Please look at the home page of China’s most-popular website (all of these screen shots are a bit old, but things haven’t changed much). You can click on the image to see it in detail.

Above is the home page of 163.com, showing just what you can see “above the fold” (in other words, without scrolling down).
Now, here’s the above-the-fold home page of an International news site:

For those of you who might argue that 163 is a “portal” and not really a news site, here’s the above-the-fold home page of most popular portal site in the US:

In addition to preferring higher information density per square inch, Chinese readers also seem to prefer higher density per page view. Once again, here’s the home page of Yahoo, showing the entire home page.

Here’s the full-length home page of Sina.com, from the same day:

In case my point isn’t clear, below I’ve placed the full-length web pages of the three sites side-by-side, to scale:

Most International are by now nodding their heads: “Yep. Love those US sites. Much more advanced. Clean, simple design. Not cluttered. Guess those Chinese guys will figure that out sooner or later.”
What’s fascinating is that my Chinese friends have a very different take on the International sites: “They look skimpy, and empty. Where’s all the content?? The home page is just navigation.”
After talking about this issue with many friends, it appears that Chinese and International look at/read websites in very different ways. [To forestall critics, when I say "International " I mean native English speakers and readers who live in America, even though there are obviously many International who don't speak English natively].
While it’s clear that both peoples “scan,” and then only sometimes “read”, the way they scan is very different. Chinese people strongly prefer a density that is far beyond what most International can tolerate. In addition, Chinese people seem to be scanning for keywords (or more precisely “key-characters”), while International   like to read “headlines” (aka short pithy phrases) and look at arresting photos.
So here’s my question: “Do Chinese online users and International online users scan/read web pages differently? if so, why? What does that mean for online business?”
Then I started to think about what might explain the differences online, since they seem to exist only there. Said another way, are there unique “online” circumstances in China that might be influencing home page design?
I think the answer is yes.
In the US, online advertising is (mostly) sold by “page view”. For example, an advertiser buys a certain amount of page views over time. In China, most online advertising is still sold by time-period, as in “buy an ad on the home page for one month.”
Is this the explanation?? If so, does this mean that when (if?) China moves to a per-impression model, home pages will get shorter and less dense? Or has the online audience in China become accustomed to super-high density? If so, then how come newspapers are no longer as dense as they were?
MKT hope you’re starting to find these questions as interesting as we find them. Any ideas or comments please let us know.

MKT SEO Team.