Kyoto is considered the cultural capital of Japan by many, and as a result, a major tourist destination for travelers globally.
The Kyoto Tourism Federation is the area’s official local government agency whose purpose is to promote cultural tourism for the area.
In 2019, Japan welcomed ~10 million visitors from China. Chinese visitors also spent ¥1.77 trillion the same year, making them the largest revenue contributor in Japan.
– Japan Tourism Agency, Nippon.com
Determined to make travel information accessible and even find creative ways to promote tourism online, the federation valued its website as an important digital touchpoint for tourists.
Especially in the face of changing border policies and the pandemic, it was more important than ever to have a highly-performant, fully interactive website.
Web Project: www.kyototourism.org
CMS: WordPress
Web Agency: dayalive
The website was beautifully designed across various touchpoints and performed as designed, globally.
That is, except in China.
While the website was built with modern best web practices, the official Kyoto Tourism Federation website encountered a combination of code-based and infrastructural incompatibilities commonly found across almost all foreign websites.
These factors contributed to the site...
Taking 2-3x longer to load from China missing critical visual components including maps and videos
Facing a higher bounce rate than visitors globally, despite the fact there was localised content on the site designed specifically for China visitors
With this in mind, the Kyoto Tourism Federation used Chinafy.
How to test websites in China?
Before Chinafy: Inconsistently loading between 8 seconds and 20 seconds
After Chinafy: Fully loaded in 6.8 seconds on average
See a time series analysis comparing the Kyoto Tourism site before Chinafy (original site, in grey) vs after Chinafy (Chinafy preview, in blue) below:
The best part? Kyoto Tourism’s website now loads faster in China with Chinafy than it does globally.
👉 Test Kyoto Tourism Federation’s website, in real-time!
In addition to improving performance, the Kyoto Tourism Federation was also able to -
Deliver a VPN-free visitor experience in China
Optimise their current experience without needing to build a separate site, local licenses, or hosting onshore in China
Continue to manage content from WordPress, as they and their agency, normally would
Improve SEO performance in China with increased indexability across Chinese search engines
Want to optimise your Enterprise Website in China? Get in touch with Chinafy!