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Anna Potapova & Arnaud FrattiniWith more than a billion internet users and half of all global e-commerce transactions, digital business in China is huge.
Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini work in content roles at Alibaba, the biggest online merchant in China. Lately they have been looking beyond their desks, trying to connect with their peers at other companies and to develop a broader understanding of content practice in the country.
They’ve shared some of their discoveries in an article on content design in China, and they’re building a new community to share practice ideas with other content strategists and designers.
Here’s a QR code if you’d like join their new Wechat community.
We talked about:
- their work as content designers for the AliExpress app at Alibaba
- the fast-paced and competitive business environment in which they work
- a foundational difference in the information density preferences of Chinese consumers
- how they localize their content-design content
- how content design is organized and managed at Alibaba
- the new content-design community meetup that they are organizing
- the origins of their article about content design in China
- two major approaches to content design that they identified as they researched their article
- Anna’s curiosity about – and her hot take on – whether consistency is truly important
- their take on the difference between user experience and customer experience
- the unique nature of branding and customer service in China
- an invitation to join their new content community
Anna’s bio
Anna Potapova is the Content Strategy team leader at AliExpress (part of Alibaba Global Digital Commerce group). She changed team positioning from pure localization to Content Design, built a style guide and a system to maintain it, initiated the upgrade of internal writing and translation tools, and improved business metrics while reducing production and localization costs.
She spoke at Button Conference and UX Evening @ Google. Previously she worked as a localization specialist, and hosted LocLunch Shanghai.
In addition to her work, Anna writes a blog, teaches cross-cultural communication class at Alibaba new employees training, and mentors Content Designers at ADPList. She’s currently working on building a content community in China.”
Arnaud’s bio
Arnaud is a content designer at Alibaba Group helping AliExpress expand into new markets.
His role is to oversee product documentation and help strategize different content forms that best communicate with users and answer business needs.
His expertise spans user research, localization, UX writing, customer acquisition and member retention. His passion lies in crafting stories for digital product, facilitating user interaction, engagement, and learning.
Beyond his work, Arnaud enjoys sharing his experience on how to build a career in China, and works on building a content community there.
Connect with Anna and Arnaud online
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 178. China is home to over a billion internet users, and half of all global e-commerce transactions happen there. Given these statistics, you might picture companies with huge design teams. But business works differently in China. Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini work together in content roles at Alibaba, the biggest online merchant in China. They’re researching and writing about content strategy and design practice in China and building a new content community there.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 178 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Anna Potapova. Sorry, I’m doing my best to pronounce that. And Arnaud Frattini. They both work for various parts of Alibaba. Anna’s a senior content strategist and team leader for AliExpress. And Arnaud is a content designer for Alibaba. So, welcome. Anna and Arnaud, tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re up to these days.
Arnaud:
Hi everyone. I’m Arnaud. I’m a content designer at AliExpress, which is one of the many companies of Alibaba. I used to work first mainly on the French market as I’m French myself. But now I’m working on the more specific features of the AliExpress app. I started about more than two years ago and where I get to work with Anna. And it’s been great so far, so many learnings, so many things to learn, especially from Anna.
Larry:
Well, Anna, you’ve been doing this a little while. You’ve been at Alibaba for how long?
Anna:
That’s right. I’ve been here for eight years. Yes. So, I started as a junior writer, also working for a local market or working for Russian market back then. And now I’m leading content strategy team for AliExpress. So, we create and localized content in 17 languages at the moment. And yeah, helping AliExpress buyers from all over the world enjoy great prices and hopefully good experience shopping with us.
Larry:
Nice. Well, obviously neither of you are Chinese by birth. You’re from Russia and France respectively. And I think all of us Westerners are curious about, things are a little bit different in China. Everything from just business culture to tech culture. Can you talk a little bit about the environment you’re operating in?
Anna:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest differences that we face on daily basis is just how fast-paced and competitive everything is with such a big market of literally 100 of millions of people that you can cater your product to. It’s really important to be faster than other people. It’s really important to provide more competitive features on this almost cutthroat speed. So, what I think really defines the environment here is, things are created and shipped very fast. Instead of thinking long-term strategy, how exactly we can make sure that this project works, that the strategy works, we just doing a lot of trials. We’re trying by doing. And we’re doing it in very fast pace. Yeah.
Arnaud:
Yeah. I think you said it very correctly, very accurately. It’s trying by doing. It’s shipping first and then we decide after. Do we keep it or do we not keep it? Do we upgrade it or not? And we were chatting about that yesterday. It could be explained by two main reasons. The first is that the development cost is usually lower than in other markets. You can afford to try. You can afford to develop and see if it works because it’s not as expensive as it would be in another market, for example. And second is just the huge user base that you have. If you launch this new feature to 10% of your users, that correspond to several tens of thousand or even a hundred of thousands of users, which allows you to get a bigger pool of data and a better idea if it could work on a larger scale or not. So, thanks to those two very specific, China specific reasons, you ship first you decide after. Yeah, that’s how it’s done.
Larry:
I’m sorry, Anna, go ahead.
Anna:
Yeah, maybe another big difference that has to do more with our work as content designers, is the fact that understanding of information density and preferences for information density are very different here in China. When we are used to saying that, “Don’t give people many choices, filter information for them. Make it simple for the user.” In China, you see completely different trends. You see a lot of apps and services just putting it all out. You have pages filled end to end with information, with text, banners, pop-ups, animations. And people enjoy having this abundance of choice. People enjoy having opportunity to decide for themselves what exactly they want to pick.
Larry:
I have so many questions about all of this. One of them though is that one, I just want to observe that a few episodes back, I had a content strategist on, a real actual strategist who talked about emergent strategy. And you have strategy in your title, so I’m guessing that it’s just maybe not as proactive as it might be in some places, you’re like a super learner who’s then incorporating that. Is that what’s going on?
Anna:
I think it’s more about formulating strategies to help our business communicate to people in different countries and regions. So, it’s about making sure that our message is clear enough and attractive regardless of where you are in Brazil, or France, or Spain, or US.
Larry:
No, and that’s right. And as I just said that as you were talking, I realized that part of your strategy has to be dealing with the environment you’re operating in. But you just mentioned localization. I’m really curious about how that super-dense information display the Chinese market demands. When you localize into Brazil, or France, or someplace like that, do you change the design? Tell me, what does your localization look like?
Arnaud:
Yes, you can. Localization is not only about… It’s more than just translation. So, it’s not just a matter of language. It’s also a matter of how to make sure it looks authentic and familiar, comfortable to another audience, I would say. So, you definitely need to adapt the content, the copy, the message in it. But visually speaking, it also involves changes indeed. And I believe our designers work on that. It’s quite important to have version of the app that suits to users in different markets. Definitely yeah.
Larry:
Well, one thing, we talked a little… Oh, I’m sorry, Anna, you were going to say something?
Anna:
Yeah, I was going to add just one little thing that definitely one of the things to consider when it comes to adapting your product to different markets is not only message structure like you said, but also the very nature of language. You need to think about the content lengths. You need to understand that what can be said in Chinese in maybe two characters would take up to 15 characters in other languages. So, that’s number one. And another thing is you really need to make sure that everybody understands how certain cultural differences need special treatment. For example, genders. When you can use one verb form in English, but in French or Russian, you would need two verb forms or three. So, those little details really need to be included.
Larry:
As you’re talking about that, one of the other things we talked about before we went on the air was the collaboration in this because of the cultural stuff and the business stuff that’s going on, the way you collaborate with your colleagues, how do you work with designers on that? Even the decision about whether or how much to adapt the visual presentation and the content interaction with that. It seems like that would be quite the dance to negotiate.
Anna:
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. And I think here, there are few rules that you can follow to address this dilemma. First of all, there are certain localization standards. You know that French is 80% longer on average than English. So, you can take it as golden standard. So, there are some pretty, I would say, well-established standards for that. And also I think it has to do with how it really helps or doesn’t help the users, and what is the goal of this product. So, when we have this shared goal, what we know exactly what this product should do, what the space should do, what this pop-up should do. We can evaluate content not only based on the cultural norms, we can also evaluate it based on does it actually fit that purpose or idea? And we can use that as a north star instead of getting personal and be like, “Ah, it’s not pretty because it’s so long.” It doesn’t matter how long it is. As long as our intended message is delivered. Yeah, I think that’s something that won a lot of arguments actually over the years.
Larry:
That’s interesting. As you said, and you obviously take pride in prevailing in that argument. But it also sounds like it was probably the right thing for the customer and for the business at the same time. And it also occurs to me as we’re talking about that, the context for this work. I haven’t dropped the episode yet, but it’ll be, I think right before this one. Chatted with Sophie Tahran at Condé Nast about, she had done some research on where and how content design teams are organized in organizations. And sometimes it’s product, sometimes it’s design, sometimes it’s embedded. How do you organize your work at Alibaba?
Anna:
Well, for us at the moment, it’s pretty standard. We are currently part of the design team, so we report to the head of design. But I know companies where content sits with product or with localization as well. So, there are different practices actually. Sometimes with marketing too. Yeah. Sure.
Larry:
Yeah, and that was the upshot of Sophie’s research was that there’s all different ways to do it and everybody does it differently. So, I was just curious about exactly how you might do it. One of the things you’ve talked about, I know that I saw that… I think one of you did a survey a few months ago about, hey, we need a content strategy organization event of some kind in China. Did anything come of that?
Anna:
Oh, yeah. Actually we do have some plans and we do have some announcements. So, first of all, initially, we started the survey and we started this series of interviews with people as a preparation for our article on content design in China. And eventually, we found out that people actually want to hang out, people seek advice from each other, and people want to grow in their craft and enjoy this kind of support network that we don’t really get very often.
Anna:
So, what we have right now is with all the people interested in having something like a conference, we organize the group in WeChat, which is one of the most popular messages in China. So, we have over 30 people now. And what we’re going to do is not only support each other on daily basis, so do kind of Q&A/mentorship in the group as needed. We also going to be doing some webinars or online meetups every month. So, our first meetup is actually taking place on February 2. And I’m going to be talking about style guides because that’s the topic I really love and I’m really proud of all the work that we did on style guide here at AliExpress. So, yeah, if you have a WeChat and if you’re based in China or if you are in this time zone, feel free to catch up on that.
Larry:
Nice. Yeah, I just live for that kind of thing, especially real-life community events. But WeChat’s a great thing. I think we all spend half our time on Zoom now, so virtual gatherings are great. You mentioned that it sounds like that grew out of the article, that as you were talking, doing the research for this famous article you did. And let’s talk about that in a little more detail, because that’s how I think we had connected. I think you might’ve been thinking about this article at this time because Anna and I met about a year and a half ago at Confab in Minneapolis. And I think you mentioned something about this then. But since then, you’ve published this brilliant article with the UX content collective. Can you talk a little bit about the origins of that, your intent, what you were hoping for, what you discovered?
Anna:
Well, first of all, it was his idea.
Arnaud:
There’s something to write about. Yeah, definitely. There is a story to tell.
Anna:
Yeah, because we were talking about it a lot, right?
Arnaud:
Mm-hmm.
Anna:
And I think it’s also, I would say very niche topic. And content design is still growing discipline in China. So, I was really not certain whether people would be interested in something like that. Whether anybody actually cares. But yeah, you push for it like, yeah, let’s do it. We should do that. And we did.
Arnaud:
Is content design. I mean in its own origins it’s mostly from English-speaking countries, US, Canada, UK. So, today the industry, you have a lot of the current experts or thought leaders are from those countries. A lot of the talks, the resources you can found are in English. And then you can see communities popping everywhere. I know that the French one is quite big as well. In Italy as well, following the publication of the article, we got a lot of people from Italy who reacted to the article connected with us following also the publication. We learned that people a bit more about what is being done in Nigeria, or India, or even Southeast Asia. So, you do have communities like that in Russia as well, quite well about this. And what about China? I mean that’s where the idea came. Okay, we are content designers in China, we are doing this. Are there other people like us doing? Are we alone in the universe?
Larry:
It’s just the two of you.
Arnaud:
So, from that observation came this question, and from that question we started looking around. There are other people doing it as well, doing it differently in organization, different coming from different backgrounds. So, it’s very interesting to see the origins of the background of those people. Because this is something also we emphasize in the article. The community is small in China. Let’s take an example, a non-English speaking example for France, which is… You will excuse me, I know that one I’m quite familiar with. But you do have regular talks. UX is something people are quite aware of, quite well established.
Arnaud:
You do have also trainings, formations, both private and in some other schools. You have big conferences. So, it’s happening. It exists. People are, of course, advocating for that, educating their stakeholders, and their bosses, the leaders, their colleagues about this. They are facing challenges, struggle. We see that on LinkedIn. But what about in China? What kind of struggles are we facing? Is this the same? One of them is the content design community is very small. And we found that there are people doing the same thing as us, but we are not connected. And that’s something that could be achieved after realizing that, and publishing the article, getting in touch with the people. So, join the WeChat group. Join us.
Larry:
And I’ll do what I can. And I just wonder as you’re talking, if there’s… This comes up a lot that the tragic irony of content people being bad at how they talk about themselves and label themselves. Maybe there’s this whole cadre of people out there doing something that looks very much like content design just under… I’m thinking of here in the west, like the society for technical communication with technical writers or marketing stuff. Has that been part of your exploration, is trying to dig around and try to find other people doing content work?
Anna:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And actually something that we discovered as we approach different people in different companies, all across the country, actually we interviewed people from Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, some others. We discovered that there are actually two different approaches to this. So, the first approach is more frequently used in the companies that cater to Chinese market. And that approach is, everybody writes. Everybody have ownership over this language thing. Everybody has a say in what we’re going to put on this error message, what we’re going to put on this button. So, in companies that are focused on Chinese market, you can see those groups of product UX designer and developer just making the decisions between themselves and vouching it. That’s just my hypothesis. I don’t have too much data to back it up. But I’m certain that it might have something to do with the whole information density and the overall, I’d say, fluency of Chinese users navigating complicated layouts and complicated information.
Larry:
Interesting.
Anna:
So, because of the specific audience, you have the specific approach. When you really maybe don’t need the person who is the title of content designer, but when everybody on the team has a little bit of that skill, it emerges together. So, that was the first approach we discovered. Second approach that was more widespread among companies that are going international is having either dedicated localization team that helps you to improve source text first and then delivery translation, or having content design plus localization team.
Larry:
That makes sense. And the Chinese team is really interesting to me because the way you described it sometimes in a lot of western companies, there’s this… One of the concerns of content design is like, well, everybody thinks they can write. And there’s this implication of like, “No, we’re professionals. We pay attention to this.” But it sounds like it’s a different dynamic there, that there is a genuine, maybe a more collaborative approach or something. Because the way you described that didn’t sound like pathological. It sounded just a normal evolution of how people work together.
Anna:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I’d say it’s definitely more about collaboration and maybe more about big picture as well, how sometimes maybe details are not as important as releasing this important feature before our competition does. Yeah.
Arnaud:
We will publish it after.
Anna:
We’ll polish it after. Yeah.
Larry:
Well, that brings me back to your role as a content strategist and content designers are always concerned with style, and voice and tone, and consistency across products. Is that something that’s just like you’re tending the garden as you go instead of planning it out from the start? Or is that a concern? Is there as much concern in some circles around consistency, and voice and tone, and style, and things like that?
Anna:
I think there are two vectors here. So, one is definitely concerns from, well, designers. Or maybe localization team depending on your setup regarding consistency. And the importance of consistency. I think if we just be a little bit open-minded about consistency. Okay, I’m going to say something that can be possibly risky. But okay, hot take. #hot take. Is consistency really that important? Ta-da. I said it. I said it. Okay. Think about it this way. If you are one of 10 products on the market that provides similar services, and you have very specific fine-tuned, polished voice and tone, that might help your product to get ahead of the competition. But if say you’re one of the 10 companies providing delivery and while everybody else delivers in one day, you deliver in two hours. If you deliver in two hours and everybody else is much slower than you are, does it really matter if you’re consistent or not?
Anna:
That’s the perspective I got from one of the Chinese UX designers that I interviewed. He’s like, “It’s really not that important. If you are so much ahead of competition, you don’t need to worry about it yet.” But once your business model matures, once your organization matures, you need to really start paying attention to details. So, it’s the question of that, how important it is for our business right now to be consistent. And also, sometimes in China, people would give perspectives like this. Okay, maybe in the early stages it’s not important. But we can actually see from the research and data that overseas is more important. I believe it was US marketing study that said that 60% of people who would see a website with a typo on the homepage would decrease their trust towards the platform because of the typo. In China, again, back to my example, when you are one of the 10 companies that does the best job in terms of service, doesn’t really matter. Doesn’t really matter.
Larry:
No, as you say that I’m thinking about what is branding? And if the brand is like I ordered something and it showed up in two hours instead of one day, that seems like good brand reinforcement and the messaging. I guess here’s the hypothesis I have about that, especially in the US, most content people come out of publishing or journalism or places like that where you’re just raised with the Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White on your desk everywhere you are. I don’t know, I think about how much more flexible and pragmatic I’ve become over the last 10, 20 years. And maybe just China’s ahead of me in that way.
Anna:
Definitely very pragmatic. Definitely very pragmatic. What matters is how useful is your copy and what kind of impact it creates for your users and your business.
Larry:
Like you were… Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Arnaud:
That reminds me of something that we were chatting when we were writing the article actually. It’s the difference between user experience and customer experience. I don’t know. I mean, everyone has its stake on this. What’s UX? What’s a different user customer, user experience, customer experience? But let’s use this to illustrate how it’s done in China. It’s the customer is king. Even more true than anywhere else. I mean after sales services are excellent, customer service, you always chat with a live person anytime of the day, of the week.
Anna:
Of the night.
Arnaud:
Of the night. Delivery services are excellent. Cold chain when you buy some food, it’s top notch. So, once you become a customer, once you’re converted, you are well taken care of. And you are not disappointing because to satisfy the customer, it’s just like Anna said, it’s the service that is important. The rest is a lot of promotion. And this is true when we were chatting with interviewing one of content designer, content writers in China, that this importance on promoting the items, the product, that’s where copy is important. And then once you convert it, it becomes a customer service is everything. That’s how you win someone.
Larry:
Yeah. You’re making me think that maybe there’s just a slight twist we have to take on how you look at content in the context of Chinese design, or product, or customer experience, or user experience. Because it seems like at some level there has to be that consistency between the messaging, like, “We’ll get that to you in two hours,” and then actually delivering on that. That kind of consistency. But it just seems like there’s another… Anna, you were nodding your head.
Anna:
Yeah, yeah. I was agreeing with your point that it’s another level of consistency. It’s not like it’s not there, it’s just you have to deliver on your promise. You have to deliver on your promise. And that’s the core part of it. And once your service really shines, then maybe your copy doesn’t have to be super polished. I used an app recently that refers to me, the customer, three different ways on the same page. They called me shopper, they called me user, and then they called me customer on the very same page. That would be unacceptable in any major app in US. In France, I guess as well. People would be upset about that. People would be posting funny screenshots and sarcastic comments on social media about how so-and-so is so unprofessional. But in China it’s okay. It’s okay. It works.
Larry:
I want to know, in that case, did you buy the thing you were looking at despite-
Anna:
Yes, I did. Yes, I did. It was a great deal.
Larry:
Yeah. Okay, there you go.
Anna:
It was a great deal. But the thing is, it all changes when you need to go overseas. When you need to go overseas with your product, then you have to play by the rules of the market that you’re going to Indeed. Yeah.
Arnaud:
Where service become less of… Doesn’t grant you as much a competitive edge as it can in China. For example, AliExpress, when you are shipping to France, or Spain, or Brazil, logistics is different. It’s done differently in those countries. So, I mean it’s much more difficult to guarantee an exact delivery date as well as we can do in China or even a tracking in real time on your screen. So, it’s not as easy. So, content and overall user experience, that’s what can give you a competitive edge. And Chinese companies going abroad, that’s what we highlight in the article. They start to understand that. And you can see a shift operate at this level. They often hire content people, I should say, to do translation, language, localization. And then turns out they start asking questions about, but what’s the mindset of those users, how it is done there? Do you think this service is attractive or not?
Arnaud:
So, there is really a need. You can feel that this need to understand the local users’ lack of knowledge that there is. And then you as a content expert, let’s say, content people, you start looking at the copy in a different way. Okay, I have to keep the message correct here, but there is actually beyond just this copy, there is the whole user flow. The whole experience that needs to be improved, that needs to be localized. You see, going back to your very first question, how localization it’s done. So, yes, you have the copy, the language, you have the visual aspect, you have just like you mentioned, the length on the strings. But it’s also the whole experience has itself. In some countries, some users are very sensitive to price comparison. And it’s very good to integrate such tools, such feature on your platform, put it on your homepage. Also pay after delivery or buy now, pay later. Those things are very popular in some countries. You need to develop that. And if you do it the Chinese way, but just translate it in French, that’s going to bring some issues. Yes.
Larry:
Now I want to do a whole other conversation just about globalization versus localization, because you just brought up a whole bunch of stuff. But hey, we’re coming up close to times, so I do need to wrap today. But before we do, is there anything last that either of you want to share that’s just come up in the conversation or that you want to share before we wrap up?
Anna:
If you are interested in literally anything that we mentioned today, please get in touch on LinkedIn. There might be time difference between you and us, but we will get to you for sure. And if you are based in China, do consider joining our WeChat group and joining our monthly events. We really want to build this community. We really want to get connected with all you folks, who I’m sure are doing great job. Somewhere in this giant country, I know there are fellow kind of designers that can use a helping hand or who maybe can help us. So, I think that’s one thing I’d like to mention. Let’s get connected, people. Let’s get connected.
Arnaud:
And for those abroad who are wondering how it is in China, if you read the article, well, I haven’t read it yet. Read it. It’s very good. It’s-
Anna:
If I dare say so myself.
Arnaud:
It will make us happy. But how is content done in China? First of all, if you become a content designer in China, it’s much faster. What you usually do in a week, you have to do it in a day or perhaps less. And it’s much faster. And the effort of, how to say, raising awareness about what you’re doing and how it should be done is probably much higher. Challenges are very similar, spread too thin. As a content, I’m being pulled after into not being invited at the meeting. Not the seat at the table. It’s same challenges. It’s just the effort is extra. It’s extra. And on top of that you can add all the usual, the cultural differences, the language and so on. But that’s how it’s usually done here. And yet it’s challenging, but it’s fascinating. It’s very interesting to see those differences. And we can already see a shift in some companies that afford themselves to have content designers. You can see a shift. A slow shift, but it’s happening. And yes.
Larry:
Well, I’m excited that you’re going to keep that shift moving with your… Because I just live for community, and events, and things like that, so thanks for doing that. And you mentioned, I’ll definitely put a link to the article and a QR code and a link to the WeChat. And it sounds like, is LinkedIn the best way to reach both of you or any other channels?
Anna:
Yes. Yes. For sure.
Larry:
Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. Great conversation. I really enjoyed talking with you.
Anna:
Thank you for having us, Larry.
Arnaud:
Thank you.
Anna:
I appreciate it.
Larry:
My pleasure.
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