India and China were often seen as the land of magic by many people in the west. Well, these two countries had very rich civilizations and one of the most beautiful aspects of these civilizations is that they never died. In India, majority of the people still follow Hinduism- a religion which is more than 3,500 years old. Indians are fan of Buddhism too (a 2,500+ years old religion). The same goes for Chinese too as they are fan of Confucius and other great philosophers. Now, it seems that the ancient wisdom of India and China can help websites to attract visitors- at least some people in India believe in this theory. Well, you may call them superstitious but they are related to technology world.
I found this very interesting article in Reuters, 'Ancient Asian beliefs spin new Web for India online' in which I found that Chiense art of feng shui and Indian art of vaastu shastra are becoming popular among the executives of some online companies in India as they feel that these arts can ensure success in terms of attracting visitors and getting good hits for a website.
Let me first give you the definitions of these two things.
Feng Shui is "The Chinese art of positioning objects in buildings and other places based on the belief in positive and negative effects of the patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi, the vital force or energy inherent in all things."
Vaastu Shastra is " is one of the traditional Hindu canons of town planning and architecture."
Now, you have the definitions and you may wonder why they may be useful for online companies. To answer this well, I am quoting from the report of Reuters:
"Just as the world comprises of the five basic elements, each Web site has five elements and these need to be in balance with one another," says Dr. Smita Narang, author of Web Vaastu, a new book that marries vaastu laws with the Internet.
The book has proved popular with businesses.
"Earth is the layout, fire is the color, air is the HTML, space is name of the Web site, and water is the font and graphics," says Narang, adding that each must be chosen carefully and strike a balance with the other."
So, you the arguments posted in this book are not that suppositious after all. The author has tried to talk with logic and we all know about the importance of harmony in our life. Naturally, this idea is gaining ground among Indian tech companies. Now let me state about the importance of Feng Shui. I am again quoting from the same report:
"Followers of feng shui, which promotes the idea of the removal of unnecessary objects to allow free flow of energy, say this Chinese science can also be used for the same purpose.
"A Web site where the colors hurt your eyes, the music offends your ears or has too much information is probably too cluttered and does not give a positive flow of ch'i," says Vikram Narayan, a Mumbai-based feng shui practitioner."
Sounds good, isn't it? If you are still doubtful and wondering how these things can help your website to grow traffic then here is an example:
"Experts say using a combination of astrology and numerology, the ancient sciences will help you choose the right colors, font, placement of graphics and navigation bar to make the perfect Web site.
Brijesh Agarwal of Indiamart, a company offering business solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises, says he has had mixed results on the five sites that his company has designed according to vaastu principles.
"We have found that on three sites the number of hits has increased by 60 percent but the other two sites have not been affected," said Agarwal.
"I can't say for definite that the positive results are due to vaastu or due to increased marketing, but I hope that vaastu has helped," he adds."
Now the million dollar question- Are you impressed? Will you go for the ancient mantras to make your website a crowd puller? Well, I am not impressed. I feel that in India still the income potential for websites is limited. So, naturally, website makers do not feel much motivated to work very hard to make their websites very popular. Promoting Indian websites or websites based on India is not so easy in Internet. For example, I have noticed in popular social book marking websites like Digg, Reddit or Slashdot- items related to India hardly make the front page.
Instead of going for ancient mantras, I would suggest Indian online companies to do more research on providing useful content and involve the visitors. One of the things I would strongly recommend is to introduce blogs.
What is your idea about this whole matter? Will you go for the ancient art?
Good idea.
Can somebody help me with the blog?
Posted by: avanti | September 24, 2006 3:14 PM | Permalink to Comment