It goes without saying that one of the essential ways to connect with audiences is through localization. However, when targeting the international market, the content and message must be easily understood by the audience in their specific region.
It is important to build trust and ensure their feeling of belonging by reflecting on their customs, culture, and languages. This will be possible with localization.
Why localize your company’s website?
Localization can extend geographical reach. Most business owners believe that using English for their marketing strategies is enough to drive more traffic to their website. This is not true, especially when targeting the global market. According to Babbel, there are only about 20% (1.35 billion) of people who are fluent English speakers in the world and a marketer will lose the opportunity to reach the remaining 80% without localization.
By adjusting web design and content through localization, translation tools are customizing the user’s experience on the website. Adapting to customer’s language, preferences, and cultures means that they need to change some parts of formats, colors, artworks, and contents to make them more relatable and appealing for target audiences.
While there are only 11 out of 80 B2B companies with localized websites, most of the top-performing competitors in the global market are part of them. This is because user experience is highly important when developing a website and by ignoring these localization factors, you might lose the interest of your target audience.
Despite the investments in tools and translators, it is possible to earn a great return on investment when localizing websites. It will be easier to extend the brand’s reach to a larger number of potential customers and increase traffic. In fact, 74% of global marketers believe that localization is important to increase revenue according to the University of Strasbourg. This is much more efficient than offering discounts, giveaways, or reducing profit margins just to earn more.
Moreover, it can improve online presence and drive more search results. By localizing content, the target audience will find the website more helpful and understandable as it is translated to their language. It will also be easier to optimize the website by localizing keywords, metadata, and hreflang tags which will improve its search results drastically.
If you are still new to website localization, this might not be an easy task for you. However, with enough planning, research, and help from reliable translators, this can be a piece of cake. There are various artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can help make your tasks easier with automation and machine learning.
How to apply localization to businesses
Localization is a time-consuming and complicated process of translating and adapting content and marketing strategies to extend target audiences. It is not a literal, word for word translation of text – it requires the adaptation to the culture of a specific location. There are also some steps that marketers need to follow in order to make it successful.
First, identify their target audience. This is one of the most essential steps in localization. Research the highest numbers of the company’s sales in other countries to know which locations on which to focus. Also, check your competitors’ websites and social media accounts to see their usual followers and customers as a reference.
Second, adopt SEO strategies when localizing websites. People think that as long as the website is translated and adapted to the cultures of the target locations, it will be enough. This is not true. For example, Americans can tell when a website’s text is clearly written by a non-native English speaker. However, it is also important to apply some SEO strategies and adapt them to certain geographical locations.
You can search for top ranking keywords for a specific location. If you are targeting France, make sure that you set the location of your keyword research tools to that location before proceeding. However, not because a keyword is great for a region means that the same will apply to its direct translation. For example, if you search “how to feed a cat” in the US server, this would be high ranking and with a great competition. However, if you search for its direct translation in French, the outcome will not be as great.
Moreover, hiring a reliable translator is a crucial part of the process. If you’re a business looking to expand internationally, there are many language service providers. One of these is Tomedes translation company. Your website can be translated in languages that can be easily understood by audiences in their languages. Tomedes has written about their extensive localization strategy here.
Localization at Tomedes undergoes various levels of processes, including linguistic review and quality assurance, and is performed by translators who are knowledgeable both about your industry and your target languages.
The quality of translations plays a great role in localization. Thus, when localizing a website, it would be best to hire reliable translators that could provide a great service. There are also some translation agencies that offer expertise and experience in different languages and niches needed.
What tools can you use for localization?
Thanks to decades of growth in international business dealings, there are already many tools that offer the features that companies may need. Even if it may take time to learn and utilize their tools and functions, investing effort in using them will result in a larger return on investment.
Here are some of the all-in-one localization tools to consider:
Lokalise
Lokalise prioritizes fast delivery of localized materials for businesses. It features collaborative translation with process automation for a fast turnaround and in-context editing for quality assurance.
Smartcat
When looking for a localization tool that is simple to use yet promises great functionality, consider using Smartcat. It combines automation technologies with communication expertise to build a free tool that everyone can use.
MemoQ
This translation tool offers a management system that lets its users customize the features that they need to make the localization process more efficient.
Phrase
The best feature of Phrase is its flexibility to all software localization processes that works well for localization teams working in different tasks.
POEditor
This is another flexible tool that is applicable for websites, apps, games, and other softwares that need localization. It also works well for team collaboration or individual projects.
There are still other all-in-one and independent software tools that were not mentioned.
Conclusion
Localization can be beneficial for global marketing if done right. It helps in extending the company’s reach and increasing sales. The only important thing is to consider the target markets and locations when localizing. Moreover, it is best to use all possible resources and automation tools that can make the process more efficient.
