Sina.com Takes Offensive As Battle of China Portals Builds Ahead of China.com IPO
By William J. McMahon
ChinaOnline News
(7/12/99) Just days before its archrival China.com hopes to raise an estimated US$64 million in a NASDAQ initial public offering, Sina.com announced new statistics showing its traffic from mainland China users averages well over a million page views per day.
Sina.com said today that it averaged 2.82 million page views per day during the week of June 11-17, with over half coming from within China. The study was conducted by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a state run agency that provides statistics on internet usage in China.
China.com claims to receive a million page views per day, but since the company has not broken its figures down by region, it's unclear where its users are concentrated. The portal site has said it has 400,000 registered users of its three main portals for the Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China market.
Sina.com also said traffic on its China web site has grown 165% during the past six months. The portal, which wants to be the premier site for Chinese language communities worldwide, also operates web sites for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in North America.
Sina.com is trying to win over investors and users alike these days. The goal of all e-businesses is to create a steady flow of visitors to a site, where these potential customers will be persuaded to spend time viewing ads or buying merchandise online. Headlines and content draw people to the site, according to the strategies of internet marketers, and create "page views." The more page views created, the more likely a site is able "to create a relationship with the prospect or customer," in the new language of the Web marketers. Without relationships there are no sales.
Internet access via foreign domains has reached nearly half of all Web traffic, according to statistics compiled by StatMarket. As of June 6, the internet research firm reported the percentage of Web traffic from foreign domains was 44%; nearly matching the traffic from commercial (.com), network organizations (.net), educational (.edu), organization (.org), military organizations (.mil), and government (.gov) domains, combined.
To contact William J. McMahon:
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F: (312) 335-9299
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E: bmcmahon@chinaonline.com
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