Netizens of Myanmar often have a unique approach to online search. Where most of the world types a query into Google (or Baidu if their government isn’t too fond of Google), people here often search in Facebook. Since one of our core services is web design for companies in Myanmar, and since we always fully optimize the websites we create for SEO (search engine optimization), this is something we tend to think about.
The actual searches being performed aren’t so different from anywhere else. A quick look at Google Trends for the US today shows what you’d expect: Pokemon Go, the Olympics and some Justin Bieber gossip lead the way. In Myanmar people search for similar topics, it’s just that lots of them do so in Facebook. We should note that plenty of people here do use Google. Also, since there is relatively little Burmese content indexed by search engines, and since Facebook is insanely popular here, Facebook search isn’t necessarily a bad search strategy.
Broader problems
This issue goes much beyond search. If people lack basic familiarity with the primary way to find websites, it’s likely they’ll also have trouble on those websites. Intuitive user interfaces are important to web design anywhere in the world. But where an out of place menu icon might cause a slight uptick in bounce rate in other markets, in Myanmar it can make a website unusable to a large number of people.
The Heineken job
The website we created for Heineken was extremely simple. First, the very short version of a huge campaign: Heineken was bringing the UEFA Champions League Trophy and former Swedish and Arsenal football legend Freddie Ljungberg to Yangon. We planned a week’s worth of events and activations (10 in 8 days!!!) around the Trophy as part of a very big, fully integrated marketing campaign.
One event sought to lead Myanmar football fans through a series of puzzles and challenges that they had to solve before they could receive an invite to a party. These types of events are tough to pull off anywhere in the world. To the best of our knowledge we were the first to try anything like it in Myanmar. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little worried there’d either be nobody there or we’d be so full we’d have to turn people away, but we did use SMS RSVP so we were pretty confident.
The site
The first step to scoring an invite to the party was to solve an online football quiz. This is where the website came in. The logic behind it was fairly simple, score three questions right and you got the instructions plus a location for the next step. Fail the quiz and you got a ‘sorry’ screen with an option to try again. It also required age gating at the start so only those of legal drinking age could participate.
The actual quiz was quite straightforward, with radio buttons used to select the correct multiple choice answer. There were bilingual English and Burmese instructions, and a submit button at the bottom with a standard line about accepting the terms and conditions. In other words, about as simple as could be.
Site launch
Once the site went live and people began flooding in to take the quiz, we were closely monitoring the site’s Google Analytics. Lots of people were successfully completing the quiz, and even more were getting through it but without enough correct answers. But, we could see that a lot of people were simply stuck, some of them unable to even make it through the age gate.
We don’t mean to imply at all that people here are web illiterate; as we mentioned, most people were having no trouble with the interface. And some of the people who looked stuck likely were just having internet connectivity issues, an ever-present problem here (and one to always keep in mind when doing web design work in Myanmar). But we know some people just weren’t grasping the format because we were also monitoring social media commenting for Heineken.
Figuring it out
As smartphones and mobile internet plans get cheaper and incomes rise, Myanmar adds to its ranks of internet users everyday. But many of these people are really going online for the first time so the learning curve is understandable. Think about the internet of just ten years ago and how primitive it seems looking back. Now imagine yourself coming online now as an adult for the first time and trying to figure everything out. It’s not such a surprise that someone who mostly uses Facebook might struggle with a website (or app, for that matter).
Spend some time here and you’ll see that Myanmar people people are determined and resourceful, so it was no surprise to us that they quickly figured the quiz out. The confused users who we could see in the real-time Analytics, they returned to the Facebook post to ask what to do. Before we could even moderate, the community stepped up and helped them out with step by step instructions. Some people of course also posted the quiz answers and screenshots of the final screen, but that’s to be expected anywhere.
Web development in Myanmar – keeping it simple
We think this (slightly rambling – sorry!) anecdote gives a pretty good step by step of how to do good Myanmar website design for a mass market audience. Create simple, easy to use interfaces, provide clear instructions, and make sure there’s a way for those for whom technology is a totally new language to get a little help. People here are eager to connect online in new and different ways, and they’ll figure it out very quickly. Companies cannot kick the can down the road. It’s time now to get out in front of all things digital in Myanmar.
Oh, and the party? We wanted not more than 300 people there, and we clocked 279. Not bad. We throw a pretty decent party too. Cheers!