Blog
How Colors Affect Purchase Decisions
I have mentioned the importance of color to cross-cultural web design at Six Points in Cross-Cultural Web Design. This blog gives details about how exactly color will affect consumer online behavior - what color for what industry, what color for what website function, what color for what gender, what color for what types of onlin shoppers, etc.
Source from: http://l2thinktank.com/blog/2011/09/infographic-how-colors-affect-purchase-decisions/
Brand entry to China
L2Thinktank recently published an infographic demonstrating status of top brands, non-Chinese brands, doing email marketing in China. Here's the message that might be helpful and suggestive for those international brands who want to find access into the Chinese market:
1. Emails are regularly used by as many as more than 65 percent of the Chinese population.
2. Almost 70% brands provide email opt in while most of them do not take advantage of emails. Less than half of brands follow up with a welcome email. Seventeen percent send out the second email.
3. As few as 35% brands send out emails in Chinese language.
4. 46% Chinese consumers access email through mobiles while NONE of the top brands optimized their emails for smart phones.
5. Chinese consumers are more receptive to email marketing than people in other countries.
I have been considering blogging about email marketing and website mobile application (DAVYIN has experience in lexdex.davyin.com ). For any ideas please comment below.
Six Points in Cross-Cultural Web Design
When an English site is going to develop a Chinese or whatever language site, it is not as easy as to translate the English context into Chinese only. Web design usually differs when the culture switches. Six points are supposed to be necessary and important for web designer’s conception – content, keyword, color, image, layout and connections.
1. Let the content say something!
Content is King for search engine optimization. High-quality content can bring targeted traffic, turn traffic into loyal users and help achieve your goal. While eighty percent of Internet users speak non-English language, chances are either you need special translation work or that people will use Google Translator. Well-written content is a great plus to translators.
Some web agencies provide translation services, like DAVYIN. We have native English, French and Chinese employees here. Slang,
idioms and abbreviations could be easily handled. And because they have years of experience in this, the translation is sure to be accurate.
2. Don't forget the keywords.
If you do not care improving local performance and adding exposure to local market, leave the keywords alone. Or keywords must not be forgotten.
I would even suggest not using machine translation. Do find a professional who speaks the targeting language and fully understands what you say. He or she knows better than machines how to express the exact meaning.
3. Have you noticed colors?
Color tells different between cultures. Red tends to give an energetic first impression to Europeans, while it stands for purity to Indians and celebration and power to Chinese. Regarding web design, a lot of western fashion sites like using black extensively. This can be hardly seen at Chinese sites since pure black relates to death and burden in Chinese culture.
Web designers thus have to learn where the target audience is from and see if the color scheme is likely to resonate as you wish.
4. Use image correctly.
A sexy woman in VOGUE cover may be considered offensive by Chinese people.
And if VOGUE China copies from VOGUE UK, having a national-famous Irish singer as the cover girl, guess how many copies can be sold out?
Just take care of images.
5. Layout matters.
Technically, well-formed CSS and UTF-8 character encoding can ease language switching.
Have a look at spaces. Chinese paragraph often takes up less space than the English version. Meanwhile three-column layout is more popular among Chinese websites than two-column ones.
Horizontal navigation bar across has also been employed to avoid inconveniences for right-to-left readers.
6. Same network connection?No.
Some countries have very fast broadband internet access while some do not. So background music, Flash and large-size graphics may not apply to all. While these items are attractive to visitors, designers just need to discuss with their clients and balance between access and patience.
Please your clients on the Internet first, and you could possibly get returned. Just start by respecting their cultures and implementing web design distinctions!
DAVYIN Host September Drupal Meetup
Drupal meetup, hosted on the second Wednesday evening of every month will be at Davyin’s office this month on Sep 14th. This event is designated for Drupal lovers to share ideas and stories about new technologies and applications. ( See event announcement at Drupal site.)
The meeting includes:
- Participant self-introduction;
- Light rounds – new ways of bricking and theming;
- Presentations on topics which is supposed to last longer (30 minutes or other);
- Job opportunities and other.
For now Edxxu from INsReady has applied to discuss about Barcode Module.
And Haibo from DAVYIN is going to share his knowledge of entities, one of the biggest changes at the architecture level of Drupal 7.
Let’s just wait and see.
8 Pointers on Web Design
Based on our years of web design experience and recent frustrations from working on a few large projects, we would like to share some of our professional advice and expertise when it comes to designing a good website for clients. If you want to have a website designed with a clean but flashy look, below are some tips for what-not-to-do:
1. Don't Look Cheap
Cheap design gives a cheap corporate image. A website's like a woman, she'll want more shoes, bags… don't keep her on a budget. The better she dresses, the better she looks on your arm. A good website costs money and the best websites have a whole team just managing the site.
2. Know Your Target Market
The Lady Gaga look for your site won't sell it with a Reggae crowd. In other words don't put Flash and creative effects for a site thats designed for 40 year-old engineers. Keep it simple to their culture and generation.
3. Garbage In = Garbage Out.
Make sure each page in your website has something valuable to offer. Valuable content is key, enough said.
4. Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity
Don't distract your visitors with an overkill of blinking or scrolling text, animated images, or worse, auto-loading sound. Keep it simple and clean.
5. China Bandwidth (Site Performance)
The internet speed in China is slow. There's also the China Firewall. Most users will never get to see those fancy effects and will not wait to see your 10 minute video.
6. Tacky Popups Are a NO
Nobody likes popups. Don't annoy your visitors with pop-up windows. There's enough of those on the internet already. Popups signal a spam site.
7. Have Organized Visibility
Make it easy for site visitors to find what they are looking for. Use menu systems that are visible throughout the site ( Primary Menus, Secondary Menus, Footer Menus) Nobody likes the hassle of finding what they want on your site.
8. Large Image Backgrounds = So Yesterday
Don't use HD image backgrounds, they take a toll on load times. Large image backgrounds scream "amateur" and visitors could see thumbnails or small images and still get the point / information.
How SEO Can Benefit Business
“Build it and they will come” no longer applies in the digital world. Simply having a website isn't enough to guarantee online success. There are millions of websites that look great but don’t bring any return, because they are not found. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines via the natural and unpaid search results, that are based on site’s relevancy.
So why is SEO the recommended way for bringing leads to your website?
Highly Targeted Traffic – SEO can provide laser precision targeting traffic to your site, ensuring possible customers, clients and leads are finding your product or service.
Good Leads - When someone actively seeks out information via typing keywords into a search engine, they are what some call “hot leads” These people are ready to either buy or learn more about a particular product. They have this product in their mind already. This is why conversions via search engine traffic outweigh any other form of marketing.
Brand Awareness – The importance for any company’s long term success is to ensure a broad awareness of its brand. Higher natural rankings build trust among searchers (as oppose to ‘spammy’ looking ads) and generates brand awareness and recognition.
Low Cost – Comparatively you will spend much less than on your other marketing efforts, with a greater return on investment. Unlike PPC (pay per click) advertising, SEO does not stop the minute you stop paying - after you establish positions in search engines, you keep getting free traffic
SEO is an investment that many businesses should seriously consider. Offer a good products, get it in front of your targeted market and you’ll reap the benefits!
China the largest internet market in the world
Just how big is the internet market in China today? According to CNNIC, the number of internet users in China doubled from 253 to 384 million alone in 2009. By the end of last year, there were 420 million users on the internet. This means 29 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are net users (that is 50% more than the entire population in U.S.) What is more interesting is where Chinese people access the internet. 45 percent access the net on handheld mobile devices since China’s cellular providers started offering 3G services a few years back, 42 percent live in rural areas where computers are hard to obtain, 50 percent have blogs, and an increasing number of users are using the internet for free online viewing of tv shows and movies through sites like YouKu and Tudou.
What does this mean?
It means you should get online! Such a large market inevitably creates new demands for internet businesses in China, particularly for businesses that target e-commerce and SNS sectors.
Ecommerce
If you have products that you want to sell to Chinese consumers, you should consider E-Commerce as a key distribution channel. In most other countries, this means you have a shopping cart on your company’s website. In China, this is not enough. You must also have presence on big ecommerce platforms like Taobao and Alibaba on top of your own website in order to reach out to all potential customers. Today every major corporation is moving online and every renown retailer is moving to e-commerce.
SNS
You already know that china has the largest number of internet users worldwide. You probably know about the increasing popularity of social networks, with millions using Twitter and even more using Facebook. But what you probably don’t know is that social networks such as xiaonei, 51.com, kaixing, are doing better than facebook, myspace combined locally. We came across astonishing statistics while working on some market research for our newest collaboration with GAI to develop China’s next top models social networking platform (www.beautycatwalk.com) as illustrated below:
We believe one reason SNS is doing so well in China is due partly to the young generation netizens. Young teenagers and adults make up the majority of netizens within the country, typically ranging from 10-29 years old. Most of them log on with one purpose: entertainment. In other words, if you can find a way to capture even half of their attention when they surf the net, then you are definitely doing something right.
