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US Website TOP 10 mistakes in China - [中国|China]
再接再厉转载一篇译言网友 YeeDing对《美国网站在中国失败的10大思路性执行错误》的翻译稿，中文原文作者是品牌管理专业人士龚文祥
Once again, introduce you another translation work from yeeyan by YeeDing. The orignial Chinese version was authored by Gong wenxiang a brand management insider. This is a very valuable paper for foreign Internet companies who want to be a success in Chinese market!US Internet companies' top 10 mistakes in China
Our college textbooks are filled with the case studies of Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google. The few translated internet books displayed in the bookstore are also full of successful US websites stories about how user friendly their product is and how advance their technologies are. However, we see complete difference in reality: US websites are usually quite inadequate in their China development. They are generally unsuccessful. In the mean time, those successful Chinese competitors have never followed any US-style routines. As the matter of fact, they even often do business in the complete opposite way.
Although China press world began to question the general failure of these US websites, their analysis are shallow, vague, and ineffective without touching the root cause. I have partied with many marketing people from top US internet companies. Based on my personal observation, they fail mainly because of the wrong concept of doing things. They have good strategies, smartest staffs, adequate cash, best product, and greatest technology. However, without changing their business concept, there is hardly any chance to create one single successful website in China.
1. Prefer elite user's penny despite general public's fortune vs. sweep both white-collar's wealth and everyone's pennies
It is a vital mistake from those US internet sharks which they haven't realized yet. All the executives are from HK or TW; all their employees are seating in the slick office building in Shanghai. Their visions are limited. White-collars and top 500 corporations are primary target customers of their product design, website style, and marketing promotions. They never consider general public nor small businesses.
Their education, aptitudes and vision lead to the exclusion of the grass root at heart. They often ignore those kids in the internet cafes, nor those internet users from thousands of small towns (Note these two groups already account for more than half of China's internet population). Even the most generally beloved TV show, "Super Girls"(the Chinese remake of American Idols), is deeply contempt by them.
They announce their elegant by knowing only gmail and msn, but not 163 nor QQ. From the bottom of their hearts, they would rather go out of business instead of making a no grade website meeting public demand.
The hope of making a mainstream website will be doomed without meeting public demand.
2. Rather be forgotten instead of be hated vs. be hated but never be forgotten
The former one is the philosophy of US websites, while the latter one is what Mr. Ma, Yun(CEO of Yahoo China) and Mr. Zhou, Hongyi (ex CEO of 3721.com and Yahoo China) believe.
US sites are afraid of negative press news. However, Chinese sites only worry about not having negative news. They believe that the best promotion is to let thousands of people "hate" you.
Getting 10 times higher salary than those Chinese rivals, the US website staffs fear losing their jobs. They'd rather have no performance instead of make mistakes. They take no risk and keep low key. They are timid, polite, and well educated, but not ready to fight. At the end, they are often bloody beaten by their energetic straightforward competitors.
3. Long term strategies vs. Quick wins
US websites always have a long term plan. They spend lots of money on all kinds of useless marketing research and paperwork. They also plan for the many years in the future, do strategy, and set budget. It’s not easy to change after all these plans. Anyway since they have money and talented staff already, they can afford to progressively plan and develop. Though Internet is an abnormal industry, it doesn't work in the same way as those prestigious international companies who plan to lost for 10 continuing years as part of the overall strategy. Both ebay and yahoo have accepted their failures in China. If this is the destiny, it would be better to stand up and fight from the beginning instead of moving slowly.
Many competitors in China only seek quick wins. Their philosophy is Quick-Straight-Soon. Mr. Ma, Yun (founder of alibaba.com, who took over yahoo China) used to setup gorilla-style team working in a closed camp, focusing on quickness, doing fast paced small cycles, and correcting mistakes on the run. US sites, on the other hand, usually build perfect plan and budget. If a trash can is not in the budget, it will take more than a month to be approved. It's generally doomed if everything has to be approved by US HQ.
4. Process oriented vs. Goal oriented
I heard that Ma manages his team like gangs. First he sets a target, like: to achieve certain traffic number this year, or to get big registration next year, etc. Next, the entire team fights for the goal by all means. If the target is met eventually, everybody gets a good piece of the rewards. So his team uses whatever the method that may be effective: spyware, bundling, soft porn, and other inappropriate promotion approaches. A typical Chinese-style website doesn’t care about the process at all. Only result matters as long as it doesn't break the law.
However, US websites keep many metrics under lots of regulations. They have to maintain their brand image, keep the fame as an international company, and be professional with all the noble sentiments. They can only seek dozens of the short-term and long-term goals under all these premises.
5. Save user vs. Meet user’s needs
One of few good things which US sites do well in China is more emphasizing on user experience. But they usually over cooked it. If considering too much about users, user friendly design can limit the growth. Chinese Internet users often need not much personal care. They make decisions by their own, but not following yours anyway.
Do you know the real reason why ICQ failed and quitted from China market? Americans paid too much attention on user privacy issue. When they launched the service in China, user could only keep their information on the local computer. If switching to a new computer, in order to best protect user's privacy, all of your previous data are not available. This is perfect for using ICQ on your home computer. However, it's completely unfit for Chinese user. ICQ has never recognized it even after leaving China. However, as the technical contact of ICQ's partner company in China, Mr. Ma, Huateng learned the technology of instant messaging and understood the Chinese users’ habit of getting online in Internet cafes (US employees would never understand what Internet cafes are). So, he made only some minor changes disregarding the so-called privacy protection which is only concerned by those white-collars, and then kicked ICQ out of the China.
6. Applaud with bad return vs. Profit without much praise
Many US sites are well praised in China but can not make money. They all have the amazingly same marketing strategy: hire a 4A advertising company to design a set of elegant advertisement; put ads on subways and bus stations; make some web based ads for the niche market of white-collar; pay big bucks to top 3 portals to distribute the ads; spend a lot to buy google keywords (note they don't use Baidu, since they only see google and msn in their eyes). Everybody likes their ads, but no one visits their websites. Even if there are a few visitors, the cost is way too high. Sometime it costs more than 1000RMB (130$) per new user. And they still found excuses of not having growth on traffic, such as in order to establish brand images, etc.
Chinese competitors forever pursuit traffic as the first priority. They believe the promotion standard of getting one visitor for every penny they spend. Not matter what next, they want to get the users to at least visit their sites. They think that big traffic is the best promotion for brand and all those falsifying brand establishments are useless. The only purpose of marketing is to bring in users, but not products. And they always want to pay less but accomplish more.
US sites normally have the plan to pay 10,000RMB for 100 high-end targeted users. Chinese sites, on the other hand, spend 1,000RMB to recruit 10,000 random customers. However, there are for sure 1,000 high-end users among them. So there is a huge difference between the efficiency. Common sense is so important, but is often forgotten by the smartest people.
7. Passive and gentleman-style vs. proactive and mandatory market promotion
American style marketing strategy is to focus on establishing brands (such as using outdoor ad sign). It’s hard to pull the market forward in that way. Chinese websites seldom do any advertisement solely for their brands. They like pull-style proactive promotions in order to create speculations, direct revenue, and popularity. And in many cases, users are forced to view ads.
Chinese marketing specialist Mr Gong, Wenxing (the author of this article) has studied the difference between Taobo.com and eBay China's advertisement. Both of them use similar banner ads to promote products from their inventory. With the same expense, Taobao is 10 times more productive than eBay China. Why?
Because eBay lists out merchandises like iPod, Zippo, etc. But those are mainly for high end market. Most people don't read English and can not afford them.
Taobao's ads include lots of eye-catching items like sexy underware, spanish fly, and etc. They also automatically pop up their ads on many "trash" websites.
Those returnees working at American sites may not understand these: they would rather invest 100 mils on a clean and fashion advertisement to bring up 10 millions users, but not spend 10 mils on a low-taste advertisement which will be visited by 100 millions users.
If US sites can only get 1/10 advertising efficiency as their Chinese competitors, they are destined to fail. (YeeDing: shouldn’t it be 1/100 instead of 1/10 from the example above, haha?)
8 Email+MSN vs. Phone+Face-to-Face communication
90% of the communication between US site employees are done by emails. And they feel too good to use English. Even a simple matter which can be done within 1 min on the phone will require 10 emails back and force. In many cases, email and msn are not efficient at all. After Mr. Zhou, Hongyi took over the management of Yahoo China, there was a serious conflict between two cultures. Most of the original Yahoo employees use email to communicate with customers and partners, instead of meeting and dinnering with them. After getting rid of those people, Yahoo's business went better.
It's said that in a US based Chinese company, if there is one American in a meeting with 20 or 30 Chinese, everybody will talk English. It's completely not practical. They have to understand that they are doing business in China, so that you have to use Chinese language to communicate.
9. Clean and elegant vs. Crowded and noisy appearance.
By the first look at a website, you can usually guess the origin of the site even without knowing its background. US websites are clean, simple, arrogant but beautiful. They hide the good stuff inside, and believe the concept of "don't be afraid of letting customer find you good stuff". It seems to be the taste of an international company. Although loved by 20% of the hign-end users, 80% of average users will just exit after a quick view of its cold and calm design.
Their Chinese competitors, on the other side, put vivid banners floating around, pile upo all the good stuff into the front page, and disregard the importance of elegant design.
Even today, the ex-Yahoo employees show no respect to hao123.com-a simple to death page with a horrible design of putting tons of links all together. But only a few years ago, Yahoo tried to make a portal with 1 billion bucks, dozens of MBA and returnee, elites from HK and TW. But they were pathetically defeated by a junior high graduate in Guangdong. He single handed created and maintained hao123.com with zero marketing expense. A few years ago, it leads in all PVs, UVs, and advertising metrics way ahead of Yahoo.
10. Hire managerial material with similar background vs. Recruit entrepreneur type of person
US websites focus too much on communication and teamwork during recruiting. So they hire all those stereotypes persons: diligent, careful, cooperative, never messing up punctuation in emails, and making perfect power point presentation. They always prefer candidates from HK, TW, or oversea returnees. They formed a closed circle not letting others in. Therefore, they naturally agree on website style, products and promotions. From management point of view, they only like smooth and easy.
Chinese websites hire any decisive, risk-taking, and hard working type of people. Although they have different skill sets and experiences, they are all full of entrepreneurial spirit. They stretch to the maximums do business aggressively and build winner website.In addition to those big sharks, many smaller US websites perform the same while doing business in China. They spend tens of millions to get barely 10’s of thousands visitor everyday to their sites, but their Chinese competitors can accomplish the same result with only a few hundred of thousands.
It is true that many US websites have huge reputation and fame in China. Their products are also great. Even before they enter the Chinese market, there have already lots of press releases. Who doesn't know eBay or Google? A native Chinese website however has to spend 1 billion to get to the same level. But Chinese Internet market is not about branding yet. It's still in an early but pragmatic phase. It's useless to only talk about abstract concepts. Those who work for US website have to firmly correct these 10 mistakes of their own, and turn the thinking to fit in the Chinese market: first satisfy Chinese customer with their special culture, and do more business development with government. Then, they can expect to see great growth.
谷歌（Google）春运交通图, 暴雪中的“亲民“服务！
Blog：New Silence2008-01-31 21:56:30
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