Project Overview 

Chinese International School (CIS) is an International School located in Hong Kong, renowned for its commitment to excellence in providing a bilingual educational environment that fosters global citizens.

Some data representing the CIS student body (2024):

1,589+ students aged 4-18

From 35+ nations/regions

~ 4% are from mainland China

CIS actively seeks to strengthen its presence in mainland China by increasing its appeal to prospective students from the region.

As a crucial part of this strategy, CIS aims to enhance engagement with potential students and their families across mainland China by optimizing the performance of its website, ensuring that it is effectively tailored to meet the needs and expectations of this important audience.

Why the Chinese Education Market?

The Chinese education market is expansive and highly competitive, with a growing demand for international education among Chinese families. Enhancing web presence within China taps into this vast market and significantly boosts the school’s visibility and accessibility.

What This Means for CIS:

Increased Exposure: Optimizing the website for Chinese audiences means greater exposure and potentially higher enrollment from students in mainland China.

Enhanced User Experience: Faster load times and better compatibility ensure a smoother, more engaging user experience for visitors.

Improved Public Impression: A more accessible and efficient website enhances CIS's reputation as a technologically adept and internationally focused educational institution.

The Challenges

Here's a GIF showing the Visual Speed Test of the original CIS website, comparing the site as it loads in the US and China.

Websites based outside of China often experience significantly slower load times, typically 5 to 8 times slower than they experience elsewhere, due to various technical factors.

In this specific case, the CIS website only managed to partially load in 14 seconds, which falls far short of the optimal user engagement threshold.

Typically, the ideal page loading time should be between 0-3 seconds. That puts the CIS website at almost 5x slower, at best.

Prolonged load times can lead to several negative outcomes, such as:

Lower Search Engine Rankings: Search engines, including Google, penalize slow-loading websites by ranking them lower in search results. This is particularly detrimental for international schools, as it hinders their ability to attract a global audience and showcase their educational offerings.

Diminished User Satisfaction: Slow loading speeds result in a substandard user experience, potentially damaging the brand's reputation among its audience.

Lowered Conversion Rates: The likelihood of users completing a purchase or requesting further information decreases significantly with slower site performance.

In addition to slow loading times, the CIS website also confronts issues with incompatibility issues:

Specifically, the original site struggled to display YouTube videos correctly in China, resulting in a fragmented user experience.

This issue stems from regional restrictions and compatibility challenges with China’s internet standards, which disrupts the delivery of content and diminishes the overall effectiveness of the website.

Our Solution

Chinafy enhances the performance of the CIS site in China by optimizing both speed and compatibility.

Here’s how Chinafy accelerates the CIS website:

Copy Creation: Chinafy begins by creating a duplicate of the CIS site, which will be optimized to suit the Chinese market better.

Intelligent, Comprehensive Scanning: The service scans the site’s front-end code (HTML, CSS, JS) to identify and rectify any elements that may be incompatible with Chinese internet standards on an ongoing basis — not just obvious issues like YouTube or Twitter integrations, but deeper incompatibilities as well.

Synchronization: With automation rules, Chinafy ensures that any updates made to your original site are automatically reflected in the China-optimized version, maintaining consistency without additional effort on your part.

Enhanced Content Delivery: Utilizing a near-China and/or China CDN depending on requirements met, Chinafy significantly speeds up content delivery, ensuring your site loads quickly and reliably.

The Chinafy Results

1. Faster Load Times

Page loading time was halved, significantly improving the accessibility of the site.

2. Full Display of Video Content

With the optimization changes implemented, YouTube videos and other multimedia elements on the website are fully functional, greatly enriching the content experience.

This plays a pivotal role in providing virtual tours, student testimonials, and insights into campus life, all of which help to paint a vivid picture of what prospective students and parents might expect.

Lastly, for any educational institution looking to expand its presence in China, utilizing Chinafy’s services will offer a strategic advantage in optimizing its website’s performance and accessibility.

Want to boost your web presence in China?

Contact Chinafy to learn more about how we can help you.