If your company wants customers in China, a translated copy of your global site won’t get you there. Websites hosted abroad load slowly or unreliably inside China, Google barely exists here, and a direct translation reads as foreign to Chinese buyers. This is the one service where being a China-based team isn’t a cost advantage — it’s the product.
What foreign agencies usually can’t do (and we do daily)
- China hosting & ICP filing guidance — hosting inside mainland China requires an ICP filing. We walk you through the requirements, prepare the site to pass, and host it properly so it loads fast for Chinese visitors.
- Chinese-language site built natively — written for Chinese readers, not machine-translated. Layout conventions, trust signals and contact habits (WeChat, phone) that Chinese customers expect.
- Baidu readiness — the basics most foreign-built sites miss: Baidu verification, sitemap submission, and the technical hygiene Baidu’s crawler expects.
- WeChat integration — QR codes, official account linkage, and inquiry paths that match how Chinese buyers actually make contact.
Why a translated site usually fails in China
Four things break, and they break independently of how good your English site is:
- Speed. Traffic from mainland China to servers in the US or EU crosses congested international links. Pages that load in 1.5 seconds at home routinely take 6–10 seconds here, and a share of requests simply time out.
- Blocked third-party assets. Google Fonts, Google Maps, reCAPTCHA, YouTube embeds and several common CDNs are unreachable from inside China. A site depending on them doesn’t just lose a feature — it can hang while the browser waits for resources that never arrive. This is the single most common reason a foreign-built site “doesn’t work in China” while looking fine everywhere else.
- Search. Ranking work aimed at Google does very little on Baidu, which has its own crawler behaviour, indexing rules and preference for domestic hosting.
- Buying conventions. Chinese B2B buyers expect a phone number and WeChat, often before a form. A page whose only contact path is an email field reads as unserious.
We audit for all four before proposing anything — several times the honest answer has been “your site is fine, you need hosting and asset changes, not a rebuild.”
Hosting inside China vs. Hong Kong
The first real decision, and it isn’t only technical:
- Mainland hosting gives the best speed and is the friendlier option for Baidu, but requires an ICP filing, which requires a Chinese business entity. The filing takes weeks, not days.
- Hong Kong or nearby hosting needs no ICP filing and can go live immediately. Performance is markedly better than US or EU hosting, though still behind mainland.
If you have no Chinese entity yet, Hong Kong is usually the sane starting point; you can migrate once filing is done. We’ll say which one fits your situation before you commit to either.
Who this is for
- Companies selling products or services into China that need a credible local web presence.
- Brands whose China distributors keep asking for “a proper Chinese website”.
- Agencies outside China that need a reliable local partner to deliver the China part of a client project — white-label is fine.
How it works
- Scoping call or email — what you sell, who buys it in China, what exists today.
- Plan & quote — domain strategy, hosting location, filing requirements and page structure, priced line by line.
- Build & review — you review staged previews with our English-language notes.
- Launch & handover — everything registered in your name, documented in English.
Common questions
Do we need a Chinese company to have a website in China?
To host on the mainland with an ICP filing, yes — the filing is issued against a registered Chinese entity. Without one you can still serve the market well from Hong Kong. We’ll tell you which constraint actually applies to you rather than pushing the bigger project.
How long does ICP filing take?
Typically several weeks, and it depends on the province and how complete your documents are. It is a paperwork process, not a technical one, and it cannot be rushed with money. Plan your launch date around it.
Can you keep our existing design?
Usually yes. Keeping your brand while replacing blocked assets, moving hosting and rewriting copy for Chinese readers is a smaller and cheaper project than a rebuild, and it’s the right call more often than agencies admit.
Do you write the Chinese copy, or do we?
Either. If you supply English source text we write the Chinese version natively rather than translating it literally. If your industry has established Chinese terminology, we use what buyers actually search for, not dictionary equivalents.
Will the site rank on Baidu?
Baidu readiness means the technical groundwork is right: verification, sitemaps, crawlable structure, and hosting that Baidu treats well. Ranking beyond that is ongoing work, and nobody can guarantee positions — on Baidu or anywhere else.
Tell us about your China plans — we’ll give you an honest read on what’s required before you spend anything.
Further reading: ICP License in China: What Foreign Businesses Actually Need to Know · WordPress Development & Web Design · SEO Services