Connect with Your Clients in Their Language

Lin Chen Spoke to Midwest Entrepreneur's Forum on Localizing Websites to Access Chinese Business

Chicago, IL - April 10, 2006 - NewCircle founder Lin Chen spoke to the Midwest Entrepreneurs' Forum in April, joining a panel of experts who were invited to discuss strategies for building business relationships with China.

"Localizing your company's website is the key to gaining access to the Chinese market," Chen told the group of entrepreneurs, explaining that U.S. companies can tap China's vast consumer market and build Chinese business partnerships effectively by reaching out to Chinese Internet users--currently numbered at 111 million and growing.

Chen, who was born and raised in China before coming to the U.S. for graduate school, explained that localizing a corporate website for the Chinese market requires a comprehensive approach.

First, and most importantly, the website content must be translated into Chinese in a sophisticated and culturally sensitive manner, Chen said. To illustrate her point, she processed a cake recipe using automated translation software, and the resulting text included such phrases as, "while the egg yolk fight to bubble-shaped..." Chen advised the audience to avoid these types of errors by having their website content intelligently rewritten for a Chinese audience.

Second, Chen advised entrepreneurs to localize their corporate website design, using the same general branding as the U.S. version, but making adjustments as needed to convey their corporate image in an effective and appealing way within a Chinese cultural context.

U.S. companies must also pay attention to technological and practical issues, Chen said. For example, due to limited U.S.-to-China Internet bandwidth, websites hosted in the U.S. download very slowly to users in China. To avoid this bottleneck and ensure quick access, U.S. companies can have the localized versions of their sites hosted within China.

Finally, Chen pointed out that search engine optimization and paid sponsorship using only the English language and U.S. search engines (for example, English keywords sponsored in Google Adwords), will not effectively reach Chinese Internet users, who typically rely on Chinese search engines and Chinese character searches. That's why Chen's company offers clients assistance in obtaining sponsored placement in popular Chinese portal sites and search engines, such as sohu.com, sina.com, 163.com and tom.com

To provide the Midwest entrepreneur forum with a better understanding of the Chinese market, Chen also cited statistics on Chinese Internet users, of whom more than a third are under 24 years old, slightly more than half are male, and the main reasons they use the Internet are to access news, conduct searches, read e-mail and shop.*

"Learning about the Chinese language, culture and economy can help U.S. entrepreneurs bridge differences between the U.S. and China," Chen said.

*Demographics from the 17th Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China (Jan. 2006) by China Internet Network Information Center.

About the Midwest Entrepreneurs' Forum

The Midwest Entrepreneurs' Forum, Inc. promotes and strengthens the process of starting and growing companies that have a strong technology orientation by providing services to educate and inform entrepreneurs. For more information, please visit: http://www.gss.net/mef/.

About NewCircle Consulting

NewCircle Consulting is a Chicago-based Web design and marketing services company serving clients throughout the United States. Founded by Lin Chen, the company brings together a team of Web development experts to create customized, web-based solutions for brand identity, e-commerce and database-backed content management. NewCircle Web solutions support easy maintenance and scalability. For more information on NewCircle's user-friendly approach, please visit: http://www.newcircleconsulting.com/.