Every time I view a Chinese website or a website using Chinese characters (traditional or simplified) I am overwhelmed by the amount of information depicted.

To demonstrate what I mean and analyze it I picked out the website of yahoo for Taiwan and the USA.

You can clearly see that the page of Yahoo USA is offering less information.
So what did Yahoo Taiwan do differently?

• the “sign in – field” is bigger and has more options
• advertising (acer, LG and a housing project)
• less news (above acer ad) and more shopping (shoes, mobile phones, cosmetic)
• when you view the page in your browser you’ll also notice that the Taiwanese site is longer
• less icons

(to only name a few)

I asked myself: Why do they do it that way?
Obviously their customers are different. Consequently does the difference between Chinese and Americans (please excuse my generalization here) dictate the way Yahoo sets up their websites.

And in general it’s a culture difference, because culture is:

“the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning“ Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

If the members of a society use their culture as a “tool” to deal with the world, it is no wonder it should influence the design of websites online.  In the next few posts I will describe some aspects of culture, which are most influential for web design.