Whether you like it or not, social plugins are likely to take Hong Kong internet community by storm. Six degree of separation may not hold true here anymore, our friends’ friends would only be one or two clicks away.

In designing website or creating new blog post, TG recommends my friends to use the popular Facebook “Like” bar to help pushing contents to your friends’ facebook, building links and increase your web site’s visibility.  Facebook launched its “Open Graph” a few months ago, including “like” buttons that encourage users to share their common interest.

Social plugins are taking Hong Kong internet users by storm

The upside of using Facebook “Like” bar is having your users or fans who really like your site content, publish it on their own Facebook domains and spread it among their peers sharing similar area of interest, hobby and tastes.

It’s tough to imagine that Hong Kong users are not Facebook frenzy. Many of them are updating their thoughts, locations and playing games in Facebook at MTR, during lunch time or even at work.

In Hong Kong, 30% of mobile users regularly check and update their social networks and Facebook is used most by Hong Kong consumers at 17%, followed by Yahoo (14%) and Google (14%).

According  to Smartphone Usage Set to Dominate Hong Kong Mobile Market reported by Cellular News,  Facebook is more popular among Hong Kong females at 20% than males at 15%, and for the younger cohort (16-30 years) at 27%.

Picking a recent example: ubuyibuy, a Hong Kong-based  B2C (business to consumer) collective buying  Internet company, grows strong in using Facebook as its online marketing tool by registering 47,784 people like uBuyiBuy Hong Kong.

Doing a google search fo ubuyibuy, TG finds its Hong Kong facebook ranks high and was indexed quite often by Google.  It’s hard for Hong Kong emarketers, bloggers and website designers not to adopt the new plugin.

______________________________________________________

Going online to browse second-hand apartments, village houses and villas for sales is gaining popularity in Hong Kong. Along with the  local booming property market price which hits or rises above pre-1997′s benchmark in some housing estates. a few property agency are rushing for gold by fine-tuning their web presences. 

TG randomly asked a couple of Hong Kong potential property buyers in an attempt to determine how to create a user-centered faceted search for a soon-to-be-launched property site.  The idea is to help reduce pogo-sticking behavior where users have left with no choice but jump up and down website hierarchy for desired information.

Almost all respondents in the user research vote unanimously that “area” and “districts” are the first 2 priorities they are searching for regardless of their nationalities and age groups.

Moving to the next level, search filters or attributes in search refinement appear to be more diversified and complicated. The facets they choose to narrow down their search results vary in accordance with their needs, preferences, age and culture.

Using facets and values to build a usable tool to capture users' eyeballs

Overseas users seeks property features more often than local users

Overseas users will look for owner-specific property, trying to avoid middleman agency.  They set their search criteria to the number of bathrooms, bedrooms and building age. Some of them are more likely to spend time on looking for search terms such as, layout- duplex, penthouse, simplex and triplex; outdoor – balcony, garden, roof top and terrace as well as floor zone.

Local Hong Kong respondents in general are eager to set themselves a price range and estimated apartment size (measured by square foot), it is paramount to decide if the price per square foot is reasonable. They are also very concerned about the brand of property developer and will track down the apartment’s history.

By taking their mortgage loan and combined family salary into  full consideration, most of them will go for small apartment in the first buy.Whether these properties are sold by owners or agents, they are less concern.

Of those respondents in the user research, Hong Kong graduate students are more likely to check out the location close to their parents’ apartments in the hope that they can share meals, being take care of their new born baby by theire parents. 

The above respondents certainly do not include affluent users, mainly from China, who primarily buy new building, houses or apartments with baggages of cash!  TG would like to get a chance to interview this type of users.

Some recommendations in designing faceted search for HK property website

In designing the faceted search for Hong Kong’s property website, a couple of things TG would like to suggest:

1. Display the numeric value to users as soon as they narrow down the search terms. Being able to see available options and the number of being reduced as soon as  they select their facets are very useful

2. Present prominently what facets and values they have selected

3. Be creative in presenting different sets of numeric data as they can be very overwhelming. Prices, sizes, building ages, number of bedrooms, bathrooms or maid rooms are common facets to be applied

4. Limit the choices of faceted search with well-designed information hierachy in the first level , only present the critical items by talking to your users

5. Having the faceted search on the left or top does not bother users too much as long as the search facility is visible and has a clean design

6. Small tools like mortgage calculator and Google map are helpful to users while they are using faceted search

TG recommends more readings from  Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters by Greg Nudelman and  Faceted Navigation by Martijn van Welie.

______________________________________________________

What kinds of video Hong Kong users like most?

TG’s guess would be music entertainment, real-time finance news and street video – those video shot by users themselves in public area and then share with their friends and other peers. 

A  music video  received 226,150 views  in 5 days which features a famous canton-pop song – 海闊天空 Boundless Oceans Vast Skies originally created by Hong Kong rock band Beyond, yet the singers are not local Hongkongese this time, they are MetroVocal Group. and they sing it in Cantonese! 

MetroVocalGroup sings Under-A-Vast-Sky

The new version - under a vast sky brings back memories and brings in traffic from the rock band fans like TG, smart move! 

TG also wants to take this opportunity to show my respect to the rock band who has created a lot of good songs and lyics for us to rejoice. 真的愛你, 光輝歲月, 大地 to name a few!!

4 singers from Beyond-Hong-Kong-Rock-Band

A recent report says Hong Kong internet users love to watch video online. About 88.5 per cent of them viewed 10 hours of video online each during March, the finding was extracted from “Nearly 9 out of 10 inernet users in Hong Kong view online video“.

The report was published by comScore, Inc, a digital marketing agent and solution provider for online audience measurement, e-commerce, advertising, search, video and mobile. It’s about time for Hong Kong Internet marketers to pay more attention to make use of online video media.

______________________________________________________