THAILAND. Chinese price-comparison app Jessica’s Secret has developed its first website in Chinese for a duty free retailer – Thailand’s King Power International Group. The first phase of the upgraded website has been launched replacing one from a different provider, and the Chinese language app is available from today on IOS platforms (search for 泰国王权 in Apple’s App Store).
A spokesperson from Jessica’s Secret said the previous Chinese website was translated directly from King Power’s English site and not therefore suitable for Chinese travellers. Using the new site features, shoppers can make orders on the website, complete payments, and pick up goods at their departure airport, according to the company.
It took Jessica’s Secret four months to redesign and remake the Chinese website, with extensive support from the retailer. Results so far have been “quite successful” said Jessica’s Secret Chairman and CEO, Mirko Wang. He added: “The management of King Power were very satisfied. During October’s Golden Week, the online sales performance was impressive.” Wang said that on one day last week, daily sales were fives times the level of the previous site.
The relationship with KPIG goes back about a year to when developers from Jessica’s Secrets helped the retailer to migrate its servers using China’s Alibaba cloud servers.
“Prior to that, in China, the site either could not be opened, or opened after more than a minute,” explained Wang. “After the migration was completed, the opening time was within three seconds.”
As a result, in May, KPIG gave the Jessica’s team the green light to develop a new Chinese website by overhauling the existing one.
The upgrades include a homepage makeover to provide a richer and more attractive display of products. “We added some ‘hot’ products, thus giving users more reasons to buy,” said Wang. “Now the website looks more like a mainstream Chinese e-commerce site such as Tmall or JD.com.”
Candidly, he added: “To be honest, from the consumer perspective, many global travel retailer websites look more like an introduction to the company than an actual ‘shopping’ platform.”
Product nicknames to the rescue
Jessica’s Secret also added a more powerful and convenient search function to save users time finding what they want. In particular, familiar names were included for key products. “For Chinese consumers, it is hard to remember the official English brand names, so there are special terms for certain products,” said Wang.
For example, Lancôme’s Advanced Génifique Youth Activating Serum is known as the Little Black Bottle (小黑瓶); SK-II’s Facial Treatment Essence as Fairy Water (神仙水); and Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair as the Little Brown Bottle (小棕瓶). “Now we’ve added these nicknames to the King Power website search engine, which greatly helps Chinese tourists to quickly find what they want,” Wang said.
Giving the Chinese what they want
Jessica’s Secret also defaulted to using SMS for Chinese tourists to register on the site. “In China, consumers are accustomed to using mobile phones to register accounts… they rarely use e-mail. In addition, smartphones can be used for authentication code logins, resending passwords, and so on. This is a more convenient operation… more Chinese style than using email,” noted Wang. His team also added WeChat, QQ, Weibo and Alipay one-click logins for consumers.
Finally shoppers can now also place orders, check an order status, and cancel orders directly on the website rather than by email which was the previous system.
Wang, said: “We firmly believe that our efforts will help King Power to perform better in terms of online sales and consumer pre-order.”
The new site has two web addresses: www.kingpower-cn.com (for PCs); and wap.kingpower-cn.com (for mobile platforms). If users open www.kingpower-cn.com on a mobile device, the new system detects this and makes the link switch to wap.kingpower-cn.com for optimal viewing.
Jessica’s Secret has begun the second phase of the site upgrade and is developing an Android app for King Power. The release of the Android version is expected by the end of this year.
