If you are familiar with Google AdWords, Baidu PPC conversion types are quite similar. Unlike Google AdWords, the conversions must be first set up within Baidu TongJi, the equivalent of Google Analytics. Then, they can be tracked in both Baidu TuiGuang (Baidu’s “AdWords”) and Baidu TongJi.

First, here is how search engines define a conversion: each instance of visitors completing a desired activity on your website, such as registration or download, is recorded as a conversion.

Here are the examples of conversion targets:

• Obtaining users’ info: registering online, creating an account etc.;
• Contact objectives: requesting consultation, sending a message, calling a phone number, etc.;
• Interactive goals: video playback event, placing item into a shopping cart, sharing content etc.;
• Revenue target: tracking online orders, payments etc.

4 types of Baidu PPC conversion that you can set up for your campaign:

Page conversions

This type of Baidu PPC conversion is triggered whenever a visitor reaches a specific URL. Each such visit will be registered as one conversion. This is the most common type of conversion used by most advertisers.

For example, a “thank you” page can be set as an URL that triggers conversion. So, whenever a visitor buys a product, signs up for a newsletter, downloads a file etc. – the next page they reach will be that “thank you” page. As soon as this event happens, Baidu knows that this is a conversion and update the report.

Setting it up is straightforward: all you need is the destination URL that triggers the conversion and define recording method (visits, page views, URL variable). You can also assign a conversion value and track conversion revenue performance.

In more advanced settings, you can also setup a path – the sequence of pages which you want your visitor to go to first before reaching the final conversion URL, in other words, a type of a sales funnel.

Even conversion

It is a bit more advanced way to set up Baidu PPC conversions than a simple. The event conversion is triggered whenever a visitor performs specified actions, such as registration, purchase, download, play, and so on.

It can be set using a preview method: user chooses the element on the page and set the conversion event page. If the page where the event is located is not unique, you can use variable part of the URL as a wildcard..

Another method is manually adding event conversion using event element ID.

This type of Baidu PPC conversions also allow you to set conversion value and track revenue.

Duration conversion

This conversion is triggered whenever visitors stayed on the site for longer than the specified time or stayed on a specific page for a specific time duration. This type of conversion can help you to understand whether users have actually read content on the page rather than skipped it.

The setup is quite simple: you set the conversion goal as the total time duration of a visits in hours, minutes or seconds.

There is also an option to set monetary value for this type of conversion.

Page visits conversion

This conversion is defined as the total number of pages opened by a visitor in one session.

You can simply define the number of pages that must be exceeded in one session and that would be recorded as the conversion. Baidu recommends to set this number to minimum 3 pages.

This type of conversion can also be tracked as the revenue once it has been assigned value in the setting but it is optional.

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If you are on a bootstrap budget, the first thing to try would be finding a freelance translator through sites like Upwork or Freelancer. It’s by far the cheapest option but could also be a hit and miss. Typically, we always suggest to have your site translated to both Simplified Chinese for Mainland China  audience and to Traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Even though, both Taiwanese and Hongkongneese  would have little problem reading content in Simplified Chinese, having those two choices would be seen as showing respect to millions of Traditional Chinese readers. Large number of corporate executives and managers of companies in China are from Taiwan and Hong Kong and it would certainly be a good idea to offer them proper translation as well.

Many freelance translators, who are native Chinese speakers, don’t have a good grasp of Traditional Chinese and would simply use machine translation program, like Baidu or Google Translate, that simply substitute Simplified to Traditional characters. As a result, Traditional Chinese translation would often look awkward and, sometimes, completely unreadable. If you use any of the freelance translators, make sure to test them first by asking them to translate a paragraph to both languages and have it verified with a native Taiwanese or Hongkongnese.

Never hire translators who are not native Chinese speakers, this would be a complete waste of your money. You should also make sure to verify the work before you release the payment.

Localization is not the same as translation of the content, although translation is the major part of it.

Another option is to hire a professional translation company but, unfortunately, many of them are simply a one-two man operation, regardless of what they say about themselves on their website. Large number of them would use machine translation software with some corrections afterwards. Be prepared to shop around for a while as, in our experience, 80% of such firms provide very low quality work.

Just like with the freelancers, you should test the quality first by asking them to translate one paragraph and, if you suspect that machine translation has been used for any of the languages (most likely Traditional Chinese), don’t hire them.

If you are prepared to spend anywhere around $1,000 or more, make sure to have a written contract with such company. The contract should stipulate that the company must correct the translation within 2-4 weeks after submitting it to you if you find any issues. There must be a legal recourse clause in the contract in case of substandard quality of the translation but it’s always time limited, so make sure to check their work carefully as soon as you receive it.

In the coming post, we will discuss other aspects of web presence localization specific to China market.

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Building a Chinese website for a foreign brand maybe not be as straight forward task as in the case of other markets. Thanks to a unique nature of Chinese internet and various market specifics, brands must modify their approach for establishing China web presence.

Here is the comprehensive list of 15 points to consider for building Chinese websites for brands.

#1 Use native translation for Chinese website

While using native translation should be the obvious rule, a surprising number of foreign companies still cut corners on this one. It should go without saying that companies should always use professional translators to repurpose the original content for a Chinese website version while also making sure that they are proofread by native Mandarin speakers.

#2 Remove links to blocked social media

While re-purposing landing pages for Chinese market, many companies forget to remove standard links to their social media accounts that are inaccessible in China anyway. The links to company Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram links won’t work anyway and but those broken links may also significantly slow down Chinese website loading time. Ideally, a page loading time should not exceed 5 seconds, although that is often hard to achieve with overseas hosting (more on it below).

#3 Optimize your Chinese website loading time

Loading time is almost always an issue for sites hosted outside of China. Unfortunately, without local business registration, hosting in China will not be possible. The next best option would be to get a hosting in Hong Kong. Some Hong Kong based hosting providers would often advertise “fast China route” options without physically having to host on the Mainland’s servers.

Alibaba Cloud is a popular hosting solution that is cheap and easy to sign up for. However, make sure that you select Hong Kong based servers when buying their hosting package.

#4 Embed videos from local platforms

Embedded videos which are hosted on YouTube or Vimeo won’t be displayed in China (see #2). The solution is to setup an account on YouKu, Chinese YouTube equivalent, upload your video there and link to it from your Chinese landing page. However, one should keep in mind that free YouKu accounts will often display pre-roll ads to Mainland visitors. The solution is to opt to paid YouKu accounts or find an alternative video hosting platform that isn’t blocked in China.

#5 Integrate share buttons and links to Chinese social media

If you already have Chinese social media presence on Weibo, YouKu, WeChat or other platforms, make sure to include links to those sites on your Chinese website. As there is no such thing as a “WeChat link”, your Chinese website should display official account’s QR code. This will not only demonstrate to your visitors that you have an established local presence but will also help in getting more followers to your Chinese social media channels.

If your website includes sharable content, make sure to include sharing buttons to Weibo and WeChat that do not require having an account on those platforms.

#6 Localize the contact form

Most website nowadays offer some type of subscription form to collect visitor’s email and other data. What is often missed is localizing such the forms by making sure that all the fields are properly translated to Chinese and don’t have any original English field names which can confuse visitors.

Also, keep in mind that while your English form may have separate fields for first and last names, Chinese equivalent would typically use just one name field for both the surname (one character) and the given name (one or two characters).

#7 Optimize for mobile

Mobile optimization of a website is extremely important for Chinese market as most traffic comes from mobile devices anyway. It’s essential to use responsive design for your Chinese website ensuring that it displays correctly on most types of mobile screens.

You may consider a separate design for a mobile version of the site to pack the most essential info “above the fold” and minimize scrolling and clicking text links.

#8 Live support

Having been spoiled by Taobao, China’s online consumers often expect instant live support for Chinese website. This is especially true for ecommerce or website that offer services.

One of the most critical components for a successful conversion of online consumers is being able to communicate with them in real, or almost real time. Luckily, there are many options available for such live chats that can keep track of the conversations and capture users’ data at the same time. Companies like Alibaba offer their own chat solutions that can incorporates into other sites.

#9 ICP License for Chinese website

If your company is registered in China, it is eligible to apply for ICP (internet content provider) license. It would allow you to get hosting in China that helps improving Chinese website loading time as well signal to your users that are in full compliance with the local law.

The ICP license number should be displayed in the footer like this:

#10 Subdomains or multiple domains

Chinese search engines generally dislike subdomains – something that is very common with multilingual websites. For example, you should avoid setting up en.mysite.com for English and zh. mysite.com for Chinese. Baidu prefers to have different languages on completely separate domains. For example, if www.mysite.com is your main site, www.mysite.cn could be its Chinese language equivalent. This makes it harder to maintain, however, if you want to rank high on Baidu – do not use subdomains.

#11 Using robot.txt file

Another Baidu quirk is disfavoring robot.txt file – Google’s standard way to communicate with search engine crawlers. This is the most common way to tell search engines which pages should not be crawled. For the purpose of your China web presence, those specific instructions should be set in .htaccess file or in server settings. This is another reason to use separate domain for your Chinese site (see #1).

#12 Domain names

Baidu ranks .CN domains higher than the equivalent .COM and.NET. As .CN domain registration is open to foreigners now, there is no excuse not to grab it. Also, once you have established you China web presence and your brand becomes well-known, chances are that .CN domain may become the target of internet squatters. So, if it is still available, register it now.

#13 Blacklisted keywords

If your site uses any of the blacklisted keywords, it will be deindexed by Baidu and probably blocked from access too. Wikipedia keeps updated list of blacklisted keywords that are mostly related to politics but keep in mind that the list may change quickly triggered by specific current events. In any case, staying away from politics in China is probably a good idea anyway.

#14 Using iFrames, JavaScript and Flash

Similar to Google, Baidu can’t crawl iFrames and Flash content. Although Google is getting much better in crawling JavaScript, Baidu is still pretty much blind to it. This means that any of your SEO content should not be in JavaScript which also includes navigation drop down menu. This is why it is a good idea to have a duplicate footer menu that is not JS based. As for iFrames and Flash – they belong to history anyway.

#15 Keep it Baidu-friendly

Due to frequent connectivity problems, Baidu’s crawlers won’t index pages that are too deep in your hierarchy. Keep your website’s architecture flat and accessible.

Anchor text should of course be in Chinese. They should also match the keywords being used on your website. Baidu is quite strict about this and may penalize sites where the anchor text and keywords are not in sync.

Don’t count on Baidu finding your site quickly – it’s better to submit it manually. Since, Baidu doesn’t have an equivalent to Google webmaster tools, the website has to be re-submitted every time there is a major change. Here is the link to Baidu submission tool.

The post Building Chinese Website: 15 Points Checklist first appeared on Sampi.co.

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Should marketers adopt cross-cultural approach in marketing communication or attempt to take into account psychological and socio-cultural associations and meanings that different colors convey in various cultures?

Most of the research on color theory has been done in the West and was primarily focused on Western color perceptions. It comes to no surprise that those perceptions differ significantly in the East. Since the color is an integral element of corporate and marketing communications it is important to understand those differences and make necessary adjustments in order to induce desired moods and emotions, which in turn, will help influencing consumers’ perceptions and behavior.

In this post we’ve pulled together information from several sources: article by MUBEEN M. ASLAM in Australian Journal of Marketing Communications (Vol. 12, No. 1, 15–30, March 2006); A Look into Color Theory in Web Design by Sixrevisions.com and Color Branding: The Meanings Behind Colors by Everyjoe.com.

Let’s start looking at each of the main colors:

Red

Western perception: Masculine, Love, Lust, Fear, Anger

Chinese perception: Love, Happiness, Luck

Summary: while powerful and strong, red also carries some negative connotations in Western culture. For Chinese, however, red is almost universally associated with the positive and good taste;

Yellow

Western perception: Happiness, Energy, Jealousy

Chinese perception: Pure, Good taste, Royal, Authority

Summary: yellow is perhaps the second most culturally important color after red for the Chinese. Historically, red & gold (yellow) were the colors associated with royalty;

Green

Western perception: Growth, Harmony, Good taste, Lack of experience

Chinese perception: Pure, Reliable, Happy

Summary: green has been extensively used in web design and remains popular across all the cultures, one of the “safest” colors in marketing design;

Blue

Western perception: High quality, Trust, Dependability, Coldness

Chinese perception: High quality, Trustworthiness

Summary: universally perceived as a “color of trust”, blue remains the most popular design choice for corporate sites across the continents, excellent fit for health products;

Purple

Western perception: Authority, Power, Sophistication, Luxury, Feminine (lighter), Sadness (darker)

Chinese perception: Expensive, Luxury, Love

Summary: there are definite similarities in the perception of purple across most of the cultures and it remains a popular choice for designs reflecting sophistication and high value;

Black

Western perception: Expensive, Elegance, Sophistication, Fear, Grief

Chinese perception: Expensive, Powerful

Summary: for the Chinese, black doesn’t carry the same negative association common in Western cultures (death, unknown) which may complicate its usage to fit both markets.

White

Western perception: Purity, Happiness, Innocence, Cold, Distant

Chinese perception: Death, Mourning

Summary: perception of white couldn’t be more different between Western and Eastern cultures. While gaining popularity in modern design in the West, it should be used with caution for the Chinese audience;

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In the second part we are going to look at each of the remaining communication channels:

Email

Email communication is one of the preferred ways to communicate with your customers in China, also being the most convenient method to maintain contact with your existing clients. While many Chinese may feel embarrassed of the low level of their oral English communication abilities, they would feel quite comfortable discussing the same issues in the written communication.

In fact, most business people in China today have a very decent level of written English making it preferable to direct phone calls. Email is a great way to follow up on meetings and provide more details after initial contact. Make sure to write your emails in plain language and avoid long sentences to keep it more readable.

Websites

Having a localized website is essential for promoting your business in China, a country with the estimated 400 million email users. Localization of your website requires a well planned effort with the most important aspect of it, translation, discussed in our previous post.

 92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well.

Having professionally designed, modern looking website may also set you apart from most Chinese based competitors that tend to have messy and cluttered sites. Remember, that your website is probably the first place an interested client will go to after meeting your for the first time.

Social Media

92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well. Sina Weibo, Chinese micro blogging platform and WeChat, mobile network, are by far the most popular of those services. The great thing about Weibo and WeChat is the ability to spread your message instantly and directly to your followers’ mobile devices.

Once you’ve setup your Weibo account, make sure to put its URL and QR code on your printed and digital marketing material and encourage your customers to connect (WeChat is different from Weibo in that way).

LinkedIn is currently not as popular in China as the alternative professional networks, we will review those services in subsequent posts.

Face-to-face meetings

Personal connection still rules in Chinese business environment. Taking time to personally visit your customers is one of the best investments you can make.

Insist on accompanying your sales people, your agent or distributor on their visits even if you don’t speak any Chinese. If you make a presentation, make sure that someone from your company, who knows the material, provides proper translation.

Phone calls

While phone calls can be of limited use if your clients have a difficulty understanding your English (or your accent) they still can be an efficient way to keep in touch with those who do speak it well enough. However, with the proliferation of instant messaging, where one can control his/her availability, calling someone’s cell phone directly may seem less considerate.

Great mobile instant messaging services, such as WeChat, could be a great way not only to communicate but also to spread your marketing message as well.

Post (Regular Mail)

Mailing printed material is one of the least efficient ways to communicate in modern times and China is no exception. In B2B marketing settings, mailing information by post is quickly losing its value and I’d advise to avoid it;

Relationship and Networking

Chinese guanxi remains important in Chinese business environment, although the whole concept can be alien to many foreigners. Guanxi refers to one’s network of personal relationships in a business context. The concept of guanxi also implies that business relationships can often transform into personal friendships, and indeed many Chinese business people consciously spend a great deal of time and energy nurturing such relationships. This can take the form of banqueting, evening entertainment or gift-giving – activities that can seem onerous and unnecessary to many Westerners.

As Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International write in their white paper: “Although such networking and relationship-building is clearly important to the sales process in China, there is a tendency among some commentators to overemphasize its importance when trying to penetrate the Chinese market.

As in any market, building strong relationships is extremely important to achieving market success, although guanxi is no substitute for a strong product offering or a trustworthy supplier. What Western companies sometimes have difficulty coming to terms with is the way in which this trust is gained, and the time it often takes to convince the customer that yours is the product or service that meets their needs. The overriding piece of advice for Western companies would be to understand the importance of establishing relationships when targeting Chinese companies, and to be prepared for the patience required for this.”

The post Targeting Chinese Companies: Part 2: Communication Channels first appeared on Sampi.co.

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The main benefit of having a website hosted in China is much faster loading time compared to the same site hosted out of the country. There is no question that faster loading speed can benefit your website from both user experience and SEO standpoints. What’s more, there is practically no chance that your site may get blocked in China for simply being unlucky enough to share a server with a blacklisted site (it does happen).

Unfortunately, due to the fact that internet in China is tightly controlled by the government, hosting a website in China requires obtaining a permit called ICP license that stands for Internet Content Provider or bei’an (备案) in Chinese. This license is issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to permit China-based websites to operate in China. The ICP licence numbers for Chinese websites can often be found on the bottom of the front webpage:

The ICP license can only be issued to Chinese registered companies. A few years ago there was a pilot program in Shanghai that allowed foreign companies to apply for ICP but it seems to be discontinued now. This means that if your business is only registered overseas, you won’t be eligible for ICP license and can’t get a local hosting.

Once your company registers a business entity in China, getting ICP license still can be quite a hassle but, fortunately, most local hosting providers will take care of that for you. There is also a grace period for new companies to obtain the ICP license after they have purchased a hosting package. However, once that period expires, a site without a valid ICP license will be taken down by the hosting company.

What if you do not plan registering in business in China? Can you still have a reasonably fast website for the mainland visitors? The answer is yes. There are some intermediate hosting solutions that involve servers in Hong Kong or Macau. China’s largest hosting provider Aliyun offers such solutions to international clients so do some of the native Hong Kong providers.

There are also CDN (content delivery networks) providers that can accelerate your site specifically for Chinese visitors. The most well known one, CloudFlare, has special server options for sites trying to reach Chinese audience.

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One of the most critical components for a successful conversion of online consumers is being able to communicate with them in real, or almost real time. In this post we are going to look at how to incorporate and use live support for Chinese website.

Chinese online consumers have already been spoiled by near instant customer support on major ecommerce sites. For example, large percentage of shoppers on Taobao would often initiate online chat session with a seller before taking a decision to make a purchase.

Regardless of whether it is a product sold from a website or an online service, Chinese visitors would expect to be able to ask questions and get answers within minutes.

Luckily, this can be accomplished in several ways and we are going to look at each of them next.

Live support for Chinese website with QQ

QQ messenger is still the most popular chat program in China. Practically every Chinese is familiar with QQ from the early days of the internet. Incorporating QQ into a website is also quite easy – all it takes is pasting a piece of code to your website to display a functional QQ icon.

By clicking a QQ icon, a visitor can start chatting immediately as long as the program is installed on their computer or a mobile device. Fortunately, this is the case for the vast majority of Chinese anyway.

Phone based support with Chinese toll free number

The good old toll free phone number is the traditional way get customers to call you directly and it would probably work well if you target somewhat less tech savvy visitors. Toll free numbers in China start with 400 and can be applied for with China’s telephone service providers. Typically, they offer several different packages and are fairly inexpensive.

Telephone companies are constantly adding more new features to those numbers such as autoresponders, forward services, voice mails, various types of notifications etc. They also allow to choose a number from an available pool, although the good numbers go quickly. While picking a 400 number it is best to avoid the “unlucky” digits such as “four”. “Eights” and “nines” are the best, so are the repetitive numbers such as 55, 66 etc.

How does live support with WeChat work

There are many good reasons to include WeChat contact on the webpage and having live support for Chinese website is just one of them. Once a visitor to a website starts following your company WeChat account, there are many ways to keep them engaged which is a whole separate topic.

Nowadays, increasing number of companies in China choose to provide customer service exclusively through WeChat because it offers much more than just a live chat. For example, WeChat can send pre-programmed answers in response to a specific inquiry with predefined keywords. It can also grab an information about users such as their present location and tailor the answer based on that criteria. More advanced companies can even integrate WeChat customer service into a sophisticated system that incorporates various types marketing automation.

One drawback of using WeChat as a live support channel is the fact it takes manual scanning of a QR code by a visitor with their cellphone. While this may be convenient for someone visiting from a desktop, browsing site on the mobile device makes that scanning impossible. The workaround is to save the QR code as a picture in the photos and then import it to WeChat. Unfortunately, this is not a straight forward process and many people are simply unaware of how to do that.

Incorporating Live Chat for Chinese Website

Live chat app is, perhaps, the most natural way to offer live support for Chinese website. Live chat can be integrated with practically any website in a form or a 3rd party plugin. There are many services that offer this type of functionality and they mainly differ in features and price plans. Basic features usually include support for mobile apps, automated responses, alerts and escalation scenarios, various levels of security, ability to share files, routing options etc.

Some of the most popular services that offer Chinese support are Zopim, LiveChat, Zoho Sales IQ as well as many others. Some of them, like Zopim, even offer free plans with limited features set and the prices for paid plans are also fairly affordable in the range of $15-30 per month – well worth the investment.

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Here are the top 10 items on your China web presence check list:

#1: Subdomains or multiple domains

Baidu generally dislikes subdomains – something that is very common with multilingual websites. For example, you should avoid setting up en.mysite.com for English and zh. mysite.com for Chinese. Baidu prefers to have different languages on completely separate domains. For example, if www.mysite.com is your main site, www.mysite.cn could be its Chinese language equivalent. This makes it harder to maintain, however, if you want to rank high on Baidu – do not use subdomains.

#2: Using robot.txt file

Another Baidu quirk is disfavoring robot.txt file – Google’s standard way to communicate with search engine crawlers. This is the most common way to tell search engines which pages should not be crawled. For the purpose of your China web presence, those specific instructions should be set in .htaccess file or in server settings. This is another reason to use separate domain for your Chinese site (see #1).

#3: Domain names

Baidu ranks .CN domains higher than the equivalent .COM and.NET. As .CN domain registration is open to foreigners now, there is no excuse not to grab it. Also, once you have established you China web presence and your brand becomes well-known, chances are that .CN domain may become the target of internet squatters. So, if it is still available, register it now.

#4: Loading time optimization

Long loading time will not only ruin user experience of your Chinese visitors but also lower your Baidu ranking. The best solution is to host in China, however that requires ICP license issued by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and is only available to China registered businesses. Hosting in Hong Kong may improve the loading speed but it still won’t be as fast as hosting in China. Signing up with a reliable CDN provider (content delivery network) service, such as CloudFlare, could be another alternative solution.

#5: Broken links to blocked sites

Links to blocked social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube will appear broken which will slow down the loading as well (see #4). Also, services like Google fonts wouldn’t load causing your fonts look not as intended. Google map wouldn’t work either and YouTube hosted video wouldn’t play. The only solution is to use the local equivalents for blocked services such as Weibo, YouKu and Baidu.

#6: Blacklisted keywords

If your site uses any of the blacklisted keywords, it will be deindexed by Baidu and probably blocked from access too. Wikipedia keeps updated list of blacklisted keywords that are mostly related to politics but keep in mind that the list may change quickly triggered by specific current events. In any case, staying away from politics in China is probably a good idea anyway.

#7:  Keyword research

It is important to do a proper keyword research with the tools available from Baidu rather than Google. Also, the keywords should never be a straight forward translation from English – Google translate or similar tools are absolutely inadequate for this purpose. This is why it is important to enlist help of a professional translator or, at least, run it by a native Chinese speaker.

#8: Using iFrames, JavaScript and Flash

Similar to Google, Baidu can’t crawl iFrames and Flash content. Although Google is getting much better in crawling JavaScript, Baidu is still pretty much blind to it. This means that any of your SEO content should not be in JavaScript which also includes navigation drop down menu. This is why it is a good idea to have a duplicate footer menu that is not JS based. As for iFrames and Flash – they belong to history anyway.

#9: Link building

At the moment, Baidu still values link quantity over quantity, which means that techniques and tricks that used to work with Google 2-3 years ago can still be quite effective for your China web presence purpose. It is quite likely that, eventually, Baidu will follow Google’s approach of putting more emphasis on link quality vs. quantity, after all they used to follow Google’s every step. In any case, for now, back links from anyone and everything would still bring SEO benefits to your site.

#10: Baidu site submission

Don’t count on Baidu finding your site quickly – it’s better to submit it manually. Since, Baidu doesn’t have an equivalent to Google webmaster tools, the website has to be re-submitted every time there is a major change. Here is the link to Baidu submission tool.

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In this post, we attempt to summarize various pros and cons of having your site hosted in China.

The pros of hosting in China

Loading speed

Having a site hosted abroad, especially on the servers that are geographically remote, often affects loading speed. This, in turn, will most definitely hurt the ranking on Baidu, the main Chinese search engine. In addition, slow loading tends to turn off users resulting in increased bounce rate. By hosting a site in China, the loading speed will definitely improve.

Another reason for sites that are hosted overseas to load slower has most likely something to do with various filters related to censoring. An easiest way to see it is to load the same site with and without VPN, thus bypassing the Great Firewall. In most cases, the difference would be fairly apparent.

Geo-targeting

Although, most search engines like Google  assign less weight to a physical location of a site these days, one should keep in mind that Baidu is always a couple of years behind with their search algorithms. It is very likely that all other factors being equal, a site with the local domain (.cn or .com.cn) and with the local IP will be ranked higher than a foreign one.

The jury is still out on how much server location and .cn domain affect Baidu search results but, in my opinion, it still does quite a bit.

Minimizing risk of being blocked

It is often said that even if your site is hosted overseas but you are making sure to steer away from politically sensitive or illegal topics, you should be fine. However, there is always a risk of being unlucky enough to share a server with a site that gets banned by the government. There were instances in the past when some “innocent” sites got blocked just because they happened to be on a blacklisted server. It is, however, much less likely to end up on such server in China due to much stricter oversight over local ISPs.

The cons of hosting in China

Hassle of obtaining ICP license

Every site that is hosted on a Chinese server is legally obligated to obtain ICP license (Internet Content Provider or ICP备案 in Chinese). It is a little number that is usually displayed in the footer of every Chinese site. All websites with their own domain name that operate within Chinese borders are required to obtain that license, and China-based Internet service providers are required to block the site if a license is not acquired within a grace period. ICP licenses are issued at the provincial level and the application period may take up to 3 weeks.

Substandard local ISPs customer service

If you are used to customary high level of tech support by Western hosting services, you may be quite disappointed in China. HostGator type of support is quite few and far between, not to mention language problems. I’m sure that the situation will continue improving but, in the meantime, prepare  to lower your expectations.

Questionable value of .cn domains

Search ranking apart, having a .cn or .com.cn extension may not improve a click-through rate as some might expect. In fact, it is often noted that .com domains still command higher authority than the local ones. It may be especially true for the Chinese who may even distrust .cn site in favor of .com or .net one.

Ideally, you could own both .com and .cn domains and, incidentally, Chinese government now allows foreigners to register and own them, which was not the case until most recently.

In conclusion, my advice would be to focus on your site performance, most importantly, loading speed. Then, based on that, decide on the optimal hosting location. If you conclude that the loading speed difference is too large to ignore, than consider hosting in China. Alternatively, you may want to explore a possibility to host your site in Hong Kong or Singapore which are geographically closer to the Mainland and have plenty of excellent ISPs with English support.

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The post Pros and Cons of Hosting a Site in China appeared first on Sampi.co.

If you have spent some time looking at Chinese ecommerce websites, you can’t help but notice how incredibly cluttered they look. In fact, most of that apparent clutter is a result of link-heavy nature of Chinese internet in general.

What might strike a Westerner as an overwhelming overload of information is likely to be perceived as a content rich and intuitive site by the Chinese.

Here are just a few examples of the most popular sites in China:

Contrast it with the clean and modern look of the Western equivalents:

Chinese website designs seem to be completely avert to modern look with its extensive use of white space, large fonts and well designed color patterns.

Since, apparently it works in China, otherwise they would have “modernized” their designs by now, I became determined to find out why is that the case.

First explanation that I came across was given by Yu Gang and David Wei in their interview with CNN correspondent Kristie Lu Stout in one of CNN episodes “On China”:

The full transcript of the interview can be found here.

Another explanation on what is causing the preference towards link heavy sites in China was given by Barry Lloyd’s, President of WebCertain Asia (read the full article):

…when you go into the Chinese consumer psyche, they want to have a chaotic bazaar type experience…They want to create this shopping atmosphere

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