Short notes ontwo markets

Several Korean brands that did well on Qoo10 started by rebuilding their product pages for Japanese customers. One underwear brand changed its thumbnails and descriptions to suit Japanese shoppers' preference for information-rich images, and said traffic rose sharply.

Names matter too. One diet-food brand shortened its Korean-style product name to fit how similar products are named in Japan. Switching to a familiar word was faster than explaining an unfamiliar one.

The smaller the ad budget, the more reviews and hands-on experience mattered. One skincare brand put a demo video and trial reviews at the very top of its product pages and gathered reviews beforehand through sample events. Seeing that sampling is not an established habit in Japan, another brand put samples in every order and turned that into set purchases.

In another case, a voluntary post from an influencer with a modest following moved sales. What mattered was how well the person fit the product, not the follower count.

A select shop run by one person looked for products that would sell and focused on one or two hero items. It passed 30,000 followers in two years. For a small brand, making one thing well known before adding more was the safer route.

Many did not aim at big retailers at the start. A bakery brand set up a Japanese entity, tested the response with a small pop-up, and used that response to move up to a department-store pop-up.

If your sales page is text from a translation tool, fix that first. Next, line up one trustworthy review or hands-on experience. Logo, website, bookings, social media and ads can follow, one at a time. At LINKERPARTNERS we sort out this order with you, starting with a ₩50K session.