It is important to have a local strategy while developing web 2.0 products for the emerging markets. A case in point is India. The recent Internet and Mobile Association of India report indicates a percentage decrease in the use of cybercafés as a point of internet access from 52% to 39% in 2006 .39% is still a significant number (www.iamai.in).
Most of these internet cafés charge as less as 20 cents per hour (Rs 10) – to survive these low price point they use old PCs (typically with Win 98) and a default screen resolution of 800*600.
This screen resolution significantly affects the way you plan your feature/layout of your website. Consider the following website as seen on the 1024* resolution
This is the same as seen in an 800*600
Notice the perceptible loss in information on the right side and the bottom of the page.
The second key element is the mouse pointer area in hyperlinks. In most emerging markets the optical mouse is still not popular – the good old roller ball mouse is still prevalent.
Given the accuracy and easy of use of the optical mouse as a pointing device, designers tend to have smaller hyperlink areas – this sure to cause some paint points in the website usability.
Tags: emerging markets, internet, Technology, usability, web 2.0
June 13, 2007 at 2:34 pm |
That is an interesting perspective, which is not usually considered.
It is kind of similar to the problem that designers have thinking about porting their web apps to mobile applications.
July 17, 2007 at 6:47 pm |
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