Europe digital
A European buyer checks before replying.
For a Chinese company selling into Europe: the site, the domain, the data rules and the profile a buyer looks at before they answer your first email.
The checking happens before the conversation
A Chinese supplier's first contact is usually judged in silence. Someone opens your site, reads for ninety seconds, looks you up, and then decides whether to reply at all. Nothing you say in the email survives a site that answers none of what they came to check.
The two sites are not answering the same questions
This is the gap that a translation cannot close. A site built for domestic Chinese B2B leads with capability; a European buyer is reading for accountability. Both are legitimate — they are simply not the same page.
| What the page leads with | Domestic B2B site | What a European buyer reads for |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | Factory area, headcount, capacity, certificates on the wall | Whether the product may legally be placed on this market |
| Range | Everything the factory can make, in one long list | One thing done well, and what it costs delivered here |
| Proof | Client logos, awards, exhibition photographs | A named person who answers, and in which time zone |
| Next step | Send an inquiry and wait for a quotation | Read the terms, then decide whether to write |
Data rules are a design constraint, not a banner
The GDPR question most companies ask is which banner to install. The useful question is what the site collects in the first place. A site that sets no tracking cookies, embeds no third-party player and sends form data to one mailbox has far less to declare — and loads faster than one that spends its first second asking permission.
- Fonts and scripts served from your own domain rather than a third party.
- No analytics tag: the server's own logs answer most questions already.
- A contact route that does not require an account or a newsletter opt-in.
- A named person and a postal address a buyer can verify.
Say where the data goes. A Chinese company whose form posts to a server in China is not doing anything wrong, but a European buyer will want to read that sentence rather than guess it.
Your name has to survive three languages
A brand name that works in Chinese can be unpronounceable in French, already registered in Germany, or an unfortunate near-homophone in Spanish. All three checks are cheap before launch and expensive afterwards — the same asymmetry as a trademark filing.
LinkedIn is a directory before it is a channel
Almost nobody finds a supplier there; a great many people check one. That changes what the page is for. It has to confirm that the company exists, that real people work there, and that someone has been paying attention recently. Publishing volume is beside the point.
Questions we get often.
Is a .com enough, or do we need a European domain?
A .com works everywhere and is the safer default. A country domain signals local commitment and is worth it once you actually have someone answering in that country — not before. Owning both and pointing one at the other costs little.
Do we need a GDPR cookie banner?
Only if you set cookies that require consent. A site with no analytics, no advertising pixels and no embedded third-party players needs no banner at all — and loads faster for it. The banner is a consequence of choices made earlier, not a legal formality to bolt on.
Should the site be in English or in the local language?
English reaches the whole continent and is where to start. The local language matters at the point of decision — the page a buyer sends to a colleague, the terms, the person to contact. Translating everything at once is usually the wrong order.
Do European buyers use LinkedIn to find suppliers?
Rarely to find one. Very often to check one. Treat the company page as something a buyer looks at after your email arrives, and the question becomes what it must confirm rather than what it must advertise.
Send us your current site and the market you are aiming at. We will tell you what a buyer there sees first, and what is worth changing before anything else.