Forum Moderators: buckworks
Thanking you in advance
Sunlight
For accepting credit cards, you should be able to use most payment gateways/merchant accounts, although the name/address will have to be in Roman characters for the vast majority of them (all?). You can code the interface to the payment gateway in Chinese easily enough.
You're going to roll your eyes when I ask you this question. Please direct me to another forum if you don't want to answer. I am a total novice to all of this, I haven't launched my website yet, and just started researching in this arena. I didn't know what HTML was last week. My question please. What is the code you said I could write for credit card details in Chinese charcters, and where can I find out how to learn how to write it.
Thanking you in advance for your kindness
Sunlight
Is the normal method of Internet payment similar to US/UK? Does an average Chinese Internet shopper carry a Visa card? Do they expect to pay in advance for their goods, or do they use an escrow system?
No, not rolling my eyes- all of us started at the same point you're at, even if it was many years ago. :)
However, I would strongly recommend that you either learn to crawl (basic HTML & web programming) before you try to run (e-commerce). Or that you outsource all the technical details to someone else while you focus on the business side.
On a basic level, you will need to use HTML (or web programming) to make an online form where the customers enter their names, addresses, creit card information, etc.
Then you will have to have another page that takes the customer's input and processes it. For this part, you will need to do some sort of programming to process the information, check for errors, same the information to a database, and/or pass the information to your payment gateway. If you're dealing with credit card information, you also have to worry about encrypting the data, using SSL, and other privacy issues.
Actually, using PayPal will make it easier, as most of the technical details can be handled on their side. In fact, you should be able to use them for all of the processing side (although you probably still need some processing on your end to keep track of orders).
Also, I forgot to mention, but jwolthuis brought it up, that credit cards are still not very common in China. Certainly not to the level they are in most other countries represented by WW users. I don't know about PayPal's popularity in China.
You mention that the web site is hosted in the U.S., but where are you located? If you are outside of China and need to move the funds from China to your country, that is another can of worms.
Also, I don't remember which forum it was, but there were some good discussions regarding hosting in China vs. hosting outside of China. It seems that if your target audience is just China, it may make more sense to host in China instead of the U.S.
The issue of integration and website design is too complicated. You would probably need to be conversant with simplified Chinese. I would suggest that you seek advice from webdesign companies based in China or Hong Kong.
Your advice is really helping me. Although I purchased 4 domain names in the last month, I will not create or launch my website until I know my way around. I am living in Beijing China now, although I am from Colorado. I was unsure about using my credit card to buy hosting in China, as the potential for fraud seems higher here, ( I might be wrong) and I don't know what hosting company is is good or bad, but I read on another post that Baidu gives peference to websites hosted in China, and I have no idea if that will affect me or not. Since I'm new to all of this my learning curve is ballistic, but exciting. I have many Chinese friends who will help me with my translation after I use Altavista babelfish for the rough drafts ( thanks to Leguna )for telling me about it. This PayPal issue is a hard one, so I'll ask my Chinese friends how they shop on the net as well. I want my site to have that little flag on it that someone can click and it changes the words from Chinese to English and visa versa.
Again thank you so very much!
Aloha,
Sunlight
