Why does the design of Japanese websites tend to differ from those in the US?

I work with a team that operates the largest consumer review website in Japan and the design was crucial to growth! Our first design was done by a Portuguese designer and we (Westerners) thought it looked very good, especially in comparison to most of the Japanese websites we were comparing against. Once we got some traction we brought on a Japanese designer who knocked font sizes way down (almost unreadable to a native English speaker looking at Japanese), he added a lot more images and had us triple and in some cases quadruple the amount of text and content on the pages.. It started working... we saw more traffic, more pageviews, and considerably more engagement. I realize it's common sense to design for your audience but I feel it's worth mentioning again that cultural nuances are sometimes so slight that you really need a designer who is native to your cultural audience.

While I agree with poster's point of view, I have few points to make. I can't say it's "behind", but I can tell you that web design in Japan (or East Asia) is taking different path. 1. Language and literacy difference We need to consider the nature of Japanese language. For people from west, Japanese language seems quite complex, but it isn't for Japanese people.  Japanese language can contain a lot of meaning in just few letters. As result, Japanese are comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time / space (this probably goes same for Chinese language).  2. Cultural difference Many businesses in Japan do not encourage risk taking. Therefore, they want to have assurance more than anything.  It's very hard to assure those people just by putting few lines of catch-phrase and pretty pictures. Conformity is another thing to consider. People do not prefer to be different from other people (even though they say they want to).  If other people stay the same, he/she tend to stay the same.... same goes to website design. 3. Technical difference Lack of web fonts can be huge issues in non-latin language. Since one font family costs several MB each (and much more expensive), we can't be too aggressive on using web fonts.  Variety of default type faces are very limited, so designers tend to use graphics instead of plain text. Using a lot of image seems hazardous in low-bandwith mobile world. However, Japan is full of G4 connections and WiFi networks. Few MB of data can be transferred in just few seconds. (Personally, I prefer to be small file sizes and little requests as possible... I try to build sites in small)

I was consulting a relatively new company in Japan about their website design because they were hoping to grow internationally. I had the same reaction: crazy and cluttered- who would ever go to this website? Turns out though that there is a huge cultural difference in the way they perceive websites. From what their designer told me, Japanese people tend to go to websites for information. The more they get from the get go, the better the website seems. If they have to click around and search within the website, then they'll move on and find another source. American websites just  show too little information for their taste. They'd rather compromise on "style" than on information. I can understand that though. I see a lot of startup websites  in the US that try to go for the simplistic look and end up giving me no information at all about what they do. Big companies can get away with it because there is usually some other form of information about what they do  (huge ad/marketing campaigns). Both cultures have problems with finding the balance between aesthetic and information.. the US just seems to be going in the opposite direction of being simpler- sometimes to a fault. This is from a single experience though, so most likely not the most reliable source,but I thought I'd share.

Another reason for the cluttered design of Japanese websites (talking mainly about the start pages here) is the general culture of consensus in many Japanese companies. Decisions are often made by committee and after a lengthy and unproductive decision process sites end up putting way too much unrelevant information on the start page in order to please everybody involved. In terms of design, consumer websites targeting younger vistors have to fight for their short attention span competing with the visual noise of their daily environment, have a look at Japanese TV, advertising or game/amusement facilities. Simplicity or an adequate use of white space wouldn't hardly work here. However, in my opinion that doesn't mean that web designers in Japan can or should neglect established rules and principles of interface design. It's certainly true that Japanese users need and can digest more information than western people to e.g. make a purchase decision. But a high information density doesn't mean that the page has to be garish looking and poorly organized in terms of structure and hierarchy. An issue here might be that the English ability amongst designers in Japan seems to be very low. To be up to date on the latest trends and best practice in web design and development it is essential to have at least a basic command of the language, otherwise the information is simply not available. I think it's too simple to say that the Japanese like only cluttered websites because their daily environments are so busy and therefore designers just cater to their taste. People living in the center of Tokyo are also enjoying the serenity of a mountain holiday in Yamagata without getting bored. They want a lot of information when it comes to websites, true, but they would certainly prefer if it would be easier accessible and easier on the eye too.

Its culture. Like culture, a fish does not know it is in the water until it jumps out. The clutter can be stereotypical of Edward Halls High vs Low Context. Asians in general prefer the relations ships. Relationships provide context. After context is established at that time the object is understood. In conversations in Japan I have learned to be very patient to wait until the object is presented. I often think that the person is rambling, but eventually they loop-back and deliver the object. The multiple links, flash animations of people create a process of building context. Obviously they like it. Würtz, E. (2005). A cross-cultural analysis of websites from high-context cultures and low-context cultures. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 13. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/wuertz.html

As many have listed, there could be many reasons, like cultural difference, corporate customs, and customers' adjustment rate, etc. Then I came across an interesting interview by Shintaro Yamada. He is a CEO of Mercari, a mobile flea market app with over 5 million downloads. As it was entering US market, he mentioned about the difference in the interface between Japan and US. He, specifically stated how Facebook has entered Japanese market as it is. So did Amazon. Were they rejected by the consumers? Far from that. They made a great hit. So, Mercari's strategy was to adjust the entire app towards the US side, and it is doing fine so far. (sorry, couldn't find that article in English) So why is that, you might think.. Here is my best shot. I had an opportunity to welcome a great UI designer last summer. She was a student from one of the leading design schools in Japan. She had the same view as me that we both HATED the Japanese crowded UI. Then, she gave me hints of 2 important points: 1. Weak Position of Designers In Japan, only a few companies take design first approach. That is, sales and engineers are usually the highest valued employees, and comes the designers there after. It is common, therefore, for those 2 to have stronger  say in the designers' work. 2. Lack of Supply Pool - Although my intern had a great talent in UI design, she was interested in the product design as a potential career. It came to be the same for her classmates. The popular employers were among the bike makers, like Honda and Suzuki, or the electronics like Sony. Those good old manufacturing companies still hold strong brands in Japan. It pulls many design talents, therefore leaving professional UI designers as unattractive alternatives. These 2 points suggest that UI designers are largely underappreciated in the companies, and many designers much rather work at product sides. Now, that is not to say all Japanese companies have terrible designs. In fact, Japan has very mature market of product design. But when it comes to  understanding and appreciation towards great UI designs, America happens to win.

Taken from: http://www.tokyowebdesigns.com/advice/2124/japanese-style-web-design If you were to ask enough web professionals about their sense of  what typifies “Japanese web design style” you would probably hear  something like the following observations: Dense Text Banner Graphics Anime Graphics and Icons Color Chaos Flash Animation Dense Text It is probably true to say that to a large extent, Japanese sites  look “busy” to non-Japanese eyes simply because our brains may not be  accustomed to looking at Japanese characters. It’s an easy thing to  test. Just find any Japanese web page and use Google Translate to  convert the page into English or whatever language you are used to.  Doesn’t it immediately look “less cluttered”? Nevertheless, it is probably still true that most Japanese sites have  more “information density” than western sites.  Some design  commentators have speculated that Japanese users could have more http://www.zeldman.com/2010/07/25/the-puzzle-of-japanese-web-design/ for high volumes of text based content than their western counterparts. A first time visitor to Japan will probably notice that there are  written instructions and warnings on public signage to cover almost  every conceivable situation in daily life. Have you ever bought a new  appliance and proceeded to read the manual on how to operate it? Didn’t  think so. But in Japan it’s not so uncommon.  New company employees are  expected to read the company manual outlining many micro aspects of  their role. Perhaps the Japanese educational style of massive rote  learning has influenced this. The pictographic nature of Japanese Kanji characters could also have  some bearing on user preferences. Kanji characters are symbols derived  from Chinese origins. Just three or four Kanji together could  effectively convey a complex meaning that would take a whole line of  Latin characters in a western language. For this reason, what appears to  be “dense” or “busy” to foreigners might be easily scannable for native  Japanese readers. Banner Graphics Many Japanese sites will use JPEG banners to display promotional  text. It is common to see headlines with the text highlighted in bold  outer strokes, magnificent glows and heavy drop shadows. This might  appear excessive to some non-Japanese but it is worth keeping in mind  that Japanese text doesn’t make use of capitalization or italics, so  Japanese designers have to rely on these and other design techniques to  emphasize a written message. The ubiquitous banner ad - this time on the street For western sites, designers have the luxury of hundreds, if not  thousands of font styles to choose from. Everything from Star Wars  inspired font faces to serious Gothic character sets. The Latin alphabet  range of just 27 characters makes it possible for font designers to  explore all these possibilities. For Japanese font designs however,  there are potentially thousands of possible Kanji characters so it is  not practical to develop a whole font vocabulary. Fortunately, new http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/css3-text-effects-typography/allow  a lot of new possibilities in terms of adding visual variation even to  traditional Japanese fonts like MS Gothic and MS Mincho. To the extent  that it is possible, designers should try to avoid using JPEG  banners  when text styling alternatives exists. HTML text is better for screen  resizing, accessibility, SEO and reducing page load time. Anime Graphics and Icons Nothing says "Stay Out" like pink bunnies A lot of Japanese websites seem to borrow style elements from the  anime character world. Pokemon style characters are often found on  landing pages or as part of advertisements. “Kawaii” (Cuteness) is a strong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawaii although it could easily be interpreted as juvenile or inappropriate in the same situation by non-Japanese. An interesting perspective on the fondness of many Japanese designers  to introduce “visual clutter” is that Japan arguably never fully  experienced the art world’s http://blog.procontentanddesign.com/articles/single/271_What_s_the_deal_with_Japanese_web_design_.htm.  The grungy 90′s style chaos of web expression was largely cleared away  in the western sense by movement towards Modernistic styles incorporated  in Web 2.0. Color Chaos Professional designers schooled in western design principles usually stay fairly close to http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory i.e. choosing colors that are analogous or complimentary to each other as determined by the standard color wheel. A million colors downtown at night On the other hand, many popular Japanese sites such as http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ seem to have thrown color theory to the breeze and choose lots of  bright, over-saturated tones. Perhaps this reflects the Japanese urban  shopping environment. Any night time visit to a downtown area is an  assault to the senses of neon advertising in every size shape and color. Flash It seems like most of the http://woorkup.com/2009/12/30/the-beautiful-art-of-japanese-web-design/ websites in Japan are created using Adobe Flash. Possibly one reason  for this is that due to the popularity of Flash based gaming in Japan,  there is a deep pool of skilled Flash designers to draw upon locally. Flash however is facing an uncertain future as a website technology. Hardware support is non-existent or http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html on most mobile web devices like smart phones and tablets. In addition,  Flash has traditionally faced obstacles with search engine visibility,  content accessibility and performance limitations. There is a growing  consensus in the web development community that best practice is to use  new web standards like HTML5 and CSS3 plus JavaScript which have enabled  a lot of the things previously only doable with a Flash browser plugin.

Yes, design is different for the reason that visual perception and visual culture is different. Also, in a broader / vaguer sense the storytelling is different in Japan: less straight stories, less structure, more details. So a web design that build on strict hierarchy of pages and "uncluttered" in a Western sense seems to be confusing for the Japanese eyes, and for most it is hard to find information. Japanese users want to see everything (or at least most of the thing) at once, and not look for it in some submenu or 2-3 links deep. If you are business offering different products, has campaigns, new about your business etc then you should put it up front on on website or people will not dig for it. Japanese users are looking for more information and different information, showed very upfront - the same advice goes for presentation slides and other visual info, too. Also, don't forget that search engine optimization is different / less straightforward in Japan. One of the result is that Flash is OK, doesn't effect such negatively the on-site optimization as in eg. the US.

If you comparing it with South Korea, you can understand it was wrong opinion about Cultural/literacy differences. South Korea start making websites much faster than Japan, but websites is similar with the U.S. sites. I was working as a web programmer for 17 years total, and worked 8 years in Japan. Based on the my experience I think it's issue of Information technology. In many Japanese planners and their sites, they unskillful to arrangement information or to build site map. I think it's not design problem. Many japanese business man think as leaflet for commercial websites even now. They not think web as another media. Therefore, websites have format like describes/speaking and the information is not organized. Because same reasons, the SEO industry is very big in Japan. In one web page, there are too many contents that is not organized. In this condition, a good design is very difficult.