Every time I present results from our eye tracking study
(as a side note, I just returned from SES Toronto and saw at least 4 or 5 presentations
that showed our heat maps or referred to the research.
I should have started a royalty program!) the question I most often receive is,
“Have you done this in any other cultures?” And the most common request is China.
As Westerners, we have a curiosity about the world’s largest market but very
little insight into the actual nature of their online interactions. When the
opportunity came to present in China, we realized we could actually
do a eye tracking study fairly easily.
Our local University has a popular English as a Second Language program for
Chinese students so we had a sample available that had only been in North
America for a few weeks. We set up our Tobii eye tracking station to be as
native an experience as possible for them, with a Chinese keyboard, Chinese character
sets and all prompts in simplified Chinese. We also were fortunate to be able to
work with Piewen Li from Microsoft, a certified Chinese translator and research
manager for the Microsoft Digital Advertising Network.
Piewen helped with study design, translation and interpretation of results.
But it was more than just the fact that we could do the study.
It was that we should do the study. I cannot overstate the importance
of the Chinese Market in the global marketplace. One number that I
found mind boggling was the fact that Chinese is the world’s 2nd
largest online market, with 150 million users. That puts China only
slightly behind the US at 154 million users. But that represents 68%
penetration in the US market, and only slightly over 10% in the Chinese market.
Obviously, the potential in China is huge and barely untapped.