5 Best Practices for Effective Website Localization

5 Best Practices for Effective Website Localization

Global business expansion is at peak and companies are trying to reach the maximum audience possible, because access to global audiences leads to high levels of profit. According to research conducted by Common Sense Advisory, 87% of people only buy products or services from websites in their native language. Therefore, it is evident that most of the successful businesses around the globe have realized the significance of website localization services.  Many global businesses tailor their content according to the culture and norms of the region in which they are operating.

Website Localization refers to the process of completely adapting a website to the language, norms, culture, and traditions of the targeted market. Following are the 5 fundamental practices in order to successfully implement your localization strategy:

Identify Your Local Market

First of all, investigate and identify the particular targeted locale or region, where the chances of potential customers are higher. Conduct an in-depth study of the targeted region so that you can confirm that your product opportunities and localization needs are valid.

Customer habits can differ extensively in the same region having a common language, therefore conducting thorough research for your targeted market is important for your website localization process. Translation or localization of your website in the top 100 languages of the world is of no use.

Instead of doing that, find out where most of your business traffic is coming from. For instance, if your website is mostly visited by Germans, there is no point in translating it into Japanese.

Implement SEO Strategy

During localizing your website into different languages, you cannot afford to ignore local keyword research and localized SEO. In simple words, you have to translate and localize your keywords, titles, descriptions, image tags, etc. It is important to nicely translate your website in order to make it sensible for foreign audiences, but without localizing a proper SEO strategy, it won’t be able to achieve maximum traffic.

In addition to it, also make sure to tweak new keywords and conduct a website localization services process in accordance with the new audience. It will boost your visibility and reach in the localized services if done correctly.

Don’t Let Language Ruin the Customer’s Experience

It is certain that translation alters the length of some words, sentences, or phrases. Therefore, you have to make sure that the final localized website does not look absurd and makes proper sense to foreign users. When you are working in a specific industry where all the content revolves around the same topics, it is also natural that words and phrases tend to repeat. In order to tackle this issue, it is important to make a glossary by extracting the most widely used words and phrases and translating them appropriately into the targeted language.

Moreover, switching between languages should not be rocket science and the user should be able to easily switch between the original and translated versions of your website.

Do Not Overlook Images

There is a common error which translators make that they ignore the other parts of the website and only focus on translating the contextual part. It is important to localize the images, symbols, and icons because they mostly have a cultural significance and can highly affect the user experience in either positive or negative ways.

The effect of imagery and symbols depends on how efficiently you localize them and make them adaptive to the user’s language. Therefore, make sure that all the images and symbols are appropriately translate and are tailored to meet the needs of your users.

Review from User’s Point of View

Once the localization of your website is completed, review it from the customer’s perspective. Check out if your website is compatible with local needs? Are there any distracting foreign components? The presence of incorrect or incomplete data, images or depictions which are unacceptable culturally, improper currency format or sensitive colors, etc. are not convincing and may lead to distracting the audience from reading your website’s content.

Lastly, ensure that your website meets the demands and expectations of your potential audience. This is how they will be encourage to stay on your website for longer and satisfy their needs.

Conclusion:

Psychologically, the users globally tend to be attracte to the product or service offered in their native language and are more likely to buy them. To enter the global market is an expensive and challenging experience but localization is an investment that is risk-free with higher profit. By following the above-mentioned guidelines for localization, you will be able to secure high profits and obstacle-free website translation services.

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