The star Chinese speaker on SES Xiamen 2007 in my eyes was Stone Chen, from Dunsh.org. In one of the session he delved into the current state of Chinese (corporate) websites and their issues. It was a good lesson on what needs to be improved, but as it not only applies to Chinese websites I think it’s worthy to give an overview. Here’s the sum up.
- The positioning of websites is not clear – what’s it build for, who for. Some build website because others have one, it can’t be a brochure
- Websites are too artistic, too much use of flash splash pages. Bosses (of the website’s company) are to busy with the look. They complain about letters, design, colors. Don’t worry about font colors, it shouldn’t appeal to yourself, but to your users
- Excessive use of graphics has an negative effect on SEO
- Some even scan the brochure
- Minimize flash, it can be annoying
- 70% of Chinese corporate websites are not updated regularly, they are just e-static version and provide limited information
- Poor navigational structure, don’t use flash, don’t make it complicated
- Don’t ignore SE’s and RSS, make your website searchable/indexable
- Use title tags
- They don’t use statistical packages to see what visitors do and where they go
- Browser compatibility is an issue. Websites don’t take into account Firefox for example.
- There are no long term plans
- Chinese companies want a free lunch, don’t even want to spend money on domain names while they will cost you only 1 Rmb now
- 80% of companies don’t have a website
- Don’t rely on websites like Alibaba to market your company
A very educational session that shows there’s a lot of room for improvement.
see also SES Xiamen Impressions
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Gemme van Hasselt is an Internet Marketing Consultant, living in Shanghai, and owner of Tiger Internet Marketing.
Category
SEO
