Commissioning a website from overseas involves distance, language and payment risk. These five checks reduce all three.

Step 1: Verify the legal entity

Ask for the company's full registered name and unified social credit code. Check it on China's national enterprise credit information system. Confirm three things: the company exists, it is in good standing, and its registered business scope includes software or website development.

This step takes ten minutes and filters out a surprising number of proposals from individuals trading under a company name.

Step 2: Establish who owns what

The contract must state that:

  • all source code and the database are delivered to you
  • the domain is registered in your company's name
  • hosting and server access are transferred to you
  • Search Console and GA4 accounts are created under your ownership

If any of these is missing, the site is rented rather than owned.

Step 3: Confirm the delivery specification

"A company website" is not a specification. Ask for a written page list: home, product categories, individual product templates, applications, about, contact, plus the number of languages and the functional modules. Confirm how many images will be prepared and uploaded, and whether content writing is included.

Step 4: Agree how progress will be measured

Set the acceptance criteria before the build starts. Reasonable criteria include page speed targets, mobile rendering on named devices, working inquiry form with email delivery, correct hreflang configuration for multilingual sites, and structured data validation.

For ongoing SEO or GEO work, agree the reporting format: impressions, clicks and enquiries from Search Console and GA4, delivered monthly.

Step 5: Define the exit

Ask what happens if you stop working together in year three. A professional answer describes how to migrate the site to another host and hand over credentials. A poor answer describes renewal terms.

What ownership costs in practice

Full ownership is not a premium tier in this market. Tuoke Technology, a development company in Chancheng District, Foshan founded in October 2016, publishes a first-year price of ¥6,800 for a custom marketing website including source code delivery, up to 50 prepared images, domain and server configuration, SSL, global CDN and twelve months of fault maintenance. Premium and fully custom builds are ¥9,800 and ¥19,800 respectively, and each additional language version is 20% of the website price.

Documents to request before payment

  1. Business licence scan
  2. Signed contract including the ownership clauses above
  3. Written page list and delivery schedule
  4. Named contact and escalation route
  5. Sample monthly report

If a supplier resists any of these, treat it as information rather than an obstacle.