THE BRIDGE

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With 10% of its users Japan, Strikingly officially launches localized service

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At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface. Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan. I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for…

david-chen-strikingly
David Chen of Strikingly, at Infinity Ventures Summit

At Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan, we briefly caught up with David Chen, the CEO of Strikingly, a service that lets you create small websites that look great on mobile with minimal effort. The service is now going after the Japanese market, and Strikingly.jp just went live late last week with a Japanese-language interface.

Surprisingly, ten percent of the company’s users already come from Japan, and that’s without any efforts to localize or promote the service in the country. Perhaps even more important is that many Japanese users are also paid customers, though maybe that’s not so surprising given that Japan’s internet can be thought of largely as a mobile internet. Strikingly’s designs are entirely responsive, and look good on any sized device — a key feature for any such service here in Japan.

I’ve used some similar services in the past, most notably About.me which is pretty simple. That service, however, when viewed on mobile does a better job of promoting About.me than it does its users. Personally I like the idea of just using Github Pages, but if you’d prefer to save yourself the trouble and the difficulty, Strikingly is a great option, especially if it’s for your business.

So for example, many of the startups we cover on this site could certainly use such a service to create beautiful pages for their apps. I whipped up a sample photography page for myself in just five minutes using the new Japanese site. As you can see below, the process is as simple as choosing your type of site, selecting a theme, and then editing the content.

Strikingly is backed by Y-Combinator, but as we heard from David on when he spoke at the Infinity Ventures Summit, the startup has faced a number of obstacles in getting where it is today.

Check out the new localized version over on Strikingly.jp.

Choose your theme
Choose your theme
Choose type of site
Choose type of site
Editing the site
Editing the site
Finished site, photo portfolio
Finished site, photo portfolio