Why website localization

Content written in Arabic, for example, needs to be formatted to appear from right to left. A key step to attracting visitors your main goal, aside from the purchase itself is to assure that you have a good search engine optimization strategy. Customers in each new locale will be using different terms to search for your products. Having your content reflect these search trends will make it easier for your business to be found and help you move you towards your business goals.

On the other hand, a country may have a preference for certain search engines. And every search engine has its own way of ranking. Another important part of any website localization project is to take into account the technological possibilities of your potential clients. In some countries, the average internet connection is slow or unstable, which means that an image-heavy website with complex animations will be harder to access.

Loading speed can be shortened by the use of Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps, among other technologies. Adapting to local technological barriers through a lightweight webpage is something to pay attention to in the localization process.

What if your site has multimedia content such as instructional videos that need to be localized? Digital content localization should also be provided by your website localization service of choice.

Wrapping up, aside from adapting images and UI, the most challenging and important aspects of website localization usually are:.

Check out our website localization e-book and take a closer look at the website localization process and its impact on businesses like yours. Nothing shows why website localization is important like a real example of successful website translation and localization. Some could even call it outdated, with its usage of densely packed columns of texts, very small images, and bold combinations of images and color.

The website also features what many could refer to as accessibility and SEO errors. For instance, it puts a lot of text in images. These traits are common to Japanese websites. There are numberless cultural and technological reasons why Japanese websites look the way they do. An important factor is the lack of italics and capitalization in Japanese. No Japanese writing system has the same tools to provide emphasis to text that, for example, the Latin alphabet has.

That can explain the role of color in Japanese web design. Therefore, website content had to be cramped to fit a small screen.

The prevalence of outdated computers in many offices and the lack of availability of Japanese web fonts have also conditioned web design. But, aside from these very circumstantial factors, some academics have even found a possible connection between Japanese philosophy and web design trends. When it comes to web design trends and user preferences, it often feels like discussing what came first, the egg or the chicken. One could say that user preferences shape web design. Expanding businesses should honor this type of user preferences and work with them.

Japan is among the 5 largest markets for e-Commerce in the world. Through this program, Nestle makes the most out of the Japanese work culture and the sense of belonging that Japanese people tend to feel towards their workplace. Those pictures that do feature customer representations allude to being calm and at home not to being at work.

Cultural appropriateness is an important aspect of global communications. And, for digital campaigns, it should be combined with insight into internet usage trends in the target market. On the contrary, in order to succeed abroad, a company has to recognize local preferences and adapt to them. For example, having a fully localized social networking presence is as important as having a culturally appropriate version of your website or perfectly translated public space ads.

The cost of overlooking localization goes beyond the immediate loss of audience. If the poorly localized digital content is not just tone-deaf but offensive, it could be a PR disaster waiting to happen. We combine ISO-certified practices, with professionals who are native speakers of your target language, adept localization engineers, and cutting-edge website localization technology.

Localize your website with leading experts and guarantee optimal results within your budget and within your deadlines. Get a Quote Now. Rigorous testing should be undertaken to ensure this. Linguistic quality assurance is the QA process that applies to the language used on the localized website. It considers correct and natural phrasing, domain-specific terminology, suitability of the language in the localized content and more.

Look for a localization company that can demonstrate experience both of the language pairing that you need and of website translation and localization work related to your particular business sector. Grill the company on details of their experience and be sure to read plenty of reviews of them, including any on sites such as the Better Business Bureau.

Opt for a company with a project manager and ask for details of the other elements of human oversight that will form part of the localization process.

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The majority of people looking for online information about specific products and services were not native English speakers. All this traffic can increase your conversion rates considerably, if you manage to make non-English internet users trust you enough to buy. Website localization is a long term investment in your business, but it has a fairly fast ROI when done right.

The first step in localizing your website is to work with the right team who has the experience and resources to pull off a seamless website localization project for you.

But whether you go about website localization in-house, or you choose an agency for the job, the same steps will apply. Internationalization I18n is a letter long word, which may not give much away. This first step consists of a series of technical changes you must perform to make your website easy to translate into various languages. The good news is that you only have to apply internationalization once. All further changes to your website will be much easier once you have an internationalized page.

This is a job for programmers who know how website localization works and it mainly covers these major elements:. Analyze potential markets and pick those where you have higher chances to sell. Your current audience can give you valuable clues about where to start your website localization from.

Conduct specific research in the target market — define your buyer persona, evaluate competitors, consider cultural issues, taxes, local laws and financial predictions. Make a realistic plan and start with a limited number of countries first. Your goal is to reach as many customers as possible, but without spending all your cash! Website localization goes way beyond word-for-word translation. You need to adapt your content, to make it easy to read by locals.

Understand the local culture and try to fit in the best way possible.