If you’re a Western university seeking to market your academic offer to Chinese students, then there are two key challenges to overcome; 1) ensuring your institution can be found online by your target audience and 2) building brand awareness and trust.

These challenges can be met with the right integrated marketing strategy, which will begin with the creation of a Chinese language website, tailored for your target audience (and typically, encompassing both Chinese students and parents alike).

In this blog, we’re going to look at the steps Western universities should take to successfully create a Chinese language website.

Do Western universities really need a separate Chinese language website?

In the past, some universities would simply choose to offer a language translation option on their English language website. This was primarily because of the time and expense involved to create websites a decade ago.

However, a simple translation option misses a trick. Firstly, Western website content is targeted for Western readers and doesn’t take into account the unique content needs of a Chinese audience. Secondly, it tends to offer a poor user experience. Chinese digital users are highly sophisticated and expect to see content that is targeted to their locality, with appropriate storytelling, symbolism, nuance, cultural appreciation and engaging, relevant content – as well as the right language!

The easiest and best way to deliver this is through the creation of a bespoke Chinese website, tailored to the needs of the audience. So what is the process to getting Chinese website design right?

1. Start with research

You already know that your Chinese website design needs to be optimised for mobile, with over 98% of the 772 million internet users in China preferring their smartphones. Did you also know though that Chinese branding for your institution is well worth the investment, to help localise your website and make it more relevant to your audience? Remember that names are highly significant with Chinese consumers, and a carefully chosen Chinese brand and name helps to add value, provide engagement and connection, and supports brand awareness – whilst allowing you to differentiate from the competition. It’s always worth bearing the key principles of close personal relationships (Guanxi) and trust (Xin) in mind when seeking to market to this audience.

2. Plan your localised Chinese website

This means considering content, design, coding and user journeys. Every aspect should be considered with in-depth knowledge of your market. For example, when planning your content you must ensure that it is:

– accurately translated, both in terms of concept and idiom as well as vocabulary
– of the right length, as Chinese characters can lead to a 25% text length shrinkage from English and have a knock-on effect on graphics, tables and more.
– correctly formatted, with simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters being preferred in different parts of China.

It is also important to remember that the Chinese like to carry out plenty of research as consumers. They also value the recommendations of their peer networks, are naturally risk-averse and value quality Western universities. Case studies, trust marks and accreditations, employment prospects, university partners, trusted recommendations from Chinese alumni… all of these are examples of content that can be leveraged effectively for a Chinese audience.

3. Register the .cn domain

Register your Chinese domain extension (.cn or .com.cn). This will support your digital marketing efforts and give your website credibility. There is a fairly complex administration process required to do this, but Market Me China can assist with the registration certificate, ID requirements and other documentation needed by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), and manage the process end to end for you.

4. Organise hosting in Mainland China or Hong Kong

Again, this takes some administration, as universities with a business licence in China can host their websites within the country to get around the Chinese firewall, but they must get a corporate ICP licence from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This takes around 20 days if the process is followed accurately. If your institution doesn’t have a Chinese business licence, it is best to maximise accessibility by hosting your Chinese website in Hong Kong.

5. Build and test on your audience

User journeys in China differ from the West. For example, Chinese users like to be able to access important information from the homepage and appreciate long-form content. They expect to see social media integrated at all turns and value symbols of trust. Tailoring of content is essential, any translation must be done carefully and expertly, and – of course – content remains king! Chinese users love useful, engaging, trustable content that adds genuine value. Additionally, if you need to integrate a payment platform for any kind of booking or purchase, then you should also ensure that your Chinese website is integrated with AliPay, WeChatPay or UnionPay.

6. Integrate with social platforms and online advertising

Successful Chinese websites will invariably have links to social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, allowing brands to maximise the reach and shareability of their content, and to extract the maximum value of content repurposing across channels. You should also ensure that your landing pages are correctly linked with any online advertising campaigns you are planning in China.

7. Assess and improve

At Market Me China, we use a three-tier benchmark to assess Chinese websites. This weighs up cultural customisation, Chinese UX and translation quality. By combining this approach with analytics and user feedback, we can help our clients to continually improve and refine their Chinese marketing efforts for the best possible results.

About WeChat apply

WeChat apply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

The post What Western universities should know about Chinese website design appeared first on WeChat Official Agency.

Walmart and Tencent Alliance in China may cross anti-monopoly line

Let go Alipay and Welcome WeChat Pay

Walmart has stopped accepting Alipay at its 90 supermarket stores and started taking on WeChat pay at all stores located in the Western region of China including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing, according to China Daily’s report.

Walmart China has confirmed they reached a deep partnership with WeChat and there will be more exclusive benefits and discounts coming up soon. The two will also collaborate in big data analytics and precision marketing, the multinational retailer said it has ended the partnership with Alipay the two formed in 2015 and that it was a business decision.

Behind the scene

Walmart is JD.com’s third-largest shareholder with just over 12% of shares, and the two formed a strategic partnership back in 2016. WeChat Pay’s operator Tencent is JD.com’s largest shareholder with over 21% share. Therefore it is not hard to figure out that Walmart has become a part of Tencent’s blueprint to enter new retail.

Turf War – Gain upper hand by controlling traffic entry point

The Alibaba-Tencent turf war isn’t new and neither is Tencent’s exclusive right to its competitive strategy. Last September, Starbucks announced that it would start accepting Alipay rather than WeChat pay, 10 months after it had reached a deal with WeChat Pay.

WeChat Apply believes that in the new retail era, the situation where Double Ma devouring market has already formed, related players in the field need to choose which side to go with. The core competition is about who is grabbing the online and offline traffic entry points.

Not only in supermarket chains, we would anticipate more “choose a side” to occur to those high-frequency payment scenarios where these two giants are wrestling such as services like share bikes, shared car and food takeaway.

Detriment of Consumer Benefit?

Some specialist stated the move by Walmart may draw consumer watch dog ‘s investigation on whether the move was an act of monopoly nature.

Some consumers are complaining that not able to use Alipay has created inconvenience when shopping at Walmart stores in question. They are used to Alipay, and their WeChat wallets don’t have enough credits.

WeChat Apply team appreciates the Walmart regional’s strategic move was a strong win for Tencent and WeChat while we also took a dialectical view that the Walmart China’s move may cause some kind of anti-unfair trading and anti-monopoly law in China.

From a micro perspective, removing Alipay from their cashier could be detrimental to consumer’s freedom of payment choice. From a macro perspective, it can be viewed as an action to undermine the fair trade. It is allegedly to take advantage of its market position by limiting a certain condition of transactions, it could cause a distortion of the free market. However, it is subject to the law reinforcement and judge’s call to observe, investigate and decide.

About WeChat apply

WeChat apply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechat apply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

The post Walmart in China South West turns to WeChat Pay from Alibaba appeared first on WeChat Official Agency.

In a restaurant in Sydney, the cash register has a paper sign saying Minimum spending $30, and Amex surcharge 3%.

After a nice dessert, waiter sees your pen signing gesture and nods his head. He walks towards the cash register. A couple of minutes later, he comes to your table and a handheld wireless POS. You browse through the bill while pulling out a non-Amex credit card from your wallet and hand it over to the waiter. He swipes your card on the POS. Then you crunch in passcodes on the device.

“Would you like a receipt? “ The waiter asks.

“Yes, please”, you reply with a courtesy smile.

A curly docket is popping out of the device with a printing mechanical sound and a slashing noise.

“Here you go.” Says the waiter. You stuffed the docket in your wallet with a Thank you.

This way of paying restaurant bill simply would not happen in restaurants in Hangzhou. Because the bill paying story above is too slow and time wasting.

Facial recognition to pay for restaurant bills has really come into reality in Hangzhou. In September 2017, Alipay announced the technology went online at KFC’s flagship restaurant in KPRO, a shopping town in Hangzhou. Customers can authenticate their payments by having their faces scanned. The “Smile to Pay” application takes just one to two seconds to recognize and identify a face, which follows the scan with a second verification through a mobile phone. The technology is fully insured, and users of Alipay can disable or enable the feature any time.

Combined with 3D cameras and likeness detection algorithm, ‘Smile to Pay’ can effectively block spoofing attempts using other people’s photos or video recordings

Saving face is a classic Chinese culture element and now Hangzhou siders are just stepping into an era of Spending face.

What do you know about Hangzhou

Westerners are quite likely aware of China Big 4 when talking about Chinese megacities, Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou, Shenzhen,北上广深 respectively. While things are changing fast in China, Hangzhou, 180 km southwest of Shanghai, on China’s eastern seaboard, is rapidly catching up to be a leading and iconic city representing China’s latest tech and economic trends.

It was the most splendid and prosperous city in China since it was the capital city in Song Dynasty 1000 years ago. It has since been a hot tourist destination thanks to its West Lake, a World Heritage Site, green tea, silkworks and a lot more.

Now it is known by the world the hometown of Jack Ma, Alibaba’s Head Quarter base, strong entrepreneurship culture, open-minded and efficient government to private sectors, 9 million well-educated population there, etc.

Hangzhou has become the driving force of China New Economy because of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. It has another new tag – global mobile payment city. Hangzhou people can go wallet-less when they go out.

Alipay enabled subway networks

As the subway line 2 started commissioning near closure of 2017, the Alipay was also rolled out at all 72 subway stations. People can use Alipay to get in and out of the subway. They will never have to buy ticket or card in Hangzhou. All they have to do is scan their mobile phone’s QR to scan in and scan out.

Alipay enabled bus networks

In May 2016, Hangzhou launched the service of scanning Alipay QR while boarding bus. The service has now covered all 5000 strong buses in Hangzhou, again the city is the first among its competitors in the country to implement Alipay on the bus. It is also expected WeChat Pay is soon to apply to the entire public transport network. The technology and the practice have been learned and adopted across China

Birthplace of bike share service in China

As early as 2008, Hangzhou began to build a public bicycle network, which was six years earlier than the nowadays shared bike frenzy. Hangzhou siders give the bike a nickname, the Little Red, which is rented hundreds of millions of times a year. The city’s owned Bike share technology has been licensed to 175 cities in China with good profit return to the city’s taxpayers. Now Chinese city dwellers and visitors are just so familiar with scan the QR at the back of the shared bike and hook it up with WeChat Official Account then connect to unlock, ride, park and go.

Once at a train station at Sydney, I bump into a schoolboy who asking me spare a dollar or two helping him buy a train ticket home? I think the way of his asking is out of date compared with the street beggars at Hangzhou. It is said that street beggars in Hangzhou accept alms by displaying their mobile phone QR codes next to their coin plates.

It was the Hangzhou which helps Alibaba be successful or was the Alibaba who makes Hangzhou successful? Another chicken-egg question.

About Wechatapply

Wechatapply is an award winning China WeChat digital marketing agency based in Sydney.Working across all aspects of the marketing solutions like WeChat promotion, WeChat Official Account Registration, WeChat KOL, WeChat Mini Program Ad. and so on, we will ensure you have a solid marketing strategy together with perfectly delivered campaigns. Wechatapply  will transform your China online marketing to increase your lead generation, brand awareness and market engagement.

The post Scan Face to Pay for Restaurant Bill appeared first on WeChat Official Agency.