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China Denies Controversial Draft Law Would Block All Foreign Sites

By Elin Box on April 6, 2016

Global Marketing News – 6th April 2016

China denies controversial draft law would block all foreign sites

The Chinese government has denied that a controversial draft law to do with domain names would block all foreign websites in the country.

The proposed law says that Chinese websites must register their web addresses using Chinese domain registration services. If they do not, they risk being blocked in the country, or being fined 30,000 yuan.

This sparked concern from many international businesses targeting China, who feared that their websites may be cut off for not having registered a .cn domain.

In response, the Chinese government has announced that the proposed laws “do not involve websites that are accessed overseas, do not affect users from accessing the related internet content and do not affect the normal development of business for overseas companies in China”.

China has some of the strictest internet censorship laws in the world. Pornographic and other “offensive” content are banned, including “the spreading of rumours”.

In 2014, China made it a criminal offence to broadcast any defamatory content online. A perpetrator can face up to 3 years imprisonment if the information has been viewed by 5,000 people or re-posted 500 times.

Third-party content slows down webpages

Research by NCC Group has found that webpages that contain a lot of third-party content load much slower than sites with less third-party content.

It looked at the 50 biggest retail sites in the UK and compared how fast their homepages displayed.

It found that the slowest website had 7.5 times more third-party content than the fastest website; the slowest website contained 618KB of third-party content, compared to 83KB on the fastest website.

Third-party content is typically advertising, remarketing or testing services.

Website loading speeds are extremely important. A report from Nielsen found that 47% of people expect a website to load within 2 seconds, and 40% will leave a website if it does not load fully within 3 seconds.

Over 1 in 3 internet users in Scandinavia use ad blockers

Over a third of internet users in Scandinavia use ad blockers, according to research by AudienceProject.

39% of internet users in Sweden, 37% of internet users in Denmark, and 34% of internet users in Norway and Finland said they used an ad blocker in February.

Ad blocking software stops adverts from appearing on web browsers.

Users install them for a variety of reasons, for example because they find adverts annoying or because they are worried about their data being collected.

Younger people were more likely to use ad blockers than older people, with use being highest in internet users aged 15 to 25.

When looking at the types of devices Scandinavians preferred to use ad blockers on, the study found that they were most commonly used on desktops and laptops, with 30% saying they used an ad blocker on such a device. This fell to 9% for tablets and just 8% for mobile phones.

H&M launches 7 new ecommerce sites targeting Europe

The fashion retailer H&M has launched ecommerce sites targeting 7 new European markets.

The new sites are targeting Ireland, Luxembourg, Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

The sites have the same collections of clothing and accessories for men, women and children as the physical stores, apart from Sweden where home items will also be on sale on the site.

H&M now has a digital presence in 61 countries across 6 continents, with ecommerce being enabled on 23 of those websites.

It saw its sales grow by a healthy 19% last year.

Uber launches in its 400th city: Abuja

And finally, the taxi hailing app Uber has launched in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, meaning that it now operates in 400 cities worldwide.

Uber now operates in three African countries (South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria) and has announced plans to enter three more African countries by summer (Uganda, Ghana and Tanzania).

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Elin Box

Content Marketing Manager at Webcertain
Elin is a Content Marketing Manager at Webcertain. She is responsible for Webcertain’s Self-learning platform, producing in-depth guides on a range of international digital marketing topics. She also helps run the Webcertain blog and is the writer of the Webcertain search and social report, an annual report summarising digital marketing best practices in over 50 countries. She is passionate about educating and empowering people to make the best decisions for their business and is proud to help share Webcertain’s wealth of digital marketing knowledge with the world. Elin is from the UK.

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