Research Methodology

To include as many national portals as possible, we started with search engines, posted a request to the IS World list requesting help and added suitable entries from Microwho (an existing directory of portals and related sites). We first narrowed the list down by focusing on 26 countries, including those analyzed by Marcus and Gould (2000). Then, using WebZip (available at www.spidersoft.com), a complete copy of the initial page of each national portal belonging to those 26 countries was archived. Next, a program was written in Visual Basic to count the number of links from the HTML code for each national portal. For countries with more than one national portal, the one with the most links was selected. This provided the final set of 26 national portals that were studied in depth. While somewhat arbitrary, the national portal with the most links is arguably the most "full-service" and thus the best fit for the criterion used in this study.

Table 2 lists the common features present in most national portals, including Yahoo!, which is taken as the standard in our research. Almost all of the national portals have layouts similar to Yahoo! (i.e., Multicolumn Directory/Subdirectory with links, occasional frames and animated objects) except in few cases where the layout is unique (e.g., go-jamaica which appears to be aimed partly at tourists). When using Yahoo! as a standard, extra features are those that a national portal includes but Yahoo! does not, while missing features are those found in Yahoo! but not the national portal (see Table 3).

Table 2: Common portal features

Directories	Display Items/Links	Other Features
Arts	Advertising	Customizable interface
Community	Auction
Education	Games	Chat
Health	Horoscope	Discussion Groups
Media and	Job listings	Download options
Newspaper	News stories	Free e-mail
Music and Entertainment	Shopping	Free Home Page
	Sports News	Arts
Personals	Stock quotes	Community
Politics	TV Listing	Education
Religion	Weather	Health
Science and Technology
Tourism and travel
Women Issues

Table 3: Content diversity and variations in visual effects among national portals

Portal Name URL No. of Links	Country/Language	Missing Items	Extra Interesting Features	Dominant Color/No. of colors
Ahijuna www.ahijuna.com.ar 171	Argentina Spanish	Women's issues, religion, TV, Auction, Free Home Page, Stock Quotes, Discussion	Economy, humor, erotic (Diosas)	Gold 9
Matilda matilda.aaa.com.au 250	Australia English	Email, free home page, women's issues, religion, personals, auction, stock quotes, horoscope	Economy, humor	Light yellow 4
Web Watch www.webwatch.be 90	Belgium French	Health, women's issues, religion, politics, free email, free home page, TV, auction, games, sports, stock quotes	Personal pages - sex sites	Gold 4
Terra www.terra.com.br 179	Brazil Portuguese	Arts, science, personals, music, religion, politics, free email, free home page, weather	Personal finance	Orange 6
Sympatico www1.sympatico.ca 197	Canada English	Arts, science, education, media, religion	Kids & teens, business, personal finance	White 5
Sina www.sina.com.cn 293	China. Chinese-Simplified	Media, religion, auction, free home page, horoscope	Business, military	Gold 4
Costa Rica www.info.co.cr 108	Costa Rica Spanish	Community, women's issues, personals, religion, free email, free home page, TV, weather, auction, shopping, jobs, stock quotes, discussion, downloads, horoscope, news, games, chart	Business, culture, history	Light blue 5
Egypt Search www.egyptsearch.com 96	Egypt English	Women's issues, personals, free email, TV, weather, auction, stock quotes, horoscope, downloads, games, chart	Egyptian culture	White 3
Canoe www.canoe.fr 173	France French	Education, health, community, personals, religion, free e-mail, free home page, auction, jobs, discussion, chat downloads	Pull down menus	Very dark blue 9
Ins-Netz www.ins-netz.de 195	Germany German	Arts, education, media, community, women's issues, personals, religion, politics, free email, free homepage, TV, auction, jobs, horoscope	Erotica, business, hobbies, real estate	Dark blue 6
Ghana Forum www.ghanaforum.com 34	Ghana English	Science, media, community, women's issues, music, religion, free e-mail, free home page, TV, weather, auction, shopping, job, stock quotes, discussion groups, horoscope, news, games	Business Main page has very little - need to use subsidiary pages	Light brown 5
123India www.123india.com 219	India English	TV, free home page, jobs, discussion groups, downloads	Emigration, dating, matrimonial, Bollywood	Light yellow 5
Catcha www.catcha.co.id 156	Indonesia English	Community, free home page, TV, auction, shopping, stock quotes, sports	Children's stories, business	White 5
Kataweb www.kataweb.it 279	Italy Italian	Science, women's issues, personals, religion, politics, auction, free home	Business	White 5
Isize www.isize.com 239	Japan Japanese	Arts, science, media, health, women's issues, personals, music, religion, politics, free email, free home page, TV, auction, discussion, games, chat	Personal finance, real estate, marriage planning	White 12
Malaysia Directory www.malaysiadirectory.com.my 184	Malaysia English	Customizability, Horoscope Download options, Top news stories, Women issues, religion,	Martial arts as sport, Koi Fish forum as hobby	Yellow 9
El Sitio www.elsitio.com/elsitio/mexico 100	Mexico Spanish	Science, Politics	Entertainment including erotic entertainment is explicitly profiled	Blue Yellow 14
Menara www.casanet.net.ma 134	Morocco French	Religion, Games, Health in general, Politics, Education, Stock quotes are absent but financial news are covered, Auction	Soccer as sport is highly profiled, although an Islamic country, Islamic reference is non-existent implying a more secular trend in Moroccan society, woman's issues are well presented	Grey 7
Zoek www.zoek.nl 191	Netherlands Dutch	Auction, Free Web page,	Sex related matters and links are prominently profiled. Soccer as sport is noted.	Deep blue 11
Pinoy Central www.pinoycentral.com 121	Philippines English	Horoscope	Extensive links for immigration, Shopping site for remittance by the Philippinos working abroad	Blue 13
Onet www.onet.pl 210	Poland Polish		Indirect links to erotic sites and adult contents. Polish beauty pageants related displays are prominently displayed	Yellow 11
Aport www.aport.ru 291	Russia Russian	Stock quotes, Free Web page, Auction	Science coverage is substantial, erotic entertainments are explicitly linked, family is focused widely, Soccer and ice-hockey as sports are profiled	Blue 10
Genie www.arrakis.com 209	Spain Spanish	Politics, Jobs	Spanish cooking is well profiled, Soccer-mania is mentioned	Green 9
Spray www.spray.se 162	Sweden Swedish	Auction, Science,		Green 9
Mirago www.mirago.co.uk 113	UK English	Stock Quotes, Chat, Customizability, Free Web page, E-mail, Religion, Science, Auction		Yellow 10

Since national portals tend to be designed by and targeted towards individuals belonging to the same cultural group, we may reasonably believe intrinsic cultural traits have been incorporated in the visual design of the interface. Among the various visual effects offered by national portals, we focused on color and layout. Colors reflect strong cultural values, much deeper than mere appearance. For example, green is generally considered an Islamic color, saffron yellow as Hindu/Buddhist, and red-blue-white-gold are colors of the Judeo-Christian West (Marcus and Gould, 2000). They identify color as an important new issue for global web user interface design, and suggest that the use of color could be related to Hofstede's Uncertainty Avoidance Dimension. Color could provide redundant cues (to reduce ambiguity for high uncertainty avoidance cultures) or maximize information without redundancy (for low uncertainty avoidance cultures). Colors were visually inspected to determine which was dominant by counting patches of color and the number of distinct color blocks. This provides some indication of the colorfulness of the portals.

The layouts of all the national portals are found to be very similar to that of Yahoo! (multiple columns in rectangular arrangements), with only the layout of Go-Jamaica being different (semicircular arrangement of items each being a circular object). Thus, no further analysis of layout was performed.