Website design for a growing Chinese Audience

Chinese users move online

According to the 19th Statistical Survey Report on Internet Development in China published by CNNIC, by the end of 2006, internet users in China had reached 137 million, approximately 10.4% of China’s population.

China’s Internet users increased by 26 million in one year, comparing with December, 2005, showing a growth rate of 23.4%. In addition to this, the number of registered .CN domain names in China increased to 1,803,393 - an increase of 64.4% in just one year.

There is no way back from this incredible period of growth and now it is up to marketers to penetrate the market and to create strategies to market to the growing number of Chinese companies and consumers online.

As is evident from the emergence of the English language based Internet, it is significantly better to be avant-garde and capture this market as it grows rather struggle to enter an already saturated market years from now.

Clearly it is important to understand the specific needs and requirements of the distinctly different Chinese audience before entering such a highly competitive market.

Website design and functionality

Popular Chinese websites such as (http://rayli.com.cn/ and http://www.chinaren.com/) are very image-rich and high on content illustrating the Chinese audience’s prefer to sort through large amounts of visual information quickly rather than navigating through many subpages of navigation.

Similarly to many Asian countries, the Chinese audience loves highly interactive websites and web 2.0 functionality allowing them to be more involved in the website. Examples of such features and functionality include blogs, forums and the ability to rate products and send information to their friends.

The Chinese audience is a very brand driven audience and viral marketing has proved to be particularly useful in this regard and thus focused viral marketing campaigns can be particularly beneficial to a Chinese audience.

Finally, websites should be designed to be culturally and aesthetically correct and will involve the translation of website content into Chinese in most circumstances.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Just like with English language search engines, users can increase their chances of being among the top hits on Chinese language search engines by altering and optimizing their web content.

There are particular strategies that need to be considered when completing search engine optimisation for a Chinese audience based on the fact that most Chinese users search in different ways to simply using Google.

Multi-lingual Content

Web technology is flexible enough to deliver content in many writing systems, but users and content providers (especially those in the United States) may not know what tools they need to take advantage of this flexibility.

Wiliam understands the importance of mulit-lingual content when attempting to reach the Chinese audience and as such, Wiliam's content management system sitedock is fully capable of managing and delivering content in multiple languages.

Reaching the Chinese Audience

Wiliam is particularly interested in aiding its clients in reaching the rapidly expanding Chinese audience and has a team that is both culturally and knowledgably geared to design and optimise a website for a Chinese audience.