Yahoo! Indonesia: Clumsy by Adi Tedjasaputra

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Yahoo! Indonesia: Clumsy

Yahoo! Indonesia ventures into the Indonesian market with lack of cultural understanding and the use of broken language, the recipe for failure.

Adi Tedjasaputra
23rd March 2006

Lycos was the first international company that endeavoured to tap the Indonesian market through its localized web portal a few years ago. For various reasons, the portal was unsuccessful and it ceased its operation shortly after the portal was introduced.

Yahoo! Indonesia is the second similar localized web portal that has begun its operation. Its success is yet to be known, but its initial blunders are noticeable.

Lack of Cultural Understanding

Cultural understanding is often deemed as the most important issues in content localization or globalization. Yet, it is often the easiest to be neglected for various reasons. The interface of Yahoo! Indonesia's Surat is the most representative feature that reflects this lack of cultural understanding.

The quote on the Yahoo! Indonesia's Surat says: “Surat Yahoo! membantu saya tetap bisa berhubungan dengan orang lain”.

When someone roughly translates the English word “connect” into the Indonesian word of “berhubungan”, there is a change of meaning that can lead to misinterpretation. The context of the word “berhubungan” in the quote, in combination with the blue, gray, violet colors and a picture of a smiling asian woman next to the quote can easily be misinterpreted for many things, but an e-mail service. The worst misinterpretation could be sexual-related services due to the possible multiple interpretation of the word “berhubungan”.

It is a definite advantage if a genuine quote could communicate the intended purpose of service offering. However, the use of the quote by Yahoo! Indonesia has shown that Yahoo! Indonesia has failed to represent the values understood by its target audience. A change of interface colors may not work with Yahoo!'s global branding, but a simple replacement of the word “berhubungan” with “berkomunikasi” can make a lot of difference in interpretation.

Broken Language

Language is the main communication barrier that often prevents web target audience to interact with a web site. In the context of local web portal, content localization or globalization can lower this barrier by providing an appropriate content that resonates with specific goals, values and needs of targeted web audience.

With a pre-assumption that the Yahoo! Indonesia is designed for Indonesian people or Indonesian-speaking people, it is fair to assume that the content of the web portal has been customized for this target audience. Yet, many of the expressions are difficult to be understood, unnatural and odd for native Indonesian speakers, such as the followings:
“Untuk mengubah preferensimu sekarang, klik Edit untuk grup setting itu.”
“Hasil pencarian dalam bahasa yang telah dipilih saja”
“Tampilan & Layout” “Mengubah gaya dan tampilan halaman hasil pencarian”
“Cek status surat Anda: Masuk”
“Surat Gratis: Daftar”

Missing Target Audience

Providing some relevant local content, such as local news, weather, advertisement, etc., is an essential ingredient to gain the loyalty of target audience for a localized web portal. However, without some appropriate access to such content, the proposed values will be useless. The most noticeable difficulty in accessing the current content of Yahoo! Indonesia lies in the textual navigation links and cues that are difficult to be understood due to the lack of cultural understanding and the use of broken language. Yahoo! Indonesia risks missing its target audience.