanding registration, language, and localization requirements. This can make the onboarding process more complicated taking time away from actually selling your products. Success can often rely on finding local partners or vendors who are already authorized to sell on one of these platforms and can get your products to market as soon as possible.

Complicated on-boarding processes on Japanese ecommerce platforms can sometimes take time away from actually selling your products – partnering up might be the fastest way to get your products to market.

Localize Your Approach for Selling Online in Japan

When in Japan, “localizing” is more of a mindset than a specific activity. A localized ecommerce strategy is crucial to a product’s success here and without it, you increase the obstacles you face as a foreign merchant trying to reach Japanese customers.

Finding a way to overcome language and cultural barriers is one of the first things you need to think about. Even with a winning product, a strategy that doesn’t produce Japanese products description, images, and marketing content tailored to the Japanese user won’t get you very far.

Always keep in mind that your Japanese competitors will always have an advantage over you simply because their products are made here. When you’re trying your best to win over as many customers as possible, you don’t want to face even greater resistance with a non-localized ecommerce strategy.

A few more reasons to localize include:

Greater engagement with your target audience
Showcase content that is more likely to convert users
Greater presence and reputation within your market
Gain trust easier from Japanese consumers
Improve your organic search volume with Japanese SEO optimized product listings for ecommerce platforms
Avoid basic translation mistakes and misrepresentation of your brand

When in Japan, “localizing” is more of a mindset than a specific activity.

PRODUCT LISTINGS

To make your products as engaging and appealing as they are in your home market, it’s better to develop your listings from scratch, or make sure they’re scrutinously localized and optimized for the kind of Japanese users you want to sell to. Simply translating your product names and description from English isn’t enough.

Phrases that seem out of place, descriptions that are too vague or confusing, or just a lack of information where Japanese people would prefer more in-depth explanations will stunt your conversion rates, even if you manage to elicit some initial interest.

When compared to other nations, Japanese individuals appear to have a much higher desire and capacity for technical data and information. Use this knowledge to pay more attention to the following in your descriptions:

What products are made from (specific types of materials and their properties)
Where materials are sourced from and where the product was manufactured
The expected lifespan and overall durability of your product
The type or generation of technology it relies on (if any)
The specific way your product works and how people can use it
Any weaknesses or disadvantages (e.g. if your raincoat isn’t 100% waterproof, don’t say that it is)
High-quality visuals that show your product being used by Japanese models in Japanese settings
Images from different angles

HB Pro Tip: Avoid saying your product is “the best” in an abstract or non provable way. If you’ve received awards or have been ranked by an independent body for being best in class, then, by all means, showcase this, but be careful about claiming that you are the “number 1” product in your market if you’re not. As a foreign seller, honesty, transparency, and being upfront are necessary virtues when trying to win trust.

Understand Your Place in the Market

Japanese people buy products from all over the world, but they’re especially into ones made in their home country. Households show strong signs of loyalty to brands they know and trust. This makes it harder for outsiders to break into the market, especially in segments are already saturated by competitor products.

One of the major reasons for this is a natural aversion to uncertainty among consumers. In fact, Japan has one of the most uncertainty avoiding cultures in the world. On Hofstede’s Uncertainty Avoidance Index, the nation holds one of the highest scores of all societies, registering 92/100. This can translate into an unwillingness to buy products from less known brands or companies that are not known to be completely reliable.

To thrive here, it’s useful to understand a few situations where shoppers do choose foreign brands over Japanese ones:

Higher brand reputation from a foreign brand
Association with popular figures or influencers
Better quality and reliability
More value for money

The biggest mistake is to think that just because you’re bringing a Western product to the market that you’re likely to have a good chance of making some strong sales. Unless you position yourself effectively to showcase all the advantages your brand can offer, while doing your best to overcome trust issues, you won’t be given as much attention as you’d like.

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Final Tips and Best Practices

Many Japanese customers might panic at the sight of English when shopping, even if they’re relatively keen on your products. Imagine your own reaction when browsing for products and come across a Japanese product description. It’s likely that you’ll keep looking until you find something that leaves no room for doubt.

While younger users are more open to Western products and brands, they generally have much lower purchasing power than individuals in other developed countries, partly due to Japan’s adherence to hierarchies within company structures. This means that adapting your brand to focus more on an older demographic group could be necessary to secure the sales you need here.

Avoid leaving any gaps in your product descriptions about what you offer and how your products work. Focus less on generic marketing promotions and explain specific details that will help to build consumer confidence.