Reasons of Web failure in China
I've discussed previously regarding China and how Yahoo, Google, and even Facebook failed to win over the chinese markets. Well, my friend and colleague Mohamed Nanabhay just blogged about a session "Economist Intelligence Unit, China" of media08 conference which he was one of the speakers.
Well, according to the speaker Jonathan Haagen, All of the Western companies failed miserably to sustain its position in Asia (especially China) and that is largely due to design issues. Apparently, Chinese sites fullfils its white space with indepth navigation as well as bling-bling graphic animations... while, for example, Google page looks too simplified which tricks the Chinese / Asian that this site has nothing to offer.
And actually, the interesting part is that the Chinese are more likely to click than type to obtain what they need (I guess web 3.0 won't be that successful in far east Asia).
Nanabhay also mentioned in his post the other major reasons of failure:
- localisation/partnerships
- top executives are entrepreneurs
- Western companies just can’t bend the rules like domestic companies can.
But let me add to the list is that the Chinese government is totally bias against foriegn companies when it comes to its own local start-ups. Check my blog post about how Yahoo got sued for music piracy while Baidu didn't as an example of gov't bias.
So.. You better be Chinese to start something in China.. otherwise, Good luck!
Powered by Qumana
