Why Japanese and European B2B websites need different enquiry flows

Running a web agency in The Hague that works in both Japanese and English, the most common misunderstanding we see is this: companies treat entering the other market as a translation project.

It is not. The translation is the easy part. What actually decides whether enquiries come in is how the buyer reaches the decision, and that differs sharply between the two markets. There are also legal rules on both sides that a straight copy of your home-market site will quietly break.

This article looks mainly at the direction most of our European clients need: selling into Japan. It combines what we see in projects with recent buying research from Gartner and HubSpot Japan, the EF English Proficiency Index, and official guidance from Dutch regulators (ACM, the Dutch Data Protection Authority, RVO) and their Japanese counterparts (the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Consumer Affairs Agency). The Japanese-language version covers the opposite direction in more detail.

Main sources for this article

• HubSpot Japan, survey on B2B buying in Japan 2026 (published July 2026, 1,573 respondents)
• Gartner's B2B buyer surveys (releases of June 2025 and March 2026, plus its 750-buyer time-allocation study)
• Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission and Consumer Affairs Agency guidance
• Dutch guidance from ACM and KvK (business details), the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (cookies) and RVO (European Accessibility Act)

What this article answers	Short answer
When do buyers contact a vendor?	In Japan, 63.5% only after shortlisting. In Gartner's data, 67% prefer no rep at all (sections 1–2)
How is AI changing the research phase?	41.6% of Japanese buyers say AI now influences decisions more — yet AI summaries are the least trusted source (section 3)
What has to change for Japan?	Page order, company profile, case studies, form, price, language (sections 4–8)
Which legal rules apply?	Japanese privacy law can apply to you; the Specified Commercial Transactions Act usually does not (section 9)
What about the Dutch side?	Business details, cookie consent, accessibility for consumer sales (section 10)

1. Most of the decision happens before you hear from anyone

The time a buyer actually spends with you

One thing is true in both markets, and it sets up everything else. Gartner, surveying 750 B2B buyers, found that the time spent in the purchase-consideration phase breaks down roughly like this.

Only 17% of that time is spent meeting suppliers — and that is the total across every vendor under consideration. By the time someone fills in your form, most of the thinking is done.

And buyers increasingly prefer it that way

Gartner's newer surveys show the trend strengthening. In June 2025 it reported that 61% of B2B buyers prefer an overall rep-free buying experience (632 buyers surveyed in August–September 2024). By March 2026 that figure had risen to 67% (646 buyers, August–September 2025).

Gartner release	Share preferring a rep-free experience	Survey
June 2025	61%	632 buyers, Aug–Sep 2024
March 2026	67%	646 buyers, Aug–Sep 2025

There is a twist. In May 2026 Gartner also reported that 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights. Reps have not become irrelevant; they have moved to the end of the process, as the people who confirm what the buyer has already found. The research phase belongs to your website — and to whatever AI tools your buyers use.

2. Japanese buyers decide as an organisation

They shortlist before they call

The best recent data on Japan comes from HubSpot Japan's 2026 survey, fielded by Macromill in June 2026 among 1,573 people at companies with 50+ employees who had been involved in a B2B purchase in the previous twelve months.

9.0% never contacted a seller at all. Among those who did (1,431 people), here is how far along they already were.

63.5% had at least a shortlist when they first got in touch, and 6.4% already had a first choice and were only doing final checks. The two most common reasons for that first contact were checking price or getting a quote (42.4%) and understanding the product or service in detail (33.3%).

Many people, several vendors, and time

The same survey shows how collective Japanese B2B decisions are.

Indicator	Share of purchases
Five or more people involved (including the respondent)	46.9%
Two or more vendors or products compared	80.3%
One month or more from start to decision	50.9%

The person reading your website is often not the decision-maker but the person who has to explain the choice to the decision-makers. That is why Japanese B2B sites put so much weight on company profiles, client lists and track records: they are material for an internal case, usually written up as a ringi (稟議), the formal approval document circulated for sign-off.

What they trust: clear prices

Asked which sources of information they trust, respondents put clear pricing first.

Clear information on prices, extra costs and contract terms (60.6%) came first, followed by individual explanations from a sales contact (59.8%) and case studies (57.0%). The common wisdom that Japanese buyers do not need prices is only half right: they will tolerate "please contact us", but what they trust is a page that tells them what it costs.

Their expectations at each touchpoint point the same way.

Touchpoint	Top expectation	Second
Website, documents, events	A clear indication of price and cost (42.9%)	Caveats explained, not just benefits (33.8%)
Sales and proposals	A proposal tailored to their situation (37.1%)	An explanation of cost-effectiveness / ROI (30.2%)
Post-purchase support	Clear contact point, hours and scope of support (35.3%)	Clear escalation path when problems arise (31.4%)

"Caveats explained, not just benefits" is worth underlining. A page that says when your service is not a good fit, and what costs extra, is easier for an internal champion to defend than a page of pure benefits.

3. AI is rewriting the research phase

41.6% say AI now shapes their decisions more

In the HubSpot Japan survey, the most common change compared with past purchases was that generative AI and AI search have more influence on buying decisions (41.6%). Using AI was also the fastest-growing research behaviour of the past two to three years (33.5%). ChatGPT (58.0%), Gemini (51.2%) and Microsoft Copilot (40.1%) were the most used tools for work research.

How AI users use it (n = 1,155)	Share
Building a long list of candidates	50.3%
Summarising each vendor's features and differences	47.1%
Producing comparison tables	39.2%
Writing summaries for internal explanation	38.8%

But AI summaries are the least trusted source

Here is the part that matters for your website. Among ten information sources, AI-generated summaries came last for trust (37.8%). And buyers check what AI tells them:

How AI users treat AI output (n = 1,266)	Share
Fact-check and edit it themselves	48.3%
Confirm it with the vendor, experts or colleagues	35.7%
Use it as is, or almost as is	24.9%

So the pattern is: AI produces the shortlist; your website and your people confirm it. That matches Gartner's finding that 69% of buyers validate AI insights with reps. A site needs to do two things: state plainly what you do, for whom and roughly at what price, so AI tools can pick you up; and carry the evidence — cases, prices, caveats — that a buyer comes looking for after reading the AI summary.

4. What the buyer is looking at right before they contact you

Two different questions

In European B2B, and in the Netherlands in particular, the individual contact usually has real authority. Reaching out is cheap for them: they will start a conversation and drop it if it does not fit. What they scan for is who they will be dealing with and roughly what it costs.

In Japanese B2B, an enquiry is one step in building an internal case. What they scan for is evidence that the company is established and safe: how long you have existed, how big you are, which recognisable companies you have worked with.

	Japanese buyer	European buyer
First question	Is this company safe to choose?	Can they do this job?
Looks for	Company profile, history, clients, address	The people, similar projects, price range
What an enquiry means	Gathering material for an internal case	Starting a conversation
Authority	Often an intermediary for decision-makers	Often the decision-maker

Different running orders

Those are different jobs for the same page, and they produce different running orders.

5. Three concrete changes for the Japanese market

Make the company look established, not just capable

A Dutch about page tends to lead with people and philosophy. For Japan, add the structural facts — founding year, size, legal entity, named clients where you are permitted to name them. This is not vanity; it is the material your contact needs internally.

Japanese company sites carry a 会社概要 (company overview) table — a plain two-column list of registered name, address, founding year, capital, representative director, number of employees, business lines and main clients. Reproducing that table costs you nothing, and it is the single page your contact is most likely to paste into a ringi.

Case studies with names and numbers

"We helped a logistics company grow" is not usable evidence in Japan. "We rebuilt the site for [company], and enquiries went from 4 to 17 per month" is. If you cannot name the client, name the industry, the scale and the result. Case studies ranked third among trusted sources (57.0%) — but only concrete ones earn that trust.

Give them something to read — and to forward

With five or more people involved in nearly half of purchases, your contact needs something they can circulate. A downloadable overview in Japanese, a detailed service page or a pricing explanation gives them a way to progress without a meeting. In the Netherlands this often feels like unnecessary friction; in Japan its absence is what causes the drop-off.

6. Language: English reaches the Dutch, not the Japanese

The 2025 EF English Proficiency Index put the Netherlands first of 123 countries and regions ("very high"). Japan ranked 96th, in the "very low" band, with a score of 446 against an Asian average of 473 and a global average of 488.

Country	EF EPI 2025 rank	Band
Netherlands	1st of 123	Very high
Japan	96th	Very low (score 446)

The index is based on people who chose to take an online English test, not a random sample of the population, but the gap is clear. An English page can get you a Dutch enquiry. For Japan, a Japanese-language page is effectively required — not because your contact cannot read any English, but because the colleagues and managers they must convince often will not.

CSA Research's 2020 survey of 8,709 consumers in 29 countries found that 76% prefer to buy products with information in their own language and 40% never buy from websites in other languages. That was a consumer study, but the logic transfers to a B2B purchase that has to pass through an internal approval chain.

7. The enquiry form: where European minimalism backfires

Field by field

European best practice — three fields, no phone number, no obligations — is the right call at home. In Japan the same form can read as a company that does not want to be reached.

Field	For Europe	For Japan
Name	Required	Required, with a phonetic reading field
Email	Required	Required
Company name	Optional	Required, and expected
Department / job title	Leave out	Normal to include
Phone number	Optional, often unwelcome	Normal to require
Enquiry type	Free text is enough	Separate "request a quote" from "general enquiry"
After sending	Reply by email	A phone call back is plausible

Japanese form conventions

• Phonetic reading field (ふりがな). Japanese names can be read several ways; its absence makes a form look foreign.
• Accept full-width and half-width characters for phone numbers and postcodes. Rejecting full-width digits is a common, silent cause of abandonment.
• Split "quote" from "consultation". Price is the top reason for first contact (42.4%); letting buyers say which stage they are at helps them explain it internally.
• Offer a document download as a separate entry point, for buyers who are not ready for contact but need material for their ringi.

Data minimisation still applies

GDPR still applies to you when you are established in the EU, so keep collecting only what you need for the stated purpose, and link the privacy notice next to the form. The point is not to abandon data minimisation — it is to recognise that in Japan a few extra, purposeful fields are not what loses you the enquiry.

8. Pricing: give more than feels natural

In Europe, withholding prices costs you enquiries. In Japan, "please contact us" is accepted — but as the survey shows, it is not what buyers trust. A workable approach for both markets:

Approach	Example	Why it works
Publish a range	"Projects of this size: €X–€Y"	Buyers can check their budget first
State what moves the number	Scope, languages, ongoing work	They can estimate for their own case
Attach price bands to past examples	"This project: around €X"	A reference point for the internal case
Name the extras	"Translation billed separately"	Removes fear of hidden costs

Look again at Figure 1: 22% of the buyer's time goes into internal meetings you will never attend. Anything that helps your contact present the cost travels into that room on your behalf.

9. Japanese law: what applies to a European company

Personal information: yes, it can apply to you

Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) has extraterritorial reach. The Personal Information Protection Commission explains that under Article 171, the Act applies when a foreign business handles, abroad, the personal information of people in Japan in connection with supplying goods or services to them. Its FAQ adds that such businesses are subject to security-management obligations and to breach-reporting duties.

In practice: if your Japanese enquiry form collects names, emails and phone numbers, publish a Japanese-language privacy notice describing purposes, retention and contact details.

The Specified Commercial Transactions Act: probably not

European companies entering Japan are often told they need a 特定商取引法に基づく表記 page — the Specified Commercial Transactions Act disclosure listing the seller's name, address and phone number.

For a business-to-business service, usually not. The Consumer Affairs Agency's guidance on mail-order selling states that contracts concluded "for or as a business" fall outside the Act (Article 26). The disclosure obligation attaches to selling to consumers.

Japanese rule	Applies to a B2B-only site?	Source
Act on the Protection of Personal Information	Yes, if you collect personal data of people in Japan to serve them	Personal Information Protection Commission (Art. 171)
Specified Commercial Transactions Act disclosure	Generally no — business contracts are exempt	Consumer Affairs Agency (Art. 26)
— but if you also sell to consumers	Yes, for that part of the site	Consumer Affairs Agency

What is not optional in practice is a company overview with a real address and a working contact route — not as a legal duty, but because its absence reads as a risk signal in exactly the market where you are trying to look established.

10. The Dutch side: rules that travel with your site

Business details on every page

Dutch law (Civil Code article 3:15d) requires online service providers to show who they are: registered name, address, contact details, Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number and VAT identification number (btw-id). KvK recommends placing them where every page can reach them — in practice, the footer.

Cookies: consent before tracking

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) allows limited analytics cookies without consent if they are only used to count visitors and not to treat people differently, and the privacy notice mentions them. Analytics combined with advertising data counts as tracking, which requires consent — legitimate interest is not a valid basis. A consumer-association review in 2025 found that 32 of 84 Dutch sites with cookie banners (38%) still did not ask for consent properly, often by making refusal harder than acceptance. Refusing must be as easy as accepting, and pre-ticked boxes are not valid consent (Planet49, CJEU 2019).

Cookie type	Consent needed?	Condition
Strictly functional	No	Only what the site needs to work
Limited analytics	No	Visitor counting only, mentioned in the privacy notice, easy to object
Analytics linked to advertising	Yes	Treated as tracking
Tracking / advertising	Yes	Legitimate interest is not a valid basis

If you run the same tag set on your Japanese and European sites, the European one is probably out of line. It also means European analytics numbers will look lower than Japanese ones; compare them with that in mind.

Accessibility, if you sell to consumers

The European Accessibility Act has applied in the Netherlands since 28 June 2025. According to RVO, it covers consumer-facing services such as e-commerce and online banking; businesses with fewer than 10 employees and turnover of €2 million or less are outside its scope, and the rules are framed around services to consumers. A pure B2B company site is generally not covered — but a shop section aimed at consumers would be, including an accessibility statement and notification to ACM.

11. And it runs the other way too

Japanese companies building a European site hit the mirror image of this problem. Their standard structure — thorough, sequential, with pricing withheld until contact — reads as evasive to a Dutch buyer, who will simply leave. There the fix is the opposite: publish a price range, put a named person forward, cut the form to three fields, and add KvK and VAT numbers to the footer. The Japanese version of this article goes into that direction in detail.

12. Two cases (fictional)

These are illustrative examples, not real clients.

A Dutch software company selling to Japanese trading houses

It has an English-only site and gets polite interest but no progress. The fix: a Japanese page with a 会社概要 table, case studies with industries and numbers, a price range, and a downloadable Japanese overview for the internal approval. A Japanese privacy notice for the enquiry form. No 特定商取引法 page, because it does not sell to consumers.

A Japanese components maker with a translated site in the Netherlands

Its Dutch site is a translation of the Japanese one: history first, prices "on request", a nine-field form. The fix: services and lead times first, named contacts with backgrounds, a three-field form, KvK and VAT numbers in the footer, and no advertising tags before consent.

Case	Fix first	Add	Remove
Dutch → Japan	A Japanese page	Company overview table, approval-ready document, Japanese privacy notice	English-only material
Japan → Netherlands	Page order (services and price first)	Named contacts, KvK and VAT numbers	Long form, pre-consent tracking

13. What not to do

Don't	Why
Machine-translate your home page and stop	The page order assumes the wrong decision process
Offer only "contact us for pricing"	Clear pricing is the most trusted information — in Japan too
Skip the company overview for Japan	Your contact has nothing to put in the approval document
Build thin pages aimed only at AI tools	AI summaries are the least trusted source; buyers verify on your site
Reuse your Japanese tag setup in Europe	Tracking cookies need prior consent
Leave KvK and VAT numbers off a Dutch site	They are a legal requirement

14. Checklist

For Japan

• A Japanese-language page, checked by a native speaker
• A 会社概要 table: founding year, address, representative, staff, clients
• Case studies with industry, scale and numbers
• A price range and the factors that change it, including extras
• A downloadable overview suitable for internal approval
• A form with a phonetic name field that accepts full-width characters
• A Japanese-language privacy notice

For the Netherlands

• Services and price range at the top
• Named contacts with backgrounds
• A short form
• KvK and VAT numbers in the footer
• No tracking before consent; refusing as easy as accepting
• If you sell to consumers: check the European Accessibility Act

The practical takeaway

• Buyers decide before they talk to you: 63.5% of Japanese buyers shortlist first, and 67% in Gartner's latest data prefer no rep at all
• AI now builds the shortlist, but AI summaries are the least trusted source — your site is where buyers verify
• Japan asks "is this company safe?"; Europe asks "can they do this job?" — but both trust a clear price
• For Japan: a Japanese page, a company overview table, approval-ready material, a Japanese privacy notice
• The 特定商取引法 page is generally not needed for pure B2B
• For the Netherlands: KvK and VAT numbers on every page, consent before tracking
• Budget for a structural rewrite, not a translation

We design for both directions. If you send us the site you have now, we can tell you specifically which parts will not carry over.

Sources

Buying research

• B2B buying survey 2026 (summary of HubSpot Japan's survey) — CommercePick: methodology and figures — stage at first contact, trusted sources, size of buying groups, AI use
• Survey on B2B buying in Japan 2026 (press release, Japanese) — HubSpot Japan: the original release
• Gartner Sales Survey Finds 61% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Buying Experience — Gartner: June 2025 release
• Gartner Sales Survey Finds 67% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Experience — Gartner: March 2026 release
• Gartner Survey Finds 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights — Gartner: May 2026 release
• Buyer Enablement Is the Key to B2B Sales — destinationCRM: Gartner's 750-buyer time-allocation study

Language

• EF English Proficiency Index 2025 — EF: the Netherlands ranked first
• Very Low Proficiency: Japan Drops into Bottom Group in English Ability Ranking — nippon.com: Japan's rank and the index's methodology
• EF EPI 2025 launch (Japanese) — Kyodo News PR Wire: Japan's score of 446 against regional and global averages
• Can't Read, Won't Buy — CSA Research: language preference in buying

Japanese rules

• FAQ on foreign businesses and APPI — Personal Information Protection Commission: extraterritorial application (Art. 171)
• FAQ on data breaches involving foreign businesses — Personal Information Protection Commission: reporting duties for foreign businesses
• Mail-order selling — Specified Commercial Transactions Act guide, Consumer Affairs Agency: required disclosures and the exemption for business contracts (Art. 26)

Dutch and EU rules

• Bedrijfsgegevens vermelden — ACM: business details online sellers must display
• Online verkopen? Deze 10 basisregels moet je kennen — KvK: where to place KvK and VAT numbers
• Cookies — Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens: which cookies need consent
• Onderzoek: cookies nog steeds te veel opgedrongen — Consumentenbond: 2025 review of cookie banners
• European Accessibility Act for products and services — business.gov.nl (RVO): scope and obligations in the Netherlands

Legal requirements depend on what you sell and to whom; the sources above were checked on 18 October 2026. The comparison of enquiry routes in Figure 4 is based on project experience rather than survey data.