Blog post
Blog Post
Improving Web Performance in China - with Chinafy and Catchpoint WebPageTest
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This is a guest blog written by the Chinafy Team.
Most people in the website space would have heard of the term Great Firewall of China. What those people won’t really know, though, is what that means.
For context, most websites don’t work the same way in China that they do elsewhere.
Due to the way the China internet is designed, most websites take a long time to load and fail to function properly. This means anything from 30+ second loading times to videos not playing to fonts not delivering, and everything in between.
What most people are shocked by once they first test their website is just how poor that experience is - as we’re not even talking about high performance in the milliseconds, but the basic level of visibility and accessibility.
Not only is discovery of the issue challenging, but so is identifying and solving those problems once it’s determined that your website has them.
- You cannot simply resolve website speed issues in China the same way you would outside of China. CDNs and hosting providers only address a part of the problem (more on this later).
- Regulatory challenges and limitations.
- China’s internet is an evolving landscape.
Chinafy is a Chinese web performance platform and the only platform that helps both onshore and offshore websites* load fast, fully, and securely for visitors in China.
Chinafy combines its proprietary Chinese web optimization technology which systematically detects third-party resources and determines actionable steps based on best practices (i.e. removal, replacement with a China alternative, and more) using a combination of automation and manual engineering expertise, with a fully managed China-friendly CDN, celebrated customer support and a robust partner ecosystem with experts across regulatory, social media, advertising and more.
The importance of website speed in China
While China's internet penetration rate based on its population size is less than that of South Korea and Japan, China as a singular country has accounted for about one-fifth of the 5.4 billion internet users worldwide since 2022 (Statista), with 1.09 billion users at the start of 2024.
Not only is the market opportunity and total number of internet users massive, digital-first behaviors are practiced across the majority of the population.
Since 2021, China has been leading the world in digital consumerism as a result of its highly integrated digital systems. Not only are mobile-first cashless payments expected within its many online shopping platforms (from Taobao, to TMall and more) but the practice is also widespread on a daily basis across many small-scale mom and pop shops. Superapps like WeChat have entire digital ecosystems including its own mobile browser, the ability to pay and process government taxes, features to text your friends, buy tickets and so much more, without ever having to leave the app.
As internet speeds continue to improve substantially in this mobile-first country, it should go without saying that any company who even wants to meet the minimum requirements of being visible in China - needs to begin to take steps towards understanding how their website works in China.
This is what led us to Catchpoint WebPageTest. We wanted to measure site performance of our users so we can gain deep insights into how to improve it.
How Chinafy uses Catchpoint WebPageTest (WPT)
How Chinafy uses Catchpoint WebPageTest (WPT) to analyze and compare performance across browsers, devices, and network conditions.
The below step by step instructions demonstrate how we run, analyze and compare tests on WPT:
- Step 1: Input website on webpagetest.com
- Step 2: Select the location(s) where you want to test
- Step 3: Choose the browser your users use and click the "Start Test" button
- Step 4: Interpreting the results
After running your WebPageTest, it's important to effectively analyze the results to understand your site's performance. Start by checking the summary for speed, usability, and resilience. Review key performance metrics such as Time to First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Speed Index, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Total Blocking Time (TBT). Below the metrics, use the filmstrip view to see a visual sequence of the page load, and the waterfall chart to identify loading bottlenecks. For more detailed guidance, refer to the WebPageTest documentation.
- Step 5: Compare Test History
Compare different records to identify trends, improvements, or regressions over time and across various locations or configurations.
- Step 6: View Filmstrip Comparison
Detailed performance comparison in the filmstrip view.
- Step 7: Analyze the Resource Waterfall
Compare the waterfall charts for a more in-depth analysis of resource loading.
Alongside WebPageTest’s robust web testing capabilities, Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) platform has the largest observability network in the industry with over 100 vantage points in China, spanning the country’s vast geography (from Harbin in the North to Shantou in the South), over 30 of its cities, major ISPs (including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom), and its major cloud providers. Catchpoint’s IPM enables detailed, global visibility across the Internet Stack – the tangled web of distributed network systems that connect your web applications to your users, including BGP, CDN, and DNS services. Our cloud-native platform ensures Internet Resilience across your organization with five enterprise IPM solutions.
Visit Catchpoint’s Website Experience Solution page or schedule a chat with our solution engineers to discover how WebPageTest and Catchpoint IPM combined can improve your website’s speed, reliability, and resilience—all within a single platform.
*Chinafy does not optimize or work with websites that are officially blocked or made inaccessible by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, nor websites that knowingly contain content that pose compliance issues with the Chinese MIIT.
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