Establishing a web presence in China: 6 pitfalls to avoid
Starting a website is one of the most critical decisions faced by every business owner in the world we live today. In all industry, it is very important to have a web presence that can stand up to competition both in terms of aesthetic (how professional is your site) and visibility (how easy it is for your customers to find your website, especially in the search engines).
This is also true in China for local Chinese companies and also for foreign enterprises coming into the country. Nevertheless, unless you go the extra step and refuse to follow the “China standards”, you may fall into one of these six pitfalls that will have a huge negative impact on your website overall success.
1. Build a flash website (or use CMS)
Flash seems to be the standards in China, and it is true that more flashy effects there are on their site more impressed would be the typical Chinese bosses. Some so-called web design companies will just use a PHP-based content management system without taking a few minutes to modify some very basic elements that would have helped the site perform better on Google or Yahoo. I have seen this many times on some real estate and trading companies websites, and many others as well. Search engines cannot read flash (so far). CMS is not that bad per se but it needs to be customized properly. Having a big flash intro at your main page (the most important of your site and the one most of the links you build will direct to), with no or little content, is a sure way to doom your site to the abysses of the search results. Try instead to embed flash in your html code, or use a CMS with search engine friendly page names and configurable meta tags.
2. Going cheap for web design, hosting or promotion.
Chinese companies have always competed by offering low prices and many local web firms will give lower than cost prices just to grab a few more clients. When choosing a company to handle your web design and hosting, go for those with a long term proven track record that can provide a portfolio of their previous clients. I have seen clients hosting companies actually disappear overnight with all the consequences you can imagine for their websites. Moreover, you don’t want to have a site that takes days to load a single page when you know how patient the typical Internet user is. It is always good to shop around for lower prices but these lower offers should only be used as a bargaining tool with more established firms.
3. Inexistent or incomplete Chinese translation of your site.
If you want to sell to Chinese you need to provide them information in a language they can understand. So many overseas companies assume that all they need to do is to advertise their current site in China and customers will come knocking at the door. There are also many examples of companies with poor translated web pages or even some using free online translation tools. You have to do the necessary investment to get your site properly translated in Chinese language for it to perform well in China.
4. Hosting Overseas
While it is true that most sites hosted elsewhere are accessible in China, it makes sense to have your Chinese portion of your website hosted in China. Not only will you have the benefit of faster connection speed, but you will be more protected against potential IP blocking (if it happens that your host has been serving subversive sites and becomes blocked in China) or even natural disasters (remember the Taiwan earthquake that essentially cut access to overseas sites from China for days or even weeks in some cases).
5. Not registering with the ICP
Yes I know China is one of the rare countries that requires you to register your site with the authorities. But it is the way it is here and if you are in business here you need to comply with the regulations. You don’t want to “forget” to register your site and have its access suddently blocked for a month or two while you are in the middle of a heavy advertising campaign. Usually your local hosting will take care of that but you would want to double check. On major corporations sites you will find that ICP certificate number in the bottom of their main pages so just do like them.
6. Over-relying on Pay-Per-Click to advertise your site.
Until a very recent time site optimization was equal to PPC in China. Although PPC should be an integral part of your marketing budget, you won’t want to over rely on it to get your site to your customers. Competitors will not hesitate to have your site bomb-clicked, and some would use some automatic software to make sure you top your maximal budget each and every day. Without proper ROI monitoring it is easy to spend huge amount of money for very little in return. Instead, you should undertake a diversified marketing strategy including organic SEO and traditional advertising as well.
Hope these quick tips will be of any help. This is not a complete reference and we will be writing more very soon on the subject.
Patrick Abotsi
www.seo4china.com
