Google Korea plans a major facelift for its main page in December, displaying media content such as news and entertainment, photos, popular blog entries, alternative searches and other items of interest upfront.
Compare the current Google Korea page
with Naver's
and Daum's
(both of which have animation and videos) and you'll see the huge difference. The article continues:
Naver (www.naver.com), the country's most popular Web site, has a 66 percent share of the search market, followed by Daum (www.daum.net), which has a 20 percent share, according to the figures. Nate (www.nate.com) is also gaining a larger chunk of the traffic after absorbing the popular Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) social networking services.
Google Korea officials stress that a heavier Google site wouldn't result in a slower user experience. Perhaps, the bigger question is whether the effort to be more like Naver, Daum and Nate is the right option for Google Korea to be more widely used.
``When Web portals add more features and make their main pages more complex, this usually leads to slower loading time. However, the newer version of Google's Korean Web page will be quick and sophisticated at the same time,'' a Google Korea official said.
The new Google Korea's (www.google.co.kr) main page will have the Google logo and search box pulled up from its current central position to make room for the categories of ``blogs,'' ``people'' and ``hot issues.''
I have Naver as my homepage mostly because I think it's much better for finding Korean information (maps, encyclopedia articles, news, 등), and because I like the dictionary. I'd like to see a regional breakdown of what portals people use, though, because I don't recall the last time I saw somebody in Jeollanam-do using Naver. (I guess Daum is more anti-establishment, or whatever).
Industry analysts believe that the popularity of Daum's online debate section, Agora, which emerged as the seedbed for anti-government bloggers amid the controversy over U.S. beef imports, is helping the portal revive its once-dying rivalry with Naver.
``Agora has undoubtedly helped Daum improve its brand image and that is resulting in the increase in search traffic," said Jeong Woo-cheol, an analyst from Mirae Asset Securities, pointing out that Naver's timing and range of decline in search share coincide with Daum's rise.
But one reason Naver has been able to succeed is because of it's "walled garden" approach, which means running a Google search in Korean won't reveal anything contained in Naver's encyclopedia or popular Q&A section. Here's a bit from an article from OhmyNews, found via from a post "Naver vs. Google" from A Year in Mokpo in 2007, about why Google has such a small market share:
A prevalent theory in Korean dotcom circles is that Google failed to impress demanding Korean customers with its lousy service. This is at least what Naver and other major local portals want Koreans to believe.
Choi Mi Jung, who leads Naver's "Knowledge Man" service, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia built by the spontaneous participation of Netizens, scoffs at the sloppy interface and unfriendly way Google's Korean site presents its search results. "It is how meticulously their service was designed that made the difference," she says.
However, the real reason behind Google's difficult path in Korea is that its highly praised search technology was rendered practically useless in the Korean language sphere when major portals decided to block Google search robots from crawling around the content they hold, industry observers universally note.
One effect I've noticed from this "walled garden," as the article calls it, is that if I'm looking for something---a picture, a video, a particular topic in the news---and I can't find it on Naver, there's a good chance a search on Daum, on another portal, or even through Google will turn something up.
Anyway, this is all pretty timely considering the conversation going on in the comment section to the post "What was wrong with ifriendly.kr?" People are talking about the different preferences of Koreans and non-Koreans when it comes to websites. Stevie Bee writing about GMarket:
It looks like an explosion in a GIF factory. Do they actually have qualified designers working for them? What sort of tasteless, clueless lackwit would lead the design of a site like that?
and again:
Honestly, the next time you're with him, sit him down at a computer, open Internet Explorer (obv) and go to gmarket.co.kr and ask him to give you an explanation. Ask him to account for the presence of 20+ animated GIFs, flickering far too quickly to glean any sense from them. Ask him to account for the floating fucking sidebar. Ask him to account for the seeming lack of any sort of prioritizing or organization of information. And then give him a good hard clip around the ear from me.
From David tz, who teaches "the head of strategic marketing at Gmarket and the head of Human Resourse at Auction":
An eyesore to who? A Korean or a person used to Google minimalism? A lot of those animated gifs are graphics provided by the companies selling products on Gmarket. It's not the complete fault of the designers of Gmarket. It's also mostly a Korean design aesthetic (ever seen a flyer for a nightclub? same thing). To a Korean, it's awesome, to a person who has grown up with Google, it's an eyesore and let's face it, Gmarket is not designed with you in mind-- eBay is.
. . .
Having worked as a Graphic Designer in Canada for 10 years, and 6 years here in Korea, I can assure you that the differences are like night and day. Korean clients want busy and garish designs and every single time I design something the way I was taught, schooled in the Western aesthetic, my designs get rejected. As soon as I take the same design and make it ugly and busy, I get a nice fat paycheck. Gmarket is in much the same position. It's nothing without the companies selling products and they're the one providing those awful gif animations. All the Gmarket designed graphics are actually static images.
. . .
From This Is Me Posting:
I think my brain just exploded from looking at that Gmarket site for more than 10 seconds.
Here's the GMarket site, by the way. And from justin:
you guys are missing the whole point...
websites are designed as so because it caters to the "KOREANS".
they have little or no interest in bringing westerners to their site.. (especially sites like gmarket..i mean who buys it there when you have sites like ebay here in the states)...so you guys are the MINORITY and no company can satisfy every single one of their potential customers.
so as far as designs go...you should accept it as a cultural difference rather than as an indication of poor aesthetic decision...
Browse the rest on your own.
14 comments:
That's rather unfortunate. Now when I randomly get redirected to google.kr I'll be bombarded with information I don't want nor did I ask for. But I guess as long as they don't have flash ads then it's fine with me.
Justin's last comment makes total sense. We are in fact the minority, and I guess it does come down to a cultural difference of aesthetics and marketplace demands.
Koreans are bred on kimchi as much as they are bred on this type of design, and no amount of complaining from us will change anything soon, methinks. It matters not how high and mighty we think of our own opinions on this subject.
I think this is debate has more meat in a sociological sense, rather than an aesthetic sense. I mean, compare the hustle and bustle of a Korean street market to the gmarket site, and it all makes sense. Koreans sell shoes, donuts and mops on the side of the road, often from barely more than a cardboard box. Hell, I've even seen whole tables being sold on the side of the road. All of these stalls are randomly strung about the streets in a way that resembles Korean internet site designs. Maybe it's the "hidden treasure" feel the Koreans want as they buy their items online and offline. Or maybe I am rambling too much late at night...hehe.
It would also be worth mentioning both Gmarket and Auction are owned by eBay.
eBay- designed for westerners in a western design aesthetic
Gmarket & Auction- designed for Koreans (and other Asians) in an Asian design aesthetic
All owned by the same company.
and to paraphrase-- you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all the time.
Ryan.G - I don't think Justin's comment does make total sense, as it happens. There is a difference between as 'aesthetic' and well-functioning design. It is wrong-headed to say that 'we Westerners' can't properly perceive the qualities and flaws of Korean website design on account of our not being Korean. If, for example, I spend five minutes looking for something on my university's website (having switched, of course, to Internet Explorer) and once those five minutes are up, not only have I not found it, but I now have seven browser windows open, that is not an 'aesthetic'; it is bad design. If I am befuddled and intimidated by the utter morass of supplementary information that confronts me after a Naver search, that is not an 'aesthetic', either.
I am disappointed that Google is opting for a more scattergun content approach in Korea, but I suspect that they are clutching at straws. Their usual approach isn't winning them many visits and they assume that it is some fundamental cultural difference. I think it is actually more the case that Koreans have been weaned on bad design. The internet in Korea has developed in isolation, and has been dominated by large corporate interests. Perhaps it is that Koreans are so used to crass, suffocated, impractical site design that they can imagine it no other way.
@Steve
Now you're splitting it into 2 different subjects. On one hand, we're talking about how it looks and you're talking about how it works. Both of which are abysmal.
Most of us never get to the point of bitching about how it works, because it looks so shitty we can't figure out where to begin. Organization of a site is a part of design, that's true, but I don't think that's the part most of us are talking about here.
David - the two things are very closely related. We don't simply look at websites, we use them. Throughout the discussion, I have spoken about the two aspects as one. With web design perhaps more than any other type of design, form absolutely follows function. My criticism of Gmarket and the like hasn't solely been that it is ugly, but rather that its ugliness is ugliness because it supplants its usability. I haven't criticized colour schemes or photo choices - I have only criticized those points of design that make the site a pain to use. This is why I have avoided speaking of (and have been critical of others speaking of) a Korean 'aesthetic'. If these sites actually had a Korean 'aesthetic' (whatever THAT might be...), but worked well, I would have no complaint at all.
they are closely related in that they are both design, but one is a technical matter and one is a aesthetic matter. It rare for graphically-minded person to also be a technical wiz
And if I recall correctly, you wanted me to smack the gmarket dude upside the head for having so many animated gifs causing you a headache. Hence the discussion being skewed towards the anesthetics.
I agree with you that they need to work together on both aspects of the usability and GUI of most websites in Korea, but from my experience from both sides of the coin, as a graphic designer and as a website programmer, it's a very rare thing, even in North America that I do both jobs on the same website. Usually I'm given a list of the graphics needed for any given page programmed by the techs and I just do my job. If I think something doesn't work right, I may mention it to the programmer and most times they'll change it, but this is Korea. How many times has a NES teacher told their co-teacher or hakwon owner something isn't working right and actually seeing some results? Try the same thing in a corporate culture here and Gmarket is the result.
That's why I spend a lot of time teaching business culture differences to these people at Gmarket and Auction, because it's clashing with the requests from the CEOs of eBay. Their English is fine, but they're having a hard time adjusting to the way their western counterparts (and bosses) do things.
I don't doubt that it's an issue of organization. That's why I mentioned earlier that the design is badly led. As we both know, that's an issue that is endemic in Korean business. And if you go back to my original comments about you giving your friend at Gmarket a cuff about the lughole, my tirade started with animated GIFs, but moved on from there to bad organization and pointless technical fripperies. And my problem with the animated GIFs stems partly from the fact that they flip images too quickly to be useful. (Also, you have to wait for them all to load, which looks amateurish and slapdash, and also, no self-respecting web designer has made animated GIFs a principle feature of a website since the turn of the century, but anyways...)
I don't for one minute think that there is just one guy designing the site, so it is somewhat moot that the aesthetics and the back-end of the site are different skillsets. However, the two most definitely are inextricably linked, which is why the design, being a team effort, has to be powerfully and capably led. This probably brings us to the nub of the problem.
Hey, look at that. I'm quotable.
Thanks, dude.
Oh- There is a ENG Ver. of Gmarket!
http://global.gmarket.co.kr
The Korean Google will be a big change from the simple look we're accustomed to. (I sometimes wonder why companies like Google or Apple even bother trying for the Korean market, considering how many changes they have to make and how much resistance they face).
But Google looks to be the exception among US search pages, not the norm. Yahoo is nearly as crowded as Naver.
http://www.yahoo.com
A student of mine worked with the masterminds of Naver back in university as a PhD student. Yes, they block Google search crawlers and so Naver wins. Google is rubbish for searching anything in Korea. As a consequence Korea remains isolated from the global internet world. My students at this IT company don't like it, but it's the commercial reality of Navers control.
Interesting view. Still, there are more Koreans who do not like Gmarket's ugly user interface. I think the only reason why the online mall has won such a success is that it provides millions of goods at most competitive prices. "I bought this at Gmarket" means economical shopping in Korea.
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