One of the topics I found really interesting that we talked about in class was web design around the world. I’m fortunate to have a group full of students from international backgrounds, ranging from Italy, Russia, China, and Canada. In class, we compared the website for Auchan, a global grocery chain.

We found that in China, there was a use of red and animal imagery. The design was also surprisingly clean in comparison to the other countries. Since Christmas is not a big holiday in China, the site design didn’t feature it.

The Russian site was more marketed towards families, featuring products of children’s toys in the sliders. The main slider has an image of Santa to celebrate Christmas.

 

I recently came across this article, “Why Japanese Web Design is so Different,” and immediately thought about the discussion we had in class. In the past, I’ve browsed Japanese sites and noticed that the design was always very crowded and text-based. This baffled me because Japan is a country that is so advanced in its technology, yet so outdated in its websites.

The author breaks down Japanese web design to several factors:

1) Linguistic Differences

• Unlike English, few characters contain a whole lot of meaning
• They can’t use emphasis with italics or capital letters

2) Cultural Differences

• Consumer behaviour – Japanese culture is quite risk-adverse and people prefer a lot of technical information about products versus big pretty images
• Website design reflects the urban landscape of how cities such as Tokyo are packed with huge flashy billboards

3) Technical Differences

• Mobile technology – sites were first designed for the flip phone to fit as much information as possible onto a small screen, but hasn’t advanced with new mobile technology
• Web fonts – there are a lack of web fonts for Asian alphabets, so they don’t have much to choose from

Sources:

Why Japanese Web Design Is So… Different