News Portal Website Design in China

I found its interesting that all the popular news portal website are designed to be very busy and have lots of pop-up ads and flash/gif adds on the page.

Here are three screen shots of the top three most popular portal sites in China:

1. www.sina.com.cn
   
   
   
   Two pop-ups, lots of flash/gif ads around the window. Very busy news headlines.
   
2. www.sohu.com
   
   
   
   No pop-ups, less ads than sina, still tons of news headlines and search engine options, etc. Very busy designed page.
   
3. www.163.com
   
   
   
   Three pop-ups including one full-screen ads. Many floating ads around the page. Also has tons of news, search and ads headlines in same fonts and weight on the page, i.e. no visual design.

All this pages are very annoying. In fact, as a regualar visitor of those sites, I seldom (almost never) click any of those ads. And only read ome particular parts on the page to get information I want. I wonder why all of them ignoring the basic usability standards? Is this because those usability principles don't apply to Chinese audience (but then why myself, as a Chinese, hate it?) ? Or, designers in China don't agree with usability principles? Are these kind of design only appearing in Mainland China or in all the Chinese communities? What do other international protal web site do in China? What does yahoo do for Chinese audiences and western ones? Let us see yahoo.com first:

Yes, clear and simple. No pop-ups and redundant ads.

yahoo China:

Hoo..., seems better then the three we have seen before. No pop-ups at least. But, still, a bit busy and disorganized on showing all the news.

How about yahoo Hong Kong then?



Much better! No ads, news and information are clearly organised!

Yahoo Taiwan?

Ok, not so bad. Cuter than Hong Kong's. Also clear and neat.

So I'm confused. Why all for Chinese audiences, but have so much different design style? Are Chinese people in Hong Kong and Taiwan more western than those in Mainland China? Maybe yes to some extent, but not in this case. Because, let's see two other examples.

1. www.wenxuecity.com
   
   
   
   Wenxuecity is a Chinese portal site in American. Their target audiences, as I understand from their contents, are Chinese people all over the world, especially, in overseas. However, also many ads around the page and some times has pop-ups. But the news and information are well-organised, you can easily find what you want to see.
   
2. www.newstarweekly.com
   
   
   
   This one used to be my favorite one. It's hosted in Canada, and focuses on Chinese comunity in Canada. Before, it has very clear news headline, with also links to popular forums. It was even better than Yahoo English's design. However, this summer, they changed the interface design. Many ads occupy the page. You have more headlines on the page, but half of them are useless.

So pitty! As half of the population in this world, we can't find a good designed news portal site! I have no other choices, suffering from all those pop-ups and flashing ads to read news in my own language!