WEBSITE LOCALIZATION: WHY AND HOW TO LOCALIZE YOUR WEBSITE

Reaching an international audience is an opportunity that small and medium businesses can harness.

In fact, in 2020, #English was the most commonly used language on the Internet. Yet, the other top nine languages?accounted for 51%?of Internet users worldwide.

What does this mean?

If you’re only serving native English-speaking users on the Internet, then, you’re missing out on a lot of traffic from non-English-speaking Internet users.

Attracting these visitors to your company’s #website goes way beyond translating your website.

Today’s world has a mix of people, countries, and regions with unique values, cultures, religions, and languages.

That’s why businesses looking to take a bite of the international market need to think beyond standardized content to win over customers in these diverse geographic markets.

#Businesses are now crossing boundaries without really crossing boundaries; meeting a wide local and international market with the help of digital tools.

When it comes to getting to clients through websites, website localization becomes a key factor. You must translate your website into the language and cultural structure of your target audience to help you expand the shores of your business.

An organization cannot explore its full potential without localizing its website.

When you fail to localize your website, you are having thousands or millions of potential clients passing you by.

What is Website Localization?

Website localization is the process of adapting a website to a specific locale or market.

When done right, website localization provides international customers with online experiences that reflect experiences they typically encounter in their domestic market.

And by doing so, businesses can target customers on a more personalized level and encourage brand loyalty.

What’s more, localizing a website ensures that your target audience receives and reacts to your brand messages. It also helps improve the overall user experience of your website.

Website Localization: More than Translation

Translation plays a key role in website localization.

Research shows that?65% of customers?prefer website content in their native language.

What’s more, 40% of consumers say they won’t buy in another language even if they understood the language.

According to the same research, the other 60% would rather use a badly translated website than no website at all.

With native English speakers accounting for only 25% of the global Internet population, website translation has become a must, not an option.

Now, you understand that translation plays a big role in website localization. Yet, it’s not the only factor that needs to be considered when localizing a website. It goes way beyond translating text on your website.

When users visit your localized website, they want to have ease and flow going through the website. For one thing, it’s boring when visitors realize that the text they are reading is machine-translated.

True website localization means so much more; it requires taking into consideration the?culture of your audience. Think content, graphic, as well as the interface of the website. These must all conform to the cultural setting of your target market.

Now that you understand what website localization is and how it differs from translation, let’s walk through the most important reasons you need to localize your website.

6 Reasons you Should Localize your Website

1. BOOST YOUR WEBSITE TRAFFIC

Language is the most significant factor in communication. If you have to communicate, then you must communicate in the language of your audience.

Truth is, your visitors will find no meaning to what linguistically makes no sense to them.

If your website is untranslated, you will be invisible to international users and as a result, you would be missing out on potential clients from other cultural backgrounds.

The reverse is exactly true when you invest in website translation and localization services. The more your website content is available in other languages, the more you can attract and engage new audiences.

A boost in traffic will show up in the form of more downloads, new subscribers on your email list, and an increase in telephone calls to your sales reps.

2. GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Competition is what separates the winning team from the losing crowd. #Localizing your website gives you that competitive edge.

With a localized website, you will be several steps ahead of your #competitors, accessing markets they cannot access because you have the visibility they don’t have.

3. IMPROVE YOUR SITE’S USER EXPERIENCE

When visitors find your website, it takes them only a few seconds to decide if they will stay or leave. You want to ensure that your website is professionally localized so that your visitors do not make too much of an effort surfing through.

To keep visitors glued to your website, you want to ensure your website is secure, has high-quality and readable content, uses user-friendly web designs, is mobile-friendly, and has fast-loading pages.

Even better, when you adjust your website content to fit the cultural, behavioural, and online preferences of your target audience, you are well on your way to providing a great user experience to your visitors.

4. SHOW UP IN LOCAL SEARCH RESULTS (SERPS)

When it comes to #digital marketing, the ability for your website to pop up in search engine results is uber important. For one thing, showing up in these results means more people will see, visit, and engage with your website and eventually convert into paying customers.

But how do you make this possible?

By improving your #SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Localizing your website is one neat trick to improving your website’s SEO. What this means is, you will be able to rank highly on international search engine result pages.

To ensure that you are winning on international SEO, you need to consider features such as metadata translation and?HreFlang?tags. These features help search engines like Google to serve the correct regional or language URLs in its search results based on the searcher’s country and language preferences.

By doing this, you’ll thrive on international search engines and appear more frequently in local search engine results.

5. IMPROVE YOUR BRAND IMAGE

Localized websites interact better with their audiences.

Let’s face it. When international visitors of other cultural and linguistic backgrounds read content in their local language, they become more receptive to the brand.

When it comes to building out a strategy to succeed online, your brand image is everything. A good brand image is what makes for a winning entrepreneur.

By localizing your website, you are emotionally connecting with your audience. And that emotional appeal alone can engage and convert visitors of other linguistic origins.

6. GAIN MORE CREDIBILITY

Extra efforts are always rewarded by extra gains. By localizing your website, you are showing off as being more credible. Your audience will understand that you take them very seriously; it plays a huge psychological effect on your audience when they feel special and attended to.

Truth is, when your audience sees your brand as being credible, they will trust you and be willing to work with you.

Now that you understand what website localization is and why it’s important, let’s walk through the basic steps of any website localization strategy.

How to do Website Localization

These three steps will guide you in ensuring that your website is professionally localized to meet the needs of your audience, no matter their location.

TRANSLATION

This is the first step in professionally localizing your website. Translation is the simple act of transcribing texts into the language of interest.

Hiring translators is usually the most effective way to localize a website, especially since you’ll need to maintain the new version of the site over time.

LOCALIZATION

This is the second step of the localization process, and it requires that you adapt your website content to the cultural context of your target audience. This entails adapting text, images, graphics, and headings to ensure that they are linguistically and culturally correct for the target market.

LOCALIZING LOCAL INFORMATION

In professionally localizing your website, you must localize every detail; local content such as date, time, price, and currency must conform to your target market.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to succeed in international markets, website localization is a must, not an option.

When it comes to winning on the international marketplace, your audience need to understand you literally (as in the words you use) and culturally (the way you say them).

Not sure where to start? Book a free consultation with one of our digital marketing specialists and learn how to set up a seamless website localization process.