The answer is YES, BUT we strongly recommend you don’t!
We initially did, but have now abandoned this approach. Even with our advantages of native speakers, familiar with the technical and regulatory requirements, it was still difficult and frustrating.
There are many reasons for this, including:
· Cost of setting-up, maintaining and promoting a website in China.
· Strong government web censorship in China.
· Social media is king in the Chinese e-commerce area!
If you have a website hosted in China, you will be 100% reliant on a third party who is located within China or has strong connections with a business located within China. Unless you have a Chinese identity card, and in many cases a Chinese legal entity like a company as well (don’t even think about that!), it is not going to happen without the Chinese based help. This will very quickly get expensive, time consuming and frustrating.
You will be a captive audience, which is another name for ‘cash cow’. If you are selling, have you thought about just how you will get the money out of China? How will the site be promoted on Baidu (the China version of Google)? The ongoing problems are immense and expensive.
Social media in China is way ahead of the west in terms of market penetration and sophistication for a very good reason – the very heavy hand of government censorship falls hardest on web sites, and social media is significantly less controlled. Which quite nicely leads to the next point . . .
Social media is king in Chinese ecommerce!
Most small to medium size businesses in China now predominantly use social media apps like Weixin as their e-commerce platform. Don’t think of this as the western version of social media though, as apps like Weixin offer extremely powerful e-commerce features, and offer a functionality that rivals that of a website. This is and will continue to change the e-commerce world in China.