Should marketers adopt cross-cultural approach in marketing communication or attempt to take into account psychological and socio-cultural associations and meanings that different colors convey in various cultures?

Most of the research on color theory has been done in the West and was primarily focused on Western color perceptions. It comes to no surprise that those perceptions differ significantly in the East. Since the color is an integral element of corporate and marketing communications it is important to understand those differences and make necessary adjustments in order to induce desired moods and emotions, which in turn, will help influencing consumers’ perceptions and behavior.

In this post we’ve pulled together information from several sources: article by MUBEEN M. ASLAM in Australian Journal of Marketing Communications (Vol. 12, No. 1, 15–30, March 2006); A Look into Color Theory in Web Design by Sixrevisions.com and Color Branding: The Meanings Behind Colors by Everyjoe.com.

Let’s start looking at each of the main colors:

Red

Western perception: Masculine, Love, Lust, Fear, Anger

Chinese perception: Love, Happiness, Luck

Summary: while powerful and strong, red also carries some negative connotations in Western culture. For Chinese, however, red is almost universally associated with the positive and good taste;

Yellow

Western perception: Happiness, Energy, Jealousy

Chinese perception: Pure, Good taste, Royal, Authority

Summary: yellow is perhaps the second most culturally important color after red for the Chinese. Historically, red & gold (yellow) were the colors associated with royalty;

Green

Western perception: Growth, Harmony, Good taste, Lack of experience

Chinese perception: Pure, Reliable, Happy

Summary: green has been extensively used in web design and remains popular across all the cultures, one of the “safest” colors in marketing design;

Blue

Western perception: High quality, Trust, Dependability, Coldness

Chinese perception: High quality, Trustworthiness

Summary: universally perceived as a “color of trust”, blue remains the most popular design choice for corporate sites across the continents, excellent fit for health products;

Purple

Western perception: Authority, Power, Sophistication, Luxury, Feminine (lighter), Sadness (darker)

Chinese perception: Expensive, Luxury, Love

Summary: there are definite similarities in the perception of purple across most of the cultures and it remains a popular choice for designs reflecting sophistication and high value;

Black

Western perception: Expensive, Elegance, Sophistication, Fear, Grief

Chinese perception: Expensive, Powerful

Summary: for the Chinese, black doesn’t carry the same negative association common in Western cultures (death, unknown) which may complicate its usage to fit both markets.

White

Western perception: Purity, Happiness, Innocence, Cold, Distant

Chinese perception: Death, Mourning

Summary: perception of white couldn’t be more different between Western and Eastern cultures. While gaining popularity in modern design in the West, it should be used with caution for the Chinese audience;

The post Color Perception Considerations in Marketing Design for Chinese Market first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Color Perception Considerations in Marketing Design for Chinese Market appeared first on Sampi.co.

Loading speed is one of the most important metrics of a website performance and is directly linked to bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave rather than continuing on to view other pages within the same site) and search engine ranking. Typically, if takes more than 5 seconds to load a page, a visitor would be most likely to move on. Loading time within 2 seconds is considered to be the optimal.

Not surprisingly, website loading speed in China is also a major factor in website ranking with search engines like Google or, in China’s case Baidu.

Unfortunately, even if your website is loading fast in your main market such as US or Europe, it is almost certain that it will be slower in China. There are two main reasons for it: website that are physically hosted outside of China have to pass the “Great Chinese Firewall” – a set of censorship methods setup by Chinese authorities and designed to restrict internet access to websites hosted on foreign servers. The process slows down data transfers and, ultimately, affects the loading speed of foreign based websites.

How to Test Website Loading Speed in China

I’ve personally tried several of the tools that are often recommended but found the results highly unstable or plain unreliable. First the tools that are, in my opinion, don’t do a very good job. Then, at the end, there is the one that I recommend.

WebPageTest.org

This is quite popular but clearly outdated tool which is obvious from the old-fashioned design. One plus, however, is that it allows selection of different browsers to test: Chrome, Firefox, IE etc. Unfortunately, for China there is just one choice – Shanghai. This can be completely inadequate as the loading speeds across China vary quite a bit.

Last time I tried, it got stuck on me and this was all I got:

Conclusion: not recommended

Gomez Networks

This is a very basic tool, although with slightly more choices for the cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Xian. Not a particularly exciting interface and doesn’t test HTTPS (only HTTP):

Conclusion: still too limited

Dotcom-Monitor.com

This tool has a much better designed interface and it allows selecting multiple locations and test them simultaneously. However, the results I got while testing Baidu.com loading in China didn’t make any sense – 4.5 sec to load the number one China’s website in Shanghai? I don’t think so.

Conclusion: unreliable

Site 24×7

This modern looking tool allows testing with several cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Qingdao. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow to run simultaneous tests but one by one. However, when testing website loading speed in China, the results were much more believable: Baidu’s loading time in Shanghai was 0.6 sec. Also, the tools shows some useful breakdown of loading time for different site elements:

Conclusion: acceptable but not the best

CE Cloud 360 by Qihoo

This is the tool that is local to China. It is free to use and run by Qihoo-Haosou, one of the most popular Chinese search engines. The only drawback of this one is that it is entirely in Chinese, otherwise it’s perfect.

CE Cloud not only tests the site from every province and major Chinese city but gives a color coded map of China. Hovering over a map shows a more detailed info for each location and there is a report shown at the table below with even more data.

This is by far the best tool out there for testing website loading speed in China.  Its straight forward interface ensures that even someone with zero Chinese skills can use it just fine.

Conclusion: the best

The post How to Test Website Loading Speed in China first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post How to Test Website Loading Speed in China appeared first on Sampi.co.

First of all,  Baidu.com is by far the most poular search engine in China with somewhere between 60 to 80% of the search engine market. With Google at only around 3% and Yahoo with Bing at ~0.5% each of the entire market, Baidu is clearly a place to be for a business seeking to reach Chinese audience.

One crucial prerequisite is required to start PPC campaign on Baidu is having your site written in Simplified Chinese. It also has to be optimized for the Chinese keywords that you are going to use for your campaign.

Second prerequisite is having your Chinese business properly registered as you will have to provide your business license in order to open Baidu PPC account. If the name on a business license is that of a foreigner, he/she will also be required to provide a passport. All the documents, including your passport, have to be translated to Chinese by a professional translation company. You will also be required to sign and seal the contract with Baidu.

Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If it wasn’t enough, the deposit payment has to be arranged through a local Baidu representative by cash. As of now, they don’t accept credit cards and any form of online payments. Why they make it so complex? Probably, such procedure is required in order to comply with the government regulations that are designed to impose a certain degree of control over information available through search engines in China.

Given the complexity of opening an account, I would advise to hire a local expert to get you set up. There are number of companies and freelancers who provide this type of service.

Next, your website must be optimized for your target visitors and be informative enough for them to stay on your page long enough. Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If you intend to sell products directly from your site, it helps to have a live chat option that is common on Chinese e-commerce site. Chinese consumers like to communicate in real time with sales representatives, so having such capability on your site is a good investment.

Now a bit about how your name will be shown in the results. In the past, all the paid search results were displayed first before the organic ones. In the recent years, Baidu started to follow Google’s model with PPC results on the top and on the bottom as well as in the right column with organic ones in between.

Below is the example of Baidu search results. The PPC results are those in the red frames, at the top, bottom and right. Organic (or free) results are shown in the green frame:

The results in the right column are based on the annual subscription at fixed price, the top 3 spot being the most expensive, followed by the next 3 spots and so on. The search  results in each of the 3 spot slot are shown in different order every time the results are reloaded.

In conclusion, while Baidu PPC campaign is similar to Google, the process of opening an account and setting it up is much more complicated. This is besides the fact that you need a local business registration and having your site available in Chinese and optimized to Chinese language keywords. I would strongly advise to hire a local help to get your Baidu PPT campaign setup properly and going smothly.

The post Pay-Per-Click Campaigns in China first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Pay-Per-Click Campaigns in China appeared first on Sampi.co.