How should you design a website for Chinese users?

Search this topic and you’ll find the same advice: Chinese sites are busy, so make yours busy, and add red. Most of it comes from side-by-side screenshots, and some of it is over a decade old.

The evidence says something more useful, and it’s easier to act on. This guide is part of our work on translating and localizing a website for China.

Do Chinese users really want busy websites?

Not quite. They accept density, but complexity still slows them down. The best test we found comes from Nielsen Norman Group, in 2016.¹

It had 6 Chinese users and 6 foreign residents of China complete tasks on desktop sites, from simple to portal-like.¹ The results cut both ways:

• Chinese users saw dense pages as normal, and judged some minimal sites as short on useful content.¹
• Even so, participants took longer on complicated sites, and showed more hesitation and anxiety.¹
• Many problems matched Western findings, such as a carousel users had trouble with and navigation that trapped them in a subsite.¹

Here’s how that compares with what’s usually repeated.

Source	What it says	What it rests on
Chinafy, 2023	Sites are “busier and more complex” 25	Brand examples and cited reading, no user test of its own
FINN Partners, 2012	QQ.com has 92 navigation links 26	One link count from 2012
Sinorbis, 2017	Pages use all their space, in small blocks 27	Site comparisons, no external study
Thoughtworks, 2021	History, language and competition explain it 28	Assumptions, in the author’s own word
Nielsen Norman Group, 2016	Simpler helps, minimal doesn’t 1	Observed tasks, 12 participants

The explanations for density are commentary too. None of the articles above proved a cause, so don’t design around a theory about Chinese culture.

What does “simpler, not minimalist” mean on a real page?

It means more substance on each page, in clear blocks, with nothing hidden. Baidu’s own page rules push the same way, at least on mobile.

The table below is our reading of the evidence. Baidu’s 2020 rules are written for pages on its mobile search, we can’t confirm it still applies these values today, and the changes are design judgments, not tested recipes.

Western habit	Change for Chinese pages	Evidence
Full-height hero with a slogan	Put real content in the first screen	Over 50% of the screen, Baidu 2020 6. Its 2023 list flags a folded first screen below 50% 8
One line per service	A short description and a link for each	Minimal sites read as less useful 1
Search hidden behind an icon	Show the search box, if you have one	Icons caused trouble in testing 1
Rotating carousel	Fixed blocks	Users had trouble with a carousel 1
One very long page	Clear sections, category names, breadcrumbs	Baidu 2019 asks for prominent category names and breadcrumbs, and says nothing on page length 29
Text inside images	Live text	Baidu’s 2014 guide, dated 30

Two limits are worth knowing:

• Baidu’s page rules say main content should sit at the center of the first screen, and ads at the top of that screen can’t exceed 10% of a screen.⁶
• Sinorbis says Chinese pages are usually “2 full screen lengths or less”.²⁷ That’s a 2017 observation without a source, so don’t treat it as a target.

Our guide to Baidu mobile SEO lists the full rules.

Left, Western template

• Full-screen image
• Slogan
• Button

Right, Chinese version

• What the company does
• Who it serves
• Links to each service
• Proof
• Visible contact

VS

Which screens should you design for?

Both phones and desktops. “Mobile first” is right for most Chinese traffic, but the two main data sources show why it can’t mean “mobile only”.

Source	What it measures	Mobile	Desktop
CNNIC, December 2025	Share of internet users who go online this way	99.6% 235	32.5% 235
StatCounter, October 2026	Share of page traffic it records	55.87% 3	42.78% 3

They don’t conflict, because they count different things. Nearly everyone uses a phone, while a large share of pages still load on a computer. CNNIC also counts laptops separately, at 31.2%, so its desktop figure understates computers.²³⁵

Your buyers may sit on either side. Nielsen Norman Group’s B2B research doesn’t give a split, so check your own analytics once you have some.

StatCounter’s October 2026 data also gives you a practical test list.⁴⁵

Test on	Why
1920x1080	Most common resolution, 11.59% 4
414x896, 390x844	Common phone sizes, 8.14% and 3% 4
360x800	Narrowest of the top sizes, 5.31% 4
Chrome, Edge, Safari	50.2%, 16.07%, 15.89% of browser traffic 5
UC, 360 Safe, QQ Browser	5.77%, 4.55%, 4.35% 5

StatCounter’s top list doesn’t name WeChat’s built-in browser, so we can’t say how much traffic it carries. Test it anyway, because people who reach you through WeChat may see your page there.

What are the right type settings for Chinese text?

Start with 14px body text and a 22px line height. That’s where Baidu’s published rules and Ant Design, a design system published in Chinese and English, meet.

Chinese characters are intricate, so small sizes hurt readability,²⁶ and settings copied from a Latin site can read too tight. The values below are published ones, each with its context.

Setting	Value	Source and context
Body size	14px recommended, 10px floor	Baidu mobile, 2016 7
Body size	At least 10pt	Baidu, 2020 6
Base size and line height	14px on 22px	Ant Design, for desktop reading 10
Line height	Over 1.4 times the size	Baidu, 2020 6
Space between lines	0.42 to 0.6 times the size	Baidu mobile, 2016 7
Tap targets	Over 40px wide and high	Baidu mobile, 2016 7
Line length	48 characters at most, in print	W3C draft 9
Gap between Han and Latin	A quarter of a character at most	W3C draft 9

The numbers line up better than you’d expect. At 14px, Baidu’s 2016 spacing gives lines of about 20 to 22px, and 10pt works out to about 13.3px in CSS units, if that’s the unit Baidu means.

W3C’s standard print size for body text, 10.5pt, is also exactly 14px in CSS units.⁹ Print and screen are different settings, so read that as a coincidence that helps, not a rule.

Line length gives you a useful check. At 14px, 48 characters is 672px, so a text column wider than that is too long by W3C’s print measure.⁹

A phone is the opposite problem. A 360px screen with 16px margins holds only about 23 characters at 14px, so short paragraphs matter even more.

A starting point for your Chinese templates looks like this:

:lang(zh-Hans) p {
  font-size: 14px;
  line-height: 22px;
  max-width: 48em;
  text-autospace: normal;
}
:lang(zh-Hans) em {
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 700;
}

Why those last lines?

• text-autospace adds the small gap between Chinese and Latin text, so nobody types spaces by hand. MDN gives normal as the initial value, so this line only protects you from a reset elsewhere in your CSS. It’s Baseline since November 2025, so older browsers will skip it.¹¹
• Italics are off because W3C’s document covers bold and emphasis dots, and we found no mention of italics in it.⁹ Thoughtworks also says Chinese fonts lack comparable styles.²⁸ That’s weak evidence, but plain bold is the safe choice.
• Bold is 700 because Microsoft lists only Light, Regular and Bold for YaHei.¹⁵ Ant Design suggests 400 and 500,¹⁰ but a 500 may show no difference on Windows.

Get lang right

Set lang="zh-Hans" on your Chinese pages.¹³ The same Unicode code point can take different glyphs by regional convention,¹² and W3C says browsers can use the language tag to pick a suitable font.³²

W3C says typography rules follow regions more than scripts. Mainland punctuation sits low and to the left of its box, while Taiwan and Hong Kong center it.⁹

Our guide to Simplified or Traditional Chinese covers the choice.

Which fonts to load is a separate question. Use system fonts for Chinese text. Our guide to fonts and embeds in China explains why, with file sizes.

Can you use any Chinese font?

No. None of the design guides we read mention this risk, and it goes beyond performance. Check the license of every Chinese font that appears in your logo, images or served font files.

Microsoft YaHei is the best-known case. Microsoft licensed its glyphs from Beijing Founder, its copyright notice also names Founder for portions of the font, and it points web developers to a separate license.¹⁵

A 2019 Securities Times report describes a Shenzhen startup that used YaHei in its branding, its WeChat account and its website.¹⁶

It says Founder sent a lawyer’s letter, and the company deleted its past brand content.¹⁶

Outcomes vary. The same report says, from Tianyancha data, that Founder’s cases mostly ended with Founder withdrawing. It quotes a legal professional who calls Founder’s font copyright fairly certain, and a lawyer who says Founder should state its fees before use.¹⁶

Use	Status	What to do
Source Han Sans in images or logos	SIL OFL 1.1: use and embedding allowed, no selling the font alone 31	Check it fits your use. It has versions for the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong 14
YaHei or Founder fonts in images, logos or served files	Assume a license is needed	Get one, or switch font
YaHei named in a CSS stack, shown from the visitor’s device	Not settled by what we read	Ask a local adviser
A free font from a download site	Unknown	Trace the license first

Free check

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Do you need to change your colors?

Usually not. We found no study showing that a foreign brand does better with red and gold, so keep your palette and adjust specific uses.

Chinafy links red with luck and prosperity, and gold with wealth.²⁵ FINN Partners calls both colors auspicious.²⁶ An EU data visualization guide also ties red to wealth and prosperity in China.²⁴

But that’s meaning, not evidence that it sells.

One convention is worth changing, though. On Chinese market data, red means up and green means down, the reverse of Western dashboards.²³²⁴

If your page shows	Check
Stock or investment charts	Use red for gains, green for losses
Growth charts with green arrows	Ask a native reader how they land
Red error messages near good news	Keep them clearly separate
Your logo colors	Leave them alone

Number and color superstitions fill many guides. We found no solid source for them, so we’ve left them out. Your native reviewer will catch anything that feels wrong.

How should contact and proof appear on the page?

Keep them visible, specific and easy to verify. Nielsen Norman Group’s 2017 B2B study found that buyers look for evidence that a company is real, and hold it accountable through that evidence.¹⁷

It’s a small qualitative study from 2017, with 8 participants, but these are the design points it supports:

• Location: participants looked for a physical store or local distributor nearby.¹⁷
• Past work: they wanted photos, case studies or testimonials they could check.¹⁷
• Chat: 5 of 8 used online chat, preferred it to calling, and kept the log as a record.¹⁷

If you have no local presence, say where you are and how you serve Chinese clients. Don’t imply an office you don’t have. Our guide to earning the trust of Chinese buyers goes further.

Chat and Baidu’s rules pull apart

Users like chat, but Baidu limits how you show it. Its 2020 rules allow one consultation function per page, never at the top, and the chat window can’t open by itself.⁶

Function buttons can’t exceed 10% of a screen, and floating ones can’t cover content.⁶ Its 2023 list also flags two or more repeated functions that stay on screen as you scroll.⁸

So a chat bubble, a sticky call bar and a WeChat button together are worth rethinking. Pick one, keep it small, and make sure the chat tool itself loads from China.

Use QR codes with care

Nielsen Norman Group’s 2016 diary study found QR codes common in China, largely thanks to WeChat, which has had a built-in scanner since 2012.¹⁸ They still have limits:¹⁸

• They take more room than a link, and too many degrade a mobile page.
• They carry no hint of what they do, so add a line of text beside each one.
• A code shown on a phone is hard to scan with that same phone, so offer a link or a way to copy your ID.

The last point is our reasoning, based on the problems the study saw with extracting codes from chat. Our guide to WeChat for foreign businesses covers the account itself.

Fix your form fields

Most Western forms need small changes:

Field	Change	Why
Name	One field, or “family name” and “given name”	“First name” confuses people who write the family name first 20
Mobile	Accept 11 digits, no area code, with or without +86	Standard mobile format 21
Character limits	Allow non-Latin text, use UTF-8	Chinese names need Unicode 20
Login, if you have one	Offer a phone code before a password	Widely used in China, per a 2018 qualitative study 19

A string can also change width in translation. W3C cites a Flickr example that counts each Chinese character as two English ones in width.²² So test your buttons and menus with the final text, not placeholders.

Personal data is a legal question too. See whether China’s privacy law applies before you add fields.

How do you check a Chinese design before launch?

Test the final Chinese pages, not a mockup with placeholder text. Most of what can go wrong only shows up there.

1. Load the pages from China. Use our guide to testing your site from China. A blocked script can leave a design half-rendered.
2. Measure them. A rich page must still load, so see how to speed up your site in China.
3. Check the first screen. On a 360px screen, see how much is main content and how much is banner, cookie notice and buttons.
4. Check the type. Confirm text size, line height and punctuation on a real phone and a Windows computer.
5. Check the browsers. Open the pages in the browsers listed above, and scan a QR code to see them inside WeChat.
6. Run a real task. Ask a native reader to find what you do and contact you, and to think aloud.

Nielsen Norman Group’s study used think-aloud tasks like this one.¹ A few sessions can show where people hesitate, though they won’t prove that a page will perform.

The bottom line

Don’t copy Chinese portals, and don’t ship your Western template unchanged. Put more useful content on each page, set Chinese type properly, and design for both phones and desktops.

Then check your font licenses and let a native reader test the result. Much of the evidence is old or small, so your own test matters more than any rule of thumb.

How Index in China can help

We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, as part of getting indexed on Chinese search engines.

Design choices stay yours, and we’ll tell you if your case needs a local adviser. Book a 30-minute call.

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