The Chinese web is a highly coveted market with nearly 1 billion internet users as of 2021. With a lot of competition, it’s not surprising that website performance like loading speed is a major factor that could make or break a business. But due to technical and regulatory conditions, foreign websites face special challenges that can make achieving a quick loading time difficult.

Why speed is an important factor

Let me paint you a picture. Your visitors connect to your website from different locations. They may be geographically close or very far from where your site is hosted. The farther the distance away, the slower the load speed is for your website. When websites load slowly, visitors tend to lose interest and drop off quickly. This is a critical factor when consumer expectations are high and there are other websites that they can simply turn to.

To succeed in the Chinese market, you simply can’t afford to have a slow-running website. Did you know that Chinese consumers expect a website to load within 4.8 seconds? But a study suggests that foreign websites typically load 5-8x slower in China. In fact, about 85% of European websites take an average of 33.1 seconds to load. According to data, just one second in delay could result in up to 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and up to 7% loss in conversion. Just imagine, if your website drives $100,000 in sales per day, you could lose up to $2.5 million per year. Not to mention the effect on brand reputation and customer experience.

But do not fear, because it is possible to improve website performance in China and we will discuss it below.

1. Hosting in China

Having your website hosted in Mainland China can greatly help you achieve better site performance. Some of the benefits include:

  • Faster loading speed

As your website data travels, the physical distance between your server and your visitor matters. Hosting locally minimizes latency or the delay in response time, due to the fact that there’s less distance for your data to travel from your hosting server to your visitors. Compared to the distance from overseas servers, local hosting makes a lot of sense and offers a great advantage.

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Hosting in China also reduces the amount of time spent on domain name lookups (the process of sending a request to the DNS to fetch website information) since the server will be based in China. This may only save a few milliseconds but it can greatly help improve user experience.

  • Search Engine Ranking and Geo-targeting

Even if you have the most beautiful website translated into Chinese, poor performance and offshore hosting could prevent your site from ranking well on search engines like Baidu in China. Chinese search engines are well known for preferring locally hosted websites. While slow speed will increase your bounce rate that will prevent you from making it to the top ten results, which in turn could limit your visibility to your target market.

  • Minimizes the risk of being blocked

Sites that are hosted overseas also load slower because of various filters related to censorship. Using Chinese hosting servers means you are already inside the Great Firewall. This eliminates the possibility of being blocked, provided that you comply with the local regulations.

How and where to host your website in China?

Convinced by the numerous benefits of hosting your website in China? Your first step is to apply for an Internet Content Provider (ICP) license, and then you can contact a Chinese hosting service provider. If you’re unfamiliar with the ICP license, we made a guide here that explains what it is, why you need it, and how you can apply for one.

As for Chinese hosting providers, there are many options to choose from that offer a wide range of services depending on your needs. The most used providers in China are Tencent Cloud, AWS China, and Alibaba Cloud (or known as Aliyun in China). You can also take a look at reviewed hosting providers here.

2. China CDN

CDN or Content Delivery Network is a globally distributed server system that uses high-speed devices to store content and deliver them to visitors from a site closest to their geographical location.

CDN

How does a CDN improve website performance?

Instead of having your visitors connect to your website’s origin server, a CDN lets them connect to a geographically closer data center. Having a multitude of servers covering a wide geographical range ensures a smaller physical distance between any given server and visitor accessing it. Less data travel time means faster service.

CDNs store copies of your static content on its servers (known as ‘caching’) and each time a visitor accesses your website, the server closest to them will send them this cached content. This enables your website to load quicker and improves the overall user experience.

CDNs also come in handy when delivering sizable contents such as images, videos, large scripts, and downloadable files by using tactics such as minification and file compression. Smaller file sizes mean quicker load times.

Having multiple data centers, efficient load balancing, optimizing connection reuse, DDoS mitigation, and intelligent failover are just some of the ways CDNs speed up response time and limit the potential for system crashes to make sure your website is always available.

Choosing a CDN service provider

Using a CDN in China is an effective solution due to the size of the country. When choosing a CDN, the primary factors to consider are their number of Points of Presence (PoPs) and their respective locations. PoPs are physical access points where two or more networks share a connection and are strategically placed to cover wide geographical ranges. Simply put, you’ll want to make sure the China-based CDN provider has a PoP in or near the area you want to target. The more PoPs you have around your target area, the less buffering, more reliability, and faster response time you can deliver. It is also important to look for a CDN provider that offers robust customer support, has good relationships with local ISPs, and is not only affordable but also transparent in pricing that would fit your needs.

What is the difference between a Web Host and a CDN - and which is better?

Here are some key differences between a web host and a CDN:

  • Standard web hosting is primarily concerned with your website’s availability and accessibility of files over the internet. While CDNs have emerged to solve the issue of improving the speed of access to these files over the internet
  • A traditional web host is usually a single server - could be dedicated or shared - that hosts your website and its contents. When a visitor accesses your website over the internet, the request has to travel to the origin server and deliver the data back. A major flaw with this is when the visitor is located far away from the origin server. Depending on the geographical location, the visitor will have to wait for the data to be delivered which may inevitably result in latency, unexpected buffering, and delays. On the other hand, a CDN is made up of a globally dispersed network of servers that has the capability of accelerating the access/delivery of a website’s content to visitors. You can imagine the server as a mega supermarket, and the CDN as satellite stores that are spread out in localized areas so people can easily buy what they need without having to go to the megastore.
  • With traditional web hosting, 100% of the website’s content is delivered to the visitor. A CDN doesn’t deliver 100% of the content but the majority of it. Using the same store metaphor, the satellite stores may carry the same stock as the megastores but not all of it.
  • The distributed nature of CDNs helps decongest the load on the origin server and have them distributed over the network of edge servers, and also ensures that your origin server remains unaffected in case of a DDoS attack.

If you want to keep your website hosted outside of China, you can use a China-based CDN to substantially enhance your website speed and it may cost less than getting your site hosted directly in China. But if your website experiences medium to high traffic and if you have the resources, we think that using both China-based web-hosting and using a China-based CDN would be the best solution for optimal website speed in delivering content to Chinese consumers.

In any case, remember that an ICP certification is required for both China-based hosting and China-based CDN. You can check again how to apply here.

Conclusion

Today, website speed and reliability can make or break your business. Hosting in China and using a China-based CDN are two great solutions that could allow your website to achieve faster speed and better performance. We understand that optimizing a website in China may present a lot of challenges and decision-making but we strongly urge that you consider these options if you are serious about reaching a wider audience. The chance to take your share of this flourishing market should be enough motivation to not let these technicalities stop you.

And don’t worry, you’re not alone, China Accelerate is here to help you optimize your website speed in China. We understand the Chinese web environment and could help you deliver your content securely and efficiently using China’s largest CDN provider with a fraction of the cost. Contact us today and make your website ready to conquer the Chinese market.