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Design and Internet Marketing for the Asian Market -Dyanna Culp The Asian-Pacific rim is the world's largest geographic Internet market. Home to 3.56 billion people, more than half the world's total population, millions of new users are heading online each month. The technology meccas of Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong have exploding online populations. China and India are not as technologically advanced, but web use is spreading like wildfire. The New York-based eMarketer research firm indicates that within the next few years, China’s population of 1.3 billion could become the world's largest single Internet market. Asian Countries bypass U.S. in percentage of population online. Studies released in late 2003 showed that Asian Countries had bumped the U.S. off the top 10 for online population percentages. By November 2003 South Korea had dramatically climbed to fourth place, Hong Kong ranked seventh (The city alone- not all of China) and Taiwan ninth. The top potential Asian markets. The big players in the Asia- Pacific market are China (over 34 million online), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and India. For the moment, English is still the world’s dominant web language, followed by Chinese then Japanese. But eMarketer indicates that Chinese could become the Internet's new dominant language.
Source Global Reach: full detailed table at http://www.glreach.com/globstats Please note that the table above indicates figures by “Language,” not by Country. For instance “Chinese” refers to the number of individuals online that speak Chinese, not the number of online individuals in the country of China.
Global rises in DSL give webmasters more design options. In the past we had to take into account slow foreign dial up speeds when designing international websites. With a larger broadband audience we can now employ more sophisticated techniques including Flash, higher quality graphics, streaming video, and interactive user options. China is now the world’s largest DSL market with 10.95 million high speed subscribers. Japan is 2nd with 10.27 million, the U.S. 3rd at 9.12 million, followed South Korea 4th with 6.43 million. Critical data for webmasters- the latest estimated total for worldwide DSL users is now ~ 64 million.
The Tribulations of Asian web design. Language: The differences between Anglo-Saxon and Asian languages is immense, a professional translator is a must. Even standard font uses are different. For instance, the fonts used on Yahoo China CSS are: MS Song, ËÎÌå, and Beijing. Graphics: Beware of using Dragons. In Japan they must always face outward, but in Korea an outward facing dragon is bad luck. Psychology studies indicate that color accounts for up to 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product or service. The global melting pot has somewhat diminished the strength of cultural specific color preferences, but in both the east and west certain colors still have strong associations. Color preferences are not universal and vary for each Eastern culture. Before designing a new site research should be done on color associations for the target market country. In China, and most of the East, red is viewed as the color of prosperity but red represents anger in Japan and red text is considered unlucky in Thailand, gold- strength and wealth, yellow- prosperity and luck, purple- wealth, green-generally a bad omen, black represents knowledge or can be evil. In China white is the traditional color of mourning, but many Koreans wear white clothing from birth to death. In Korea white represents purity, innocence, morality and expresses the Buddhist ideal “come empty, return empty.” U.S. corporate websites almost always use blue colors because in general Americans associate blue with trust and stability. To achieve the same trust and stability association from South Koreans your site would need to use pink or other pastel colors.
General East Color Rules:
THE CHINESE MARKET Over 114 million are online in China. Some 2003 reports gave estimates of 34 million, but a detailed study issued in November 2003 radically raised the figure to 114 million. The DSL Forum predicts that by 2006 that figure will more than double to 250 million online. A big reason for the explosion is government funding. The Chinese government is pouring billions into networking gear to help China's Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. become international rivals of Cisco Systems and Nortel. Chinese Search Engines: Hot news in China is the attempts of home grown Chinese Search Engines to combat the Google invasion. In February Google began offering its classic PPC Ad Words in Chinese language across both its own Chinese site and numerous acquired “partnerships”. The estimated worth of the Chinese Search Engine market is projected to be in the $100 million dollar range (£55.4m) for 2004, and this may be a radical under estimate. The top Chinese engines are Sina www.sina.com (in talks with Google), NetEase www.163.com (a Google partner), Baidu www.Baidu.com (seen as a prime Google take over target), Sohu http://it.sohu.com , Yahoo China http://cn.yahoo.com, and Zhongsou www.Zhongsou.com a strange engine with animated pigs across the page top. Over 32% of online Chinese buy goods or services on the web. Internet use in China occurs more often at home (61% of the time) than at work (48% of the time online). The typical Chinese surfer is a well paid, well educated young male. The majority of online users earn much more than the average Chinese salary. The Chinese are particularly concerned about web security issues so any site targeting this audience should emphasize privacy and security measures for online transactions.
THE JAPANESE MARKET Japan recently held its first Search Engine Expo in Tokyo. Recognizing the immense potential of the Japanese web market, both Google and Yahoo owned Overture were present at the April 2004 Tokyo Expo. Foreign and Japanese webmasters attended the 1st workshops of their kind on Japanese targeted SEO and Search Engine Marketing. Although all Expo presentations were in Japanese, details can be found (in English) at http://www.idg.co.jp/expo/ses/english/index.html Top Japanese Search Engines include Goo http://www.goo.ne.jp, Infoseek http://www.infoseek.co.jp and Yahoo Japan http://www.yahoo.co.jp . Over two thirds of Japanese web users buy products and services online. Japanese men typically buy software and computer related products. Japanese women shop online for food, clothing, and accessories. Both sexes use the web for buying books and magazines. Reasons given for repeated visits to web sites include: a secure and easy to use shopping cart, a large selection of products, the site clearly identifying its geographic location (preferably Japan or a neighbor country), and low prices.
THE SOUTH KOREAN MARKET In South Korea, nearly 59 percent of the population is estimated to be using the Internet. South Korea has the highest broadband penetration in the world. Home access is widespread and the hottest new social spots called “Bangs” are a form of public Internet cafes. Globally, Korea ranks highest for online population percentages that visit ecommerce websites. NetValue research shows that Korea was also closest to online gender parity with 47.5 percent women and 52.5 percent of its men online. The most popular online activity is online gaming. Korea and Taiwan are two of the world’s largest online gaming markets. Koreans make up 54 percent of the worldwide market, followed by Taiwan at 26 percent. South Korea is closing in fast on Japan and may become the new global capitol of consumer electronics. Companies such as Samsung, Daewoo and LG are becoming major players in markets for everything from cellular phones to DVD players.
South Korean Search Engines:
Rapid changes are splitting the global Internet market into two main camps: the English language and the Chinese. The Asian market is the fastest growing world market for households connecting to the Internet. Asian countries have surpassed the West in both online population percentages and Internet spending. For optimal worldwide penetration companies need a Chinese language mirror site and if possible mirror sites in South Korean and Japanese, the 2nd and 3rd largest Asian language market. The website ecommerce potential is immense and the field of Asian SEO and Internet marketing is poised to explode as the demand for country specific knowledge and Marketing skills increases.
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