Do you have an urge to expand your brand’s global markets? Website translation is one step not to miss. However, having your website content translated may not achieve you much. That is why it’s vital for you to go past just translation to website localization.
Localization is vital to your business’ success. How! Localizing your website ensures that your content resonates with your entire potential target audience. Beyond simply translating the words on the page, localisation adapts your website to meet the needs of a particular language, culture or desired population’s “look and feel.” A correctly localized website attracts more traffic and increases click-through rates that improves conversation rates and inevitably sales.
Changing your site’s color scheme, adapting your SEO and social media strategy, and even remodeling the design of your site itself can all impact positively to your success out there. Checkout the crucial points to remember for your multilingual and multi-regional websites.
The first step in localization of any content is to know who you are selling to. For that need to analyze which markets will bring in the greatest revenues but going global without proper research would lead to losing customers instead of bringing more. Conduct specific research before deciding to take a step ahead. Know your international buyer personas by carefully researching on the language they speak, their cultural background, traditions, and buying habits. Try asking these simple, yet useful questions when identifying your target market:
Be sure that each of your localized sites has the correct contact information localized to that particular locale.
Make sure that your legal considerations such as terms and conditions page and cookies agreement adhere to the requirements of that particular territory.
Ensure that details on your site’s products or event listings, such as sizes, measurements, dates or currency, all conform to the standard units or formats in your target country.
Images and videos also need to be altered and optimized, including subtitles on video content, or reworking text-based images into your target language. All in all, you should ensure that your images and videos themselves are culturally sensitive to your target audience.
Make your instructional imagery as easily-comprehensible as possible, and be sure to adapt any step-by-step graphics for any territories reading from right to left. You should also make sure that any gestures and scenarios in the photos on your site which may register as inoffensive to western audiences (such as drinking alcohol) are altered or replaced in order to avoid upsetting users in other cultures.
As with the text and layout of your pages, the overall structure of your site will need to be revised in order to adhere to localized customs in your target markets. Researching how your local competitors organize the navigation of their sites will give you a better idea of how companies in your sector structure their websites, particularly when it comes to organizing products and services.
Beyond this, developing a local SEO strategy to these new markets is also essential, making sure that any link building campaigns target locally-relevant websites. As well as translating your onsite content, revising elements in the back end of your website, such as your title tags and Meta descriptions, allows you to accommodate localized keywords, and set canonical tags on any pages which could be flagged up as duplicate content. Hosting these versions of sites at different local domains has also been recognized as a positive ranking factor, so investing in a “.co.ug, .bf or .za website alongside your primary global domain will help your site’s visibility. You should also keep your Google My Business profiles updated with all information for any local offices you might have in these other territories.
Website localization may seem terrifying, but it can easily be primed by your market research and the collective knowledge of the staff in the territories to which you are expanding. Depending on the number of countries for which you will need to localize, the process will likely become easier the more.