With nine in 10 Hong Kong shoppers using the internet to shop online, every business must have a website. One that’s high quality, easy to navigate and fast.
Hong Kong websites are often frustrating and unusable. Old coding techniques make them look outdated. Thankfully, things have moved on, and you no longer have to be a web genius to create a great looking site. Web platforms like WordPress and Joomla are free and can be installed with one click on many cPanel hosting services. Now there is no excuse for having a bad internet site.
We recommend you consider the following three features when designing your new website.
IT MUST BE MOBILE READY
According to a recent South China Morning Post news article, 96 percent of Hong Kong residents use their smartphone to access websites. To be successful, you need to catch Hong Kongers on the train, in the taxi or when waiting for friends. You won’t catch them at home, because they’re rarely there! The opportunity for small businesses is vast, but only if you have a mobile-friendly website.
Website usability – a measure of mobile-friendliness – on mobile devices is so important that Google changed their search algorithm to penalise websites that do not cater for mobile users. Mobile users are beginning to expect business websites to cater for their devices so they can shop on the move.
Google has a simple test which shows if your site is mobile friendly, and you can test your site here: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly
YOUR SITE MUST HAVE SEARCH
Visitors who find you through search are looking for something specific. Whether it’s a product you sell, or information they need, they want to find it quickly. If they find your site through search, they may land on a page that’s not quite right. A Search bar gives users and option to find what they need without leaving your site. This reduces your bounce rates and creates a better user experience. If you don’t have a searcch bar, then users who can’t find what they need will leave almost immediately.
Users who use search on a site are more determined than casual browsers. Sites with a search bar keeps visitors on the site longer – the statistics back this up. Perhaps not coincidentally, websites with a search function have higher sales volums than those that don’t.
Modern platforms like WordPress has built-in Search, all you need to do is add the widget to your site, and it’s ready to go.
YOUR SITE MUST BE FAST
If your site is not loading in less than four seconds, you have a problem. When large shopping websites have slow web servers they lose millions of dollars in potential sales. InHong Kong where broadband is fast, and users are impatient, people will not wait for your website to load.
You can test your web speed on sites like pingdom.com and fix your slow pages with the results. Google’s PageSpeed tool offers useful suggestions on how to improve your website.
Asporea can help you too – like we’ve helped many of our clients – to improve your website with measurable results. If you’re interested contact us and let’s chat about your needs.
Asporea has blindingly fast shared hosting plans at very competitive prices. Subscribe to our Asporea newsletter and get 25% any of our hosting packages for life. Click here to subscribe.