Essentials for a Vietnam Company Website — Legal Disclosures · Invoices · Languages

This article is compiled from our experience building our own site and handling registrations for other legal entities as a company based in Ho Chi Minh City. This is not legal advice; please verify registration and tax matters with local experts.

The Problem

The first wall Korean companies face when establishing a legal entity or branch in Vietnam and building a website is the lack of information. Headquarters staff in Korea are unfamiliar with Vietnam's complex tax registration procedures and legal disclosure obligations. Conversely, local development agencies may not understand the headquarters' brand guidelines or security standards, leading to communication difficulties.

This information asymmetry causes critical delays and cost overruns at the project kickoff stage. Frequently, projects focus solely on design or feature implementation, only to face delays in site launch due to non-compliance with legal requirements. This is especially true if the site includes e-commerce or booking functions, where prior registration procedures are mandatory, requiring legal risk management from the initial planning stage.

This article clearly outlines the legal disclosures, invoice issuing entities, multilingual handling, and performance security standards that must be included when building a website for a legal entity in Vietnam. It provides a concrete checklist based on actual corporate operations and registration experiences, rather than vague advice. This helps reduce unnecessary rework and quickly establishes a foundation for legal operation.

Why It Is Difficult

The first difficulty is the institutional gap between Korea and Vietnam. Korean companies are unfamiliar with Vietnam's tax code (MST) system or the e-commerce website registration system. Local agencies may be reluctant or unaware of how to reflect these headquarters requirements, taking considerable time to find a consensus between both sides.

The second is the complexity of language and content management. If the site targets Vietnamese customers, Vietnamese (vi) should be the default locale, but it often needs to support Korean (ko) and English (en) for headquarters and global customers. Site map structure, translation, and review costs for three languages can increase more than threefold compared to a single language, making consistent message delivery difficult.

The third is that for customers in strictly regulated industries like finance, brand guidelines and security standards are specified numerically in the contract. They require measurable metrics such as PageSpeed scores or zero OWASP vulnerabilities, not just "fast speed." If these quantitative standards are not reflected in the design from the development stage, major revisions become inevitable during the final review stage.

What We Did

We included 4 legal disclosure items in our site footer. These are the official Vietnamese legal entity name (CÔNG TY TNHH CORECODE), tax code (MST 0319452339), registered address, and representative information. These disclosures are the minimum device to ensure legal trustworthiness beyond simple information provision.

We determined whether the e-commerce website content was subject to registration and prepared the registration form. We have experience preparing and signing a registration form based on a list of 14 pages for another legal entity (LUXURY CRANE). The registration form must accurately state the legal entity name, MST, address, and the list of pages subject to registration, thereby ensuring the legal operation of online sales and booking functions.

We clearly defined the entity issuing the electronic tax invoice (hóa đơn điện tử). The issuing entity differs depending on whether payment is made by the Korean headquarters or the Vietnamese legal entity; if a Vietnamese legal entity exists, a Vietnamese tax invoice is issued. Additionally, we mandatorily placed Vietnamese privacy notices and consent checkboxes on inquiry and sign-up screens that collect personal information to comply with data protection regulations.

For the language strategy, we set Vietnamese as the default locale and configured Korean and English as auxiliary languages. We applied automatic branching based on browser language and designated native reviewers to manage translation quality. For search engine optimization, we applied hreflang tags, language-specific sitemaps, and Schema.org structures (FinancialService, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, etc.).

Performance and security standards are handled by specifying them numerically in the contract. We set targets of PageSpeed mobile score 65 or higher, LCP under 2.5 seconds, CLS under 0.10, INP under 200ms, and zero OWASP Top 10 Critical/High vulnerabilities. These are the standards we used in our proposal for Shinhan Securities Vietnam's homepage.

By the Numbers

Metric	Value	Notes
Legal disclosure items	4	Entity name · MST · Address · Representative
E-commerce registration page list	14	LUXURY CRANE case
Supported languages	3	vi default · ko · en
Contract metrics	5	PageSpeed · LCP · CLS · INP · OWASP
Kickoff checklist	27 items	Free PDF

What This Article Says

Building a website for a legal entity in Vietnam requires defining legal disclosures, registration procedures, language settings, and performance security metrics before design. If these four elements are organized into a table before kickoff, you can effectively prevent confusion and rework in the later stages of development.

Readers are encouraged to download the 27-item kickoff checklist PDF mentioned in this article today and review it against current projects or future plans. This allows you to eliminate legal risks and technical debt in advance.

The Problem

Why It Is Difficult

What We Did

By the Numbers

What This Article Says

Further Reading