The first thing you need to do if you’ve decided to develop your business in the international market is to localize your website. In this article, we explain how to properly adapt the content and interface of your website for different countries so that you can talk to clients all over the world in their own language.
What Is Website Localization?
Localization of a website doesn’t just mean translating the text. You are adapting the whole resource to the culture and norms of people from different countries. It involves the content, design, and functionality.
This is what you need to do when performing localization of your website:
- Translate all the text: Product descriptions, your blog, frequently asked questions—this all needs to be not just translated but adapted. The text should sound natural for local clients.
- Change the interface: You need to translate the menu, buttons, and forms. Words can be longer or shorter in different languages, which may affect the design.
- Adapt pictures and videos: Make sure that the photos and videos on your site are understandable and attractive for people from different countries. You may need to change some of the images.
- Tweak the formatting: Dates, times, and figures are written differently in different countries. For example, the standard format in the US is MM/DD/YYYY, whereas in Europe it’s DD/MM/YYYY. It’s a minor detail, but it makes your site more comfortable for your users.
- Take cultural sensitivities into account: Sometimes you need to change colors, symbols, or even whole sections of your site to ensure you don’t offend or confuse people from other countries.
- Customize SEO: You need to translate key words and descriptions for your site. That way, potential clients will be able to find you when they search locally.
- Add local payment methods: Integrate the payment systems that are popular in that country. Show your prices in the local currency.
- Check the laws: Update your terms of use and privacy policy in accordance with the local laws.
- Speed up your site: Set up your hosting to ensure your site loads quickly in the country in question.
You also need to update your localization. When you change something on your site or add new goods, you need to change the translated versions too.
Why Localize Your Website? 5 Advantages
Website localization isn’t just a whim. It’s a tool for growing your business. This is what you get:
1. Attracting a new audience
Localization allows you to enter new markets. Translation of your website into different languages helps you attract new customers who otherwise would never hear about you.
2. User loyalty
According to HBR, 72% of people spend time on websites with content in their own language. And 72.4% are more likely to make a purchase if the site provides information in their language.
When a website talks to users in their own language and shows sensitivity to their culture, they feel comfortable and they will come back.
3. Trust in your company
Localization of your website gives the impression that you take your customers seriously and are ready to go the extra mile for them. This increases trust in your business.
4. Increased sales
New markets = new customers = more revenue. The math is simple.
5. Competitive advantage
If translations of your website are available in several languages, while your competitors’ sites are all monolingual, this will give you a clear competitive advantage. Users will choose you because it’s easier for them to do so.
Examples of Localized Websites
- Salesforce, CRM systems developer They have more than ten translated versions of their website. Clients from all over the world can easily learn more about their product.
- IKEA in Thailand When IKEA launched on the Thai market, they noticed that some of the Swedish product names sound weird and have double meanings in Thai. To correct this, the company hired a local team of translators, who checked and changed the names to ensure they were understandable and attractive to Thai consumers.
- Coca-Cola Coca-Cola’s websites are very different for different countries. The Canadian site is very simple and to the point, emphasizing the brand’s mission and values. It is believed that Canadians prefer minimalism and clarity.
The Japanese localization of the site, however, is full of all sorts of pictures and information. This is connected to the fact that Japanese consumers like to know as much as possible about a product before they buy it, so the site looks more extensive.
- McDonald’s The company adapts its websites for different countries in light of local customs. For example, the site’s layout has been changed for the UAE: the text and graphics are laid out from right to left, as is the norm in Arabic. There’s also no mention of pork, which is important in that culture.
What Exactly Do You Need to Localize on Your Website?
Depending on the situation, the following parts of your website should be localized:
- The interface: This is the “face” of your resource. Think about the colors (they may have different connotations in different cultures), the typeface (some languages require special typefaces), and the overall structure of the pages.
- The texts:
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- The main page
- Descriptions of products or services
- The blog and articles
- The “About Us” section
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- The terms of use and privacy policy
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- Multimedia:
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- Pictures (and captions)
- Video
- Audio
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- Technical details:
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- Date and time formats
- Currency
- Units of measurement (miles or kilometers?)
- Address and phone number formats
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- Key words for SEO: People in different countries search for goods in different ways. Investigate which words your potential customers use.
- Forms and buttons: Buy Now or Add to Basket—which sounds better in your customers’ language?
- Marketing materials:
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- Banner ads
- Presentations
- Newsletters
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- Channels of communication: How will customers get in touch with you? Different messaging services and social networks are popular in different countries.
Tip: If you have a big website, consider using special translation tools like a proxy translator. This will help you save time and money when you update content.
Preparing Your Website for Localization
Before you start the process of localization, you need to prepare. This is what you need to do:
- Study the market:
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- Talk to your team: sales, marketing, and support. Do they know where customers are coming from?
- Find out who your potential customers are in new countries. What are they interested in? How do they shop?
- Think about whether you need to adapt your product or pricing for the new market.
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- Select what to translate: You don’t always have to translate absolutely everything. Choose the most important sections. For example, the main page, the catalogue of goods, and the contacts are all must-haves. Old news posts and user comments, on the other hand, can probably be skipped.
- Prepare your content:
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- Make sure that the texts are perfect in your native language. Correct any errors.
- Gather all the texts in one place. This can be done in a file or on the site’s administration panel.
- Compile a list of important terms and names. This will help the translators in their work.
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- Check the technical side:
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- Makes sure there are no bugs on your website. All links should work properly.
- Think about how your resource will display in different languages. Do you need to add a button for choice of language?
- If you have a big website, talk to the coders. They will be able to prepare code that makes adding new languages easier.
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- Think about the details:
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- How will you communicate with clients in the new language? Who will be answering their questions?
- How will you process payments in a different country? What currency will you use?
- What laws about personal data are there in the new country?
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- Make a plan
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- Decide what order you are going to translate the sections of your website in.
- Work out who will perform the task. Maybe you should hire professional translators or a localization studio?
- Establish deadlines. When do you want to launch your project in the new language?
When everything is ready, you can move on to the process of localization.
How to Localize a Website: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. Establish your strategy
First, decide what countries you want to launch your business in. Think about where the people who may be interested in your product or service live. Find out more about those countries: how do people make purchases there? How do people pay for goods? What’s important for them when they choose a company?
Now take a fresh look at your brand. Think about how it will be received in new countries. Maybe the name of your company sounds funny or even offensive in another language. Or maybe your standard way of communicating with customers will be seen as too direct or not direct enough there. This all needs to be taken into consideration and, if necessary, changed.
Think about how you will understand whether your translated site is working well or not. Do you perhaps want to see growth in sales in new countries? Or is it more important for you that more people visit your website? Or maybe you want your site to be easy to find on search engines in the new language? Decide this beforehand, and it will be easier to evaluate the results afterwards.
And, talking of search engines… Find out which words people search for most often when they’re looking for goods or services similar to yours. These words may be different from the ones that are used in your country. Be sure to use them when you’re creating the texts in the new language. And don’t forget to make sure those texts are unique—that’s important for search engines.
One more important point: find resources in the new countries that can tell their users about you. These could be blogs, news websites, or forums in your subject area. Make deals with them to place information about your company or links to your website on those resources. That way, more people will find out about you and it will increase their trust in our business.
Localizing a website isn’t just changing the words into another language. It’s a major project to adapt your business to a new country and culture. Be prepared to change not just the language, but also your approach to clients, your sales methods, and even your goods or services themselves. Remember, if you do all of this correctly, you will be able to find new customers and grow your business.
2. Plan your project with localization in mind
Many people think that first you need to make a website in one language before you translate it into another. However, that isn’t actually the best approach.
If you think about what your site will be like in different languages from the very beginning, it will save you time and money in the future. Imagine that you build a house and then decide to make it bigger. You’ll have to knock down walls, change the roof, and basically do a lot of extra work. It’s the same principle with a website. If you plan it from the start with different languages in mind, it will be much easier later on.
When you design your website, bear in mind that the text may be longer or shorter in other languages. For example, a long text in English will be much shorter when translated into Swedish. But if you are translating into Chinese or Japanese, the text may take up much more space vertically. You should therefore leave more free space for text.
You should also think about pictures and about how the page looks overall. What’s easy to understand in one country may be incomprehensible in another. That’s why you should choose pictures and a page layout that will work everywhere.
3. Prepare your website for internationalization
Internationalization (i18n) is preparing your site to be ready to “speak” in different languages.
Rather than having to change every word on your website by hand, programmers make sure that the site itself substitutes the right words in the right language. It’s like having a robot translator that knows every language and changes the words on the website automatically when required.
Furthermore, you need to consider how dates, times, and addresses are written in different countries. For example, in the US they write the month first and then the day, but in Russia it’s the other way around. Details like that are also important.
You also need to make sure that your website understands where visitors are coming from and shows them pages in the right language. If the user is from England, then it’s better to show them text in British English rather than American.
If you use popular systems for creating websites like WordPress or Drupal, they already have the tools for working with different languages. You just need to configure them. If you’re building a website from scratch, then your programmers will have to add special code for work with foreign languages.
4. Establish a localization process
Next, select a team. You will need people who don’t just know their job well, but also understand the specifics of working with different countries. Designers need to understand that, in different cultures, colors and symbols can be perceived differently. Developers need to know how to configure the website so that it switches easily between languages. Translators need not just to know the languages, but also to understand the field you’re in.
Normally, several groups of people contribute to the website localization process:
- Programmers, who are responsible for the technical side.
- Project managers, who ensure everything goes to plan.
- Copywriters, marketing experts, and translators, who work on the texts.
- Quality assurance experts, who make sure that everything is working properly.
Next, you need to decide how you are going to work. You can create your website in one language first, then translate it. But it’s better to do everything at once: develop your website and translate it at the same time. That way, you can launch your site in new languages more quickly and avoid all sorts of problems.
5. Translate the pages of your website
When the design of your website is ready, and all the technical aspects have been configured, then you can start translating the pages. There are three main ways of doing this:
- Machine translation: when the text is translated by a computer program. This is fast and cheap, but the quality will probably not be very high.
- Human translation: when the text is translated by a professional translator who knows both languages and understand the subject of your website. This type of translation is usually of higher quality, but it takes more time and costs more.
- AI-assisted translation: this is a new method whereby a smart program doesn’t just translate the words but also tries to understand the meaning and the context. It operates by your style rules and uses your glossary of special terms to make the translation more accurate.
Each of these ways is good in different situations.
Machine translation works for simple phrases that repeat regularly on your website. For example, buttons like “Register” or “Enter”.
But if you have complex text, like the description of a unique product or a humorous article, you should really entrust it to a human translator. They will be able to convey not just the meaning but also the mood of the text—for now, that remains beyond the capabilities of AI.
Human translation is worth using when you are dealing with important information, such as the website’s terms of use or descriptions of medical services. In these cases, every detail is important, and mistakes can cost you dearly.
It’s best to use a combination of different methods. For example, first make a rough translation using a machine or AI, then hand it to a human to edit. That way, you can save time and money, but still get a good-quality result.
6. Check the quality of your localization
When the translation of your website is ready, you need to perform testing. This is what you need to check:
- Is the text easy to read? Are any sentences too long or hard to understand?
- Is the translation accurate? Are there any errors in terminology, grammar, or punctuation?
- Is the text suitable for the target country? Should some jokes or examples be changed for something more relevant?
- Is the concept of your brand properly conveyed? Does it sound the way it does in the original language?
- Are the pictures and videos translated? Will they be understood by people in the new country?
- Do all the links work? Do they link to the right pages?
- Do the interactive forms work properly?
- Do pages have the right tags for search engines to understand which language they are in?
- Is the right currency displayed? Can you pay for goods with a payment method that’s convenient for that country?
- Does the site load quickly in different countries?
- Is the site easy to use overall?
Only once you’ve checked all that can you launch your site in the new country.
7. Use the right software
The right tools can make the work much easier and ensure it’s of much higher quality:
- Translation management system: helps to organize the workload and keep track of what’s already been done and what still needs to be translated.
- Continuous translation platform: allows you to translate your website as it is being developed.
- Integration tools: allow you to link the translation platform with the CMS the site works on. This is needed to ensure everything works smoothly and automatically.
- Translation memory and glossary: help to speed up the translation process. They store the translations and terms that have already been used.
- QA tools: are used to evaluate the quality of translations as well as identify errors and inconsistencies.
- Contextual translation tools: these show the translator where and how the text will be used. They help to make the translation more accurate and suitable.
If you don’t know where to begin, then you can always seek help from professionals. At Inlingo Studio, we have over 12 years of experience helping companies get closer to their customers all over the world. We localize content into more than 45 languages. Write to us, and we will help you localize your website for different countries.