Webdesign for Asia in general and China specifically

[pmkpmk]

Continued from [searchengineworld.com...]

I'm looking for a web ressourse, a book, a tutorial, a design-Zen-garden, etc. - anything which will give an overview and insight into Asian (web)design in general, and Chinese (web)design specifically.

Our minimalistic, elegant, reduced style, more-info-less-design European websites don't work over there. It has to be flashy, noisy with huge colorful graphics - apparently.

Any hints to ressources for learning the Asian way of webdesign?

Now that we are up and running again, any other tips apart from checking out sohu.com and daum.net?

My problem is that I can't read Chinese (or any Asian language) and therefor I can LOOK at the pages, but I can't READ if it is e.g. SELLING things or REPORTING about things.

[bill]

If reading the pages is an issue then I'd say this is a great time to use one of the online translation sites, like AltaVista's Babel Fish. You can run the entire page through and get the gist of what the site is all about. The translation quality is pretty low (which is why you should never use machine translation for your website), but you can get a general idea of what they're talking about.

[pmkpmk]

And it gives a funny break in office life.

[bill]

:) Yes, the comic relief is an unintended side-effect of machine translation. Makes you wonder about all those people who put up machine translated sites thinking that they now have a multi-lingual website. LOL.

[pmkpmk]

Let them do it! Consider it as economic social-Darwinism.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

Can't help ya with the Chinese market but here's a quick rap sheet for Korea:

Benchmark:

Portal/search: use NAVER.com as you benchmark. Not Daum.
Community site: cyworld.com (and you must look at the pop-up "mini-hompies"--that's the meat of it).
commercial: www.cokeplay.com
Ecommerse: Gmarket.com
if you need other examples, you have to give me a specific area.

--Pastel colors, media rich, loud, flashy, lots of flash ok (esp. for menus and stuff like that)...ie: Let your designer go wild.

--and when in doubt...opt for "CUTE" style rather than "cool" (and don't be afraid of cutsy characeters either.

--busy is fine...but its gotta very "CLEAN"! ... like lots of CSS and very well layed out.

--Image IS important here....and a poorly designed website (ie: in terms of LOOK) can be taken as 1to1 to your ability and competence. Sure there are examples to the contrary...but generally speaking.

--most common screen resolution: 1024x768

--don't worry about Firefox. no really. just forget it. I had 0% (ZERO) of my visitors (at 50,000 unique/day) using FF.

--its ok to use ENGLISH a lot of english to COMPLEMENT your korean. it makes you look cool and "international".

--all the above is given somewhat more latititude if you are an "obviously US/foreign" company. Depends on the product though. Luxury items, or small items or company site etc...all have differnt levels of tolerance to styling and "english" focus.

--Follow SEO principles as that's just good practice...but don't fret over it....at all. 99.9% of the cases, you can't break into this market on SEO. Google has 1.7% of the search market here...and that's about the only place SEO really gunna work for you.

--be prepared to SPEND (registration fees, ad spend, etc) or else don't expect anything from this market. No way around it for this market, unless you are here on the ground doing guerilla marketing.

--Use : EUC-KR charset. UTF-8 won't cut it.

--do some searches on the Korean market on this forum. I've written plenty about what to do/what's up with the Korean market.

--Koreans are used to the internet at blazing speeds. Make sure you host is kick@ss or get one closer (or IN) korea (asia).

--definitely check out babelfish for a good laugh^^...but that's about it. Its translations for Korean are so bad that I don't even think you get the right idea from it.

Feel free to post more questions about the KRoean market if you have em...but I don't come around here conisistently so you you can pm for my email if you need more immediate help.

good luck!

[GrendelKhan TSU]

depending the content/site of course but...

let me add that I would a Koreanbased web hosting as well.

since things are super fast out here and customers are used to it... hosting outside of korea, hosting with a Korean host DOES show a noticable increase in speed.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Well, what are KR's links like to the outside world, and how cheap and easy would it be to host for KR and the rest of AsiaPac from KR for an English-speaker like me?

I am dabbling expensively with hosting in AU because it was the best I could find...

Rgds

Damon

[GrendelKhan TSU]

Hi,
Well, what are KR's links like to the outside world, and how cheap and easy would it be to host for KR and the rest of AsiaPac from KR for an English-speaker like me?

I am dabbling expensively with hosting in AU because it was the best I could find...

Rgds

Damon

fast fast fast. I hosted a site here for US users and they said they couldn't tell any difference ...alexa used to rate us VERY FAST (or whatever they're highest speed rating was).... so I imagine to the rest of asia would be fine as well.

they are straight-up lightning locally.

prices I find competitive ...perhaps A BIT more expensive than the US. but still reasonable.

the thing that you do have to get used to is that koreans love to package things. so you are kinda forced to deal with there packages and rules much more so than you would with a US host, whom usually is all about giving you all your options. That's just way it works here.

might be a little tougher to get host with English service...but there are ways around that.

if you have information about what requirements you need (in terms of hosting, gbs, server etc) I can give you a better idea of what kind of things are around.