A recent project localising an American website for realise in China got us a bit curious. Does the cultural difference between Western and Chinese translate to how websites are designed? The websites covered in this study are:
- News and Searches:
Google.co.uk & Baidu.com - Online Directory:
Yahoo UK & Yahoo China - Educational Publishers
Pearson & Higher Education Press - Universities:
Harvard University & Peking University - Online Book Store:
Barnes and Noble & Bookuu - Business Studies –
Stanford University & Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business - Business/Financial news
Bloomberg & BizNewsCN
Appearance
The study shown, regardless of website origin, all 14 websites examined has consistently shown a conventional layout. Where the logo is situated on the top left, navigation along top of the page, followed immediately by key content and ends with simple sitemaps at the footer.
Colours
China’s history and culture has long established it’s own set of colour symbolism that varies slightly from that of the west. Therefore when designing a website for China, one should make sure colour chosen fits into it’s culture correctly. One example of website variations for different target audience can be seen from the Peking University website as shown below.
The screen capture on the left (fig 1.1) for the Chinese version of the site shows a clean and simple design with emphasis on the colour blue, which in Chinese Culture represents Trust, Calmness and Relaxation. Where as the screen on the right (fig 1.2) showing the same website in English, focuses its design using dark red, this is to establish a sense of Leadership, Courage and Strength.
A common pattern seen in all website is the use of light coloured background with dark coloured text. (Screen capture of all websites studied can be viewed in Appendix A) The study also shown many of the Chinese websites have a tendency of using shades of blue, as stated above, this is used to help the companies and institutes establish a sense of trust.
Content structure and strategy
To analyse content structure of the 14 selected websites, each were examined in terms of the amount of text (file size), images and links per page as well as loading time. This is to achieve a quantifiable method of understanding how website content differs between the two sides.
The following table shows an overall summary of data collected. A detailed overview of data collected from this study can be seen in below
| Western Websites (Sum) | Chinese Websites (Sum) | |
| File Size | 5568 kb | 9841 kb |
| Links | 2147 | 4190 |
| Images | 307 images | 671 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 12.28 seconds | 91.4 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 61.66 seconds | 83 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 36.97 seconds | 87.2 seconds |
Using the information collected, we have established the following:
- Western websites tend to have a higher text to image radio then Chinese websites, which are often text heavy
- Western websites focuses each page with a smaller amount of content, while Chinese web pages has higher content concentration and many more external links per page
- Chinese websites are in average 154% longer in page length than their Western equivalent sites (Screen captures of tested websites can be seen below)
- Chinese websites tend to have a longer average loading time, tested using both servers from Hong Kong and US
Screen captures for all websites under research
Appendix B
| Google News | Baidu News | |
| File Size | 113 kb | 367 kb |
| Links | 362 | 666 |
| Images | 52 images | 43 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 0.7 seconds | 9.38 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 8.96 seconds | 4.71 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 4.83 seconds | 7.045 seconds |
| Yahoo UK Home page | Yahoo China Home page | |
| File Size | 542 kb | 1.9 MB |
| Links | 170 | 1185 |
| Images | 60 images | 103 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 1.23 seconds | 17.07 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 4.26 seconds | 7.82 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 2.75 seconds | 12.45 seconds |
| Pearson | Higher Education Press | |
| File Size | 388 kb | 685 kb |
| Links | 156 | 250 |
| Images | 7 images | 32 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 1.68 seconds | 9.47 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 2.95 seconds | 8.98 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 2.32 seconds | 9.23 seconds |
| Harvard University | Peking University | |
| File Size | 1.7 MB | 269.3 kb |
| Links | 189 | 26 |
| Images | 43 images | 32 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 1.94 seconds | 9.58 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 21.09 seconds | 5.72 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 11.7 seconds | 9.4 seconds |
| Stanford University | Cheung Kong GSB | |
| File Size | 388 kb | 286.4 kb |
| Links | 111 | 111 |
| Images | 46 images | 24 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 1.97 seconds | 6.12 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 3.1 seconds | 12.7 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 2.53 seconds | 9.41 seconds |
| Barnes and Noble | Bookuu | |
| File Size | 1.7 MB | 6 MB |
| Links | 723 | 1729 |
| Images | 168 images | 410 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 2.93 seconds | 29.65 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 16.17 seconds | 36.97 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 9.55 seconds | 33.31 seconds |
| Bloomberg | BizNewsCN | |
| File Size | 737 kb | 334.3 kb |
| Links | 436 | 223 |
| Images | 53 images | 27 images |
| Loading time (From US) | 1.83 seconds | 10.13 seconds |
| Loading time (From HK) | 5.13 seconds | 6.1 seconds |
| Average Loading time | 3.48 seconds | 8.12 seconds |