China Internet Watch

Trend of China’s Automobile Consumption in 2015

CIW Team — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 02:00:49 +0000

With the booming of the new emerging market, automobile has become less expensive, and the internet has brought an open platform which makes it more reachable to families. China Automotive Technology Research Center estimated last year that automobile sales volume will reach 25.5 million in 2015 and 35 million in 2020 with average annual growth rate of 7%.

Tencent made a research on China’s automobile consumption after surveying 33,729 internet users, 83.5% of which are between 21 to 45 years old, 30% with high school degree, 34.8% with a bachelor degree or higher. The survey was made across over 20 provinces in all levels of city tiers.

According to the research, the number of car-owners in the second or third tier cities have similar purchase intentions as that in the first-tier cities; about 30% users plan to become car-owners in one year, especially in second and third tier cities. There is still a large potentially bigger automobile market in China.

60% respondents intend to buy cars priced between 100 to 200 thousand yuan (US$16,108 to 32,216), especially in second and third tier cities. 30 years old or below prefer Chinese brand while 45 years old and above like European cars. And users in different ages focus on different points when choosing a car. Users under 30 years old put priority on automobile design rather than technical functions while users above 45 years old prefer cars of rich technical functions.

Convenient technical functions of automobiles are one of the several key factors that influence people’s purchase intention in China. There are several functions that automobiles may equip, interacting with smartphones, wonderful social network experience, navigation system, voice-ond so on.

Most automobiles are not equipped with attractive interactivities with mobile phones although 58% car owners receive one to three calls when driving every day; even about 20% owners have four to six calls when driving. 95% internet users surveyed are open towards interactivities connectivity with mobile phones; and only 5% don’t need it at all.

Some research shows that using mobile phones while driving may make drivers respond slower which may cause accidents. 40% users surveyed wish to enhance social network experience by improving intelligent safety. And many users require Wi-Fi equipped within the car, which is convenient for people to use navigation, receive payment if using Uber or Didi, a car calling app in China, or search for the road traffic with WeChat Traffic…

The navigation system is a necessary and important device inside the cars; nearly 70% users need navigation, especially during travel or on business trip in other strange cities. When using the navigation, users may find that it may locate inaccurately, waste power, show no road traffic, too many voice messages and sometimes can’t update in time. Solutions need to deal with those problems, where improving network experience may help in some means.

More than half of car owners like listening to the music or radio inside the cars; many are loyal listeners of some internet radio programs.

Other high-end functions, such as auto-braking, pneumatic suspension, self-adoptive cruising, supplemental steering, night-vision and so on, which help with safety, are expected according to the research. Driverless cars are also talked about, only 4% users know nothing about it; most people approved it is useful while the safety can’t be guaranteed.

Automobile users in China’s first-, second- and third-tier, fourth-tier and county level cities almost have the same budget level for purchasing automobile devices.

Over half of the respondents would consider purchasing cars online; about 60% prefer purchasing online if they can enjoy a lower price than in stores.

People who purchase automobile accessories online are higher than those who purchase offline. The trend may be more obvious in the future.

When purchasing cars, 40% users say they may consider purchasing new ones and second-hand ones at the same time; less than 10% users will give a priority to second-hand ones. Second-hand automobile market lacks mutual trust between buyers and sellers. 48.2% would choose to buy cars from acquaintances; and 59.3% respondents are afraid of facing undisclosed poor conditions of cars when they buy second-hand cars.

43.3% users obtain automobile information from the mobile internet; automobile vertical websites rank next important information channel. The internet becomes the major sources of automobile information.

Also read: Chinese Luxury Traveler Insights 2015

China Mobile Search Trend 2015

CIW Team — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 08:30:27 +0000

The number of indexed mobile websites by Baidu increased by 105% as of the end of 2014 according to Baidu. Baidu mbile search revenue surpassed that of desktop computers in Dec 2014.
The main problems of mobile websites from search engine friendliness perspective in 2014 found by Baidu are:

Browser detection using the user agent is not appropriately set
Title and meta description didn’t meet the requirement
Geo-redirection targeting Baidu spider
Inappropriate website information architecture
The important content can not be accessed

According to CNNIC, the number of mobile search users in China reached 429.1 million by end 2014, which is 77.1% of total mobile internet users.

Baidu would consider these are low quality mobile website:

Broken links
Lack of content
Keywords staffing
Outdated content
Too many tag pages
Redirection to spam sites
Forcing popup download
Forcing logins

Though the growth of smartphone slowed down in 2014, mobile search continued its rapid growth.

Categories with the fastest growth in terms of search query volume are education, lifestyle, people, and news. Books and documents, tools, health, movies, shopping and games are still strong.

Another trend of mobile search in China is the growing number of mobile search users looking for local resources. Baidu also updated its algorithm in end 2014 for this trend. In addition, more users trend to choose fresh content.

More users, especially children used voice and images to conduct mobile searches. Baidu estimates, the most demanded content categories in 2015 are lifestyle, education and news.

China Mobile Search Development in 2013

Sida — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:00:25 +0000

Baidu recently released 2014 China Website Development Report. In this report, Baidu revealed some facts about mobile search.

Mobile search brought large revenue for Baidu. What did people search on mobile in 2013? Literal content was still in demand, for being convenient and costing little traffic. This might be a good news for webmasters of small and medium size websites.

The demand for high quality reading source, life service, tool service and online inquiries remained strong. And the demand for life service, tool & inquiries, health and education increased in 2013; however China websites were lack of high quality source in these field.

Most mobile websites were not spider-friendly. In other words, the search engine optimization of mobile websites was low. Non-standard page and no mobile redirect for Baidu mobile UA (user agent) were the main reasons why spider failed to grab mobile web pages. These two reasons accounted for over 70% of ineffective grab. Baidu suggested mobile websites should use separate domain names. Baidu also encouraged webmasters to use Html 5.

Baidu Site App Platform: Turn Your Website into WebApp

Jude — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 07:58:59 +0000

If you are observing an increase in mobile traffic with high bounce rate, you probably should consider designing a mobile site (if your site is not based on responsive design). If you don’t have a budget for that, you can use this tool from Baidu called Baidu Site App.

According to Tencent News, Baidu Site App Platform is the 1^st online web app builder in China, officially launched on Sep 3. It can provide website developers with integrated services such as webapp delivery, net flow and user importing.

There had been 10,041 registered users, 8,919 submitted portals and 843 of them were rated as good three weeks since its launch.

The five main features of Baidu Site App are:

Provides multiple sets of templates
Auto-sync of content
Helps mobile search ranking
Supports Baidu Analytic
Free for ever

Users can register and log in on Baidu Site App Platform. Enter the URL of selected websites, choose Web App templates, and modify specific functions. After deploying domain name, users should submit for official approvement. Once passed, the web app will be online on the mobile internet.

For developers, the advantage of Site App is gradually appearing. As an online builder of mobile web app, Site App can easily turn PC portals into mobile web app. Meanwhile, with the help of Baidu Analytic, intelligent operation can be easily realized. Also, there will be more inputs of net flow and users from Baidu mobile search engine and other means. For example, websites, which are turned into Web App, will have better expression on mobile. This will help the website get higher ranking on results page.

As for users, the transformation of Site App will help them save time and resources. Users have to search, download and install Native app before really using it, which is quite inconvenient. Not to mention how much memory capacity it will occupy. But if native app transforms into web app via Site App Platform, users can get access to a variety of apps without downloading.

We will not deny it is native app that facilitates the explosion of mobile internet but it has its inevitable limitation. In contrast, web app will not be limited by relative hardware and software vendors while maximize the net profit of developers. We can easily anticipate its leading role in the near future.