How not to drown in landings: the history of the creation of the Japanese CarPrice
In a previous article about the development of CarPrice in Japan, we promised to write separately about creating a site for the exotic Japanese market. A completely unfamiliar language. Little time to start. The big time difference between IT and business. A geographically dispersed team from Russia, Japan, Canada, Belarus, the Philippines and China. In this post we will tell you how everything turned out in these difficult conditions.
After the very first comparison of the Russian and Japanese markets, it became clear that we could not get off with a simple translation. And with the "simple translation" it was not easy. Attempts to process the text head-on were doomed to failure - here are a few examples of Google translator:
A Japanese living in Russia joined our team, but his knowledge of his native language was not enough for an accurate translation. Knowledge of terms was needed. As a result, our first inspector in Japan, Takita-san, helped us a lot. Thanks to his expertise, we correctly localized the first version of the application for inspectors - the part of the content that is most saturated from a professional point of view.
Briefly about technology. Japanese CarPrice is a fork of the Russian project. There are several projects on Laravel + vue, Go, and two on Bitrix: the main monolith project and the site with the FAQ (chiebukuro.carprice.co.jp). A monolithic project consists of two sites: a site for customers and a site for dealers.
A site for those who want to sell their car. Here, the owners are recorded on the evaluation of the car and auction. Here is our promotional video with a description of the work scheme:
Creating this site, we took into account the Japanese traditions of web design and relied on the fact that landings are actively used in this country. It was planned that this will increase the conversion by a factor of two. Therefore, further attention will be paid to landings.
So, the main element of the main page is a record for the inspection of the car. The following is a description of the CarPrice operation scheme. These are 5 steps:
In the first desktop version of the site, the entry form was moved up:
In the first mobile version of the site on the main page of the questionnaire was not, it was necessary to click a button:
Along with the site, landing pages were launched for our first marketing campaigns - less vivid, more saturated with information.
Friends program (ト モ ダ チ). Bring a friend and get 20,000 yen.
Come to us program (»来 店 応 援). Submit your application before March 31 and get 1,000 yen when inspecting the car and another 10,000 yen to the selling price. Mobile landings here are almost no different from desktop ones - the content is mainly textual.
In the following design of the home page for mobile, we placed the form on the first page and reduced the number of steps:
In the future, we decided to remove most of the descriptions and focused on the recording form. Now immediately here you can fill in personal data - name, surname, phone number:
The mobile version was redone in a similar way, but later on we made the evaluation form more compact and added a picture to the header explaining the benefits of selling a car through CarPrice. Then the same information migrated to the desktop.
The benefit report increased conversion by 10%. In the next version, we hung a simple medal with the number one in the cap without further explanation. Conversion jumped 25%!
Then we decided to experiment with landing pages for specific brands: Toyota, Honda, Nissan:
According to the results of this period, the site’s work actively took up mobile landing. First, we redesigned the evaluation record form, updated the blocks about CarPrice's work and customer benefit, as well as the comment block. Then they reduced the information blocks, changed the picture in the header. Then the information blocks were returned again, but they shifted the emphasis on the steps of selling a car in CarPrice. And finally - phew! - decorated everything with icons. After some time, part of these changes also affected the desktop version of the site (in the illustration below, both versions are placed side by side).
As a car manufacturer, Japan has huge export potential. In Japanese CarPrice, we also decided to establish an export work scheme and made the corresponding landing page in English:
With the proliferation of accordion sites, we have accordingly changed mobile landing.
We hope you read to this place. It's time to reveal the personality of the girl in the first picture of the post. This is Nastya - the face of our company in Japan. Nastya is fond of cosplay and tweet in Japanese ( https://twitter.com/nastyan_cos ). Once she was able to raise 3.2 million yen ($ 30,000) on crowdfunding to open her own maid cafe - these are cosplay restaurants in which waitresses dressed in French style behave not like ordinary waitresses, but like maids in private house. A photo of Nastya, until recently, adorned the hat of the Japanese CarPrice.
The accordion form showed the best conversion, and we decided to leave it. But instead of Nastya, they added more Japanese themes to the header along with screenshots of the client dashboard. The latest major update to the client site at the moment was the introduction of adaptive design.
Compared to other Japanese auto auction sites, we have less supporting content on the first screen. Given the specifics of the market, we decided to do without further explanation.
This site is intended for those who want to buy a car. Here is a list of auctions, bids on them. You can configure the newsletter according to your criteria. This year, big changes are planned in the UX site, on which the Japanese team of designers is working now. Below are screenshots of an application that duplicates the functionality of a dealer site.
In a previous article, we mentioned multifunctional Japanese gas stations and services where you can inspect and buy cars. Therefore, not only CarPrice employees use our IT platform, but also partners for whom we are now creating a personal account. Attracting new partners is the main goal of our Japanese marketing today.
We created a partner’s personal account together with a consulting company. They developed a large database of damage and modifications, algorithms for determining whether the car was in an accident or not. They also give advice on application development and train inspectors. With this company, we have created our own system for assessing the general condition of a car, interior and exterior.
Among the evaluation parameters are mileage, year of manufacture, repair history, engine noise, defects. The inspector shall record all damage to the vehicle on the score sheet (評 価 シ ー ト).
For convenience and ease of perception of all defects, we have developed a schematic scan. On the diagram, on each damaged part, the type of damage and the degree are marked. Photos are also attached here.
In our scheme, we use the generally accepted designations in Japan for the types and sizes of damage. Each type of damage has its own size gradation. For example, for scratches: 1 - with a business card, 2 - with sheet A4, 3 - more than sheet A4.
On filling out the first form, work with car owners is just beginning. In Japan, we were able to completely translate all the interaction into electronic form. For this, a personal account of the seller was created.
Through the seller’s personal account, the client leaves detailed information about himself and his car, and after the auction accepts the proposed price or refuses. If agreed, the seller fills in the remaining necessary data and leaves an electronic signature. In Japan, an electronic signature is used everywhere and has legal force, so there are no obstacles to the implementation of a fully electronic document management.
We do not plan to stop the development of your personal account, client portal and landing pages, but now we have concentrated most of our resources on the dealer website. By the way, in our Moscow office a vacancy of a leading testing engineer has opened . We look forward to your resume!
After the very first comparison of the Russian and Japanese markets, it became clear that we could not get off with a simple translation. And with the "simple translation" it was not easy. Attempts to process the text head-on were doomed to failure - here are a few examples of Google translator:
- 乗車 定員 is the number of passengers. Google has driving ability
- パ ド ル - steering wheel. Google has a paddle
- テ ー ル レ ン ズ - stop lamp. Google has a tail lens
- ト ラ ン ク ル ー ム - trunk interior. Google has the main room
A Japanese living in Russia joined our team, but his knowledge of his native language was not enough for an accurate translation. Knowledge of terms was needed. As a result, our first inspector in Japan, Takita-san, helped us a lot. Thanks to his expertise, we correctly localized the first version of the application for inspectors - the part of the content that is most saturated from a professional point of view.
Briefly about technology. Japanese CarPrice is a fork of the Russian project. There are several projects on Laravel + vue, Go, and two on Bitrix: the main monolith project and the site with the FAQ (chiebukuro.carprice.co.jp). A monolithic project consists of two sites: a site for customers and a site for dealers.
Client site
A site for those who want to sell their car. Here, the owners are recorded on the evaluation of the car and auction. Here is our promotional video with a description of the work scheme:
Creating this site, we took into account the Japanese traditions of web design and relied on the fact that landings are actively used in this country. It was planned that this will increase the conversion by a factor of two. Therefore, further attention will be paid to landings.
So, the main element of the main page is a record for the inspection of the car. The following is a description of the CarPrice operation scheme. These are 5 steps:
- Entering information about the car and getting an approximate cost.
- Booking the time of inspection of the vehicle by the inspector. You can choose on the site or through the call center.
- Inspection of a vehicle
- A 15-minute car auction by interested dealers. The history of auto auctions in Japan goes back dozens of years, everything has already been honed and is passing quickly.
- Bidding to the client, execution of necessary documents
In the first desktop version of the site, the entry form was moved up:
In the first mobile version of the site on the main page of the questionnaire was not, it was necessary to click a button:
Along with the site, landing pages were launched for our first marketing campaigns - less vivid, more saturated with information.
In the following design of the home page for mobile, we placed the form on the first page and reduced the number of steps:
In the future, we decided to remove most of the descriptions and focused on the recording form. Now immediately here you can fill in personal data - name, surname, phone number:
The mobile version was redone in a similar way, but later on we made the evaluation form more compact and added a picture to the header explaining the benefits of selling a car through CarPrice. Then the same information migrated to the desktop.
The benefit report increased conversion by 10%. In the next version, we hung a simple medal with the number one in the cap without further explanation. Conversion jumped 25%!
Then we decided to experiment with landing pages for specific brands: Toyota, Honda, Nissan:
According to the results of this period, the site’s work actively took up mobile landing. First, we redesigned the evaluation record form, updated the blocks about CarPrice's work and customer benefit, as well as the comment block. Then they reduced the information blocks, changed the picture in the header. Then the information blocks were returned again, but they shifted the emphasis on the steps of selling a car in CarPrice. And finally - phew! - decorated everything with icons. After some time, part of these changes also affected the desktop version of the site (in the illustration below, both versions are placed side by side).
As a car manufacturer, Japan has huge export potential. In Japanese CarPrice, we also decided to establish an export work scheme and made the corresponding landing page in English:
With the proliferation of accordion sites, we have accordingly changed mobile landing.
We hope you read to this place. It's time to reveal the personality of the girl in the first picture of the post. This is Nastya - the face of our company in Japan. Nastya is fond of cosplay and tweet in Japanese ( https://twitter.com/nastyan_cos ). Once she was able to raise 3.2 million yen ($ 30,000) on crowdfunding to open her own maid cafe - these are cosplay restaurants in which waitresses dressed in French style behave not like ordinary waitresses, but like maids in private house. A photo of Nastya, until recently, adorned the hat of the Japanese CarPrice.
The accordion form showed the best conversion, and we decided to leave it. But instead of Nastya, they added more Japanese themes to the header along with screenshots of the client dashboard. The latest major update to the client site at the moment was the introduction of adaptive design.
Compared to other Japanese auto auction sites, we have less supporting content on the first screen. Given the specifics of the market, we decided to do without further explanation.
Dealer site
This site is intended for those who want to buy a car. Here is a list of auctions, bids on them. You can configure the newsletter according to your criteria. This year, big changes are planned in the UX site, on which the Japanese team of designers is working now. Below are screenshots of an application that duplicates the functionality of a dealer site.
Partner Account
In a previous article, we mentioned multifunctional Japanese gas stations and services where you can inspect and buy cars. Therefore, not only CarPrice employees use our IT platform, but also partners for whom we are now creating a personal account. Attracting new partners is the main goal of our Japanese marketing today.
We created a partner’s personal account together with a consulting company. They developed a large database of damage and modifications, algorithms for determining whether the car was in an accident or not. They also give advice on application development and train inspectors. With this company, we have created our own system for assessing the general condition of a car, interior and exterior.
Among the evaluation parameters are mileage, year of manufacture, repair history, engine noise, defects. The inspector shall record all damage to the vehicle on the score sheet (評 価 シ ー ト).
For convenience and ease of perception of all defects, we have developed a schematic scan. On the diagram, on each damaged part, the type of damage and the degree are marked. Photos are also attached here.
In our scheme, we use the generally accepted designations in Japan for the types and sizes of damage. Each type of damage has its own size gradation. For example, for scratches: 1 - with a business card, 2 - with sheet A4, 3 - more than sheet A4.
Merchant account
On filling out the first form, work with car owners is just beginning. In Japan, we were able to completely translate all the interaction into electronic form. For this, a personal account of the seller was created.
Through the seller’s personal account, the client leaves detailed information about himself and his car, and after the auction accepts the proposed price or refuses. If agreed, the seller fills in the remaining necessary data and leaves an electronic signature. In Japan, an electronic signature is used everywhere and has legal force, so there are no obstacles to the implementation of a fully electronic document management.
We do not plan to stop the development of your personal account, client portal and landing pages, but now we have concentrated most of our resources on the dealer website. By the way, in our Moscow office a vacancy of a leading testing engineer has opened . We look forward to your resume!