Everything You Should Know about Translating and Localising Your Website
Localising a website is a smart strategy to increase the traffic from international users. Consumers are more likely to trust and engage with websites available in their native language. So, as a business, which languages should you localise your website into?
Around 1.3 billion people speak English, many of them as a second language, but that still represents only around 17% of the world’s population. For many international users, English isn’t their preferred language, so they’re more likely to engage with content presented in their native language.
CSA Research shows that the majority of website users strongly prefer viewing websites in their native language. This, consequently, directly influences their purchasing habits.
Choosing languages based on your intended audience’s preferences would be best while localising your website. This post will discuss everything you should know to make your content more accessible. So, let’s get started.
Localising vs Translating a website
Before deciding which languages to go for, it’s essential to understand the difference between translating and localising a website.
A website translation simply means translating website content from one language into another for a target audience. If you have developed your website in English, as most people do, you might automatically integrate a website translation plug-in to translate the text into a user’s language.
However, it’s important to note that these plug-ins can be unreliable due to inaccuracies. Although machine translation can be useful for basic understanding, professional human translation or machine translation with human post-editing is usually recommended for marketing, legal and customer-facing content. This is why it is strongly recommended to choose established professional translation services.
Website localisation goes beyond translating the text. It also involves adapting elements such as:
- Currency
- Time
- Calendar
- Measurements
We can conclude that translating is a part of localisation. And although translation is vital and crucial to helping you attract more clients to your website, localisation takes it one step further.
EXPERT’S TIP: Are financial translations really key within a global business environment? Find out in our expert’s latest article!
4 Factors to Consider When Localising Your Website
Let’s take a look at some factors to consider while localising your website.
1. Website Analytics
Many website development platforms and content management systems (CMS) include built-in analytics tools that help monitor metrics such as:
- Traffic (organic and paid)
- Top landing pages
- Conversion rate by country
- Backlinks
- Bounce rate
- Errors
- Security
You can use this analytics tool to monitor the incoming traffic to your website. You can also use this tool to have a detailed report to showcase the location of your website’s visitors.
If you have translated your website into different languages, the analytics tool can also provide insight into which languages users browse your website. For example, “Data of location” and “Preferred language” can help you decide which languages you should choose to localise your website.
You can also go for the following third-party website analytics tools if you don’t want to use the developer’s built-in platform.
2. Competitors’ Website
You can visit your competitor’s website and observe how they have localised their online presence. That can give you an overview of which language to choose for website localisation.
If you keep learning from your competitors, you will stay one step ahead and attract more customers.
However, many competitors hide their technical features, such as translation plug-ins, because doing so would disclose their business expansion plans. So, if you see your competitor has localised their website into a rare language, your business can also have a growth opportunity by doing the same.
You should also compare factors such as international SEO visibility, the languages they support, country-specific content, and the markets they appear to target. Combined with your own analytics and customer enquiries, this can help you decide whether expanding into a particular market is worthwhile.
3. Target Audience
Understanding your target audience should always be the first step when planning your website localisation strategy. You should ideally know the following things about your audience:
- Language
- Location
- Age
When you know the native language, which your target audiences prefer when surfing the internet, you can easily localise your website through a professional translation service provider.
You must also focus on your target audience in terms of buying power. This factor determines the market size in a particular region because the more customers spend to buy a product, the more business is likely to grow.
For example, if you sell high-end winter clothes, you should observe the purchasing behaviour of these products worldwide. Unfortunately, many customers who might be interested in winter clothing do not understand English. However, they may never discover your products if your website isn’t available in a language they understand.
Since that particular audience can easily convert into customers, we suggest you localise your website according to their native language preference.
4. Website Design
Website design or UI/UX comes in parallel with localisation. You must ensure a competent team is ready to handle design modifications.
Since translating your website allows international users to navigate your content more easily, it’s important to consider how different languages affect your design. Some languages require significantly more space than English, while others, such as Arabic, are read from right to left. These differences can affect menus, buttons, navigation and page layouts, so your website should be flexible enough to accommodate them.
- Context
- Design
- Character limits
Your translation service provider is responsible for keeping the certified translation readable in your chosen target language without changing the context and design. However, the whole website design might suffer if the copy length exceeds the limit or fails to reach the minimum character limit, for example.
Localisation also involves adapting your website’s design to your target audience’s cultural preferences. Colours, imagery, symbols and even page layouts can carry different meanings across cultures, so it’s worth considering how your website will be perceived in each market. Making these thoughtful adjustments can help your website feel more familiar and appealing to local users while creating a better overall experience..
Languages to consider for your Website Localisation
Lastly, check which languages are most common for website localisation. That’s a general determinant of whether you should localise your website to a particular language or not. Here are a few languages you should consider localising your website into:
● Spanish
● French
● German
● Arabic
● Simplified Chinese
These languages cover a vast area of the world and can give you global business exposure.
You can expand the scope of your target audience by localising your website in the top languages listed above. Your brand can get a diverse clientele by translating your website into a potential audience’s preferred language other than English.
One great advantage is that you might be less likely to get negative reviews from international customers just because your website doesn’t rely on unreliable translation apps to translate for them.
EXPERT’S TIP: Learn the differences between certified and notarised translations in our in-depth guide here!
Conclusion
Translating a website into a user-preferred language is beneficial for SEO ranking, but that’s not enough. You should localise your website into other lucrative languages considering your target audience.
Your potential website visitors will become drawn to your business when you localise your website. That also helps your website gain more organic traffic from several regions as well as come across as credible.
Partnering with the right professional translation service to localise your website will give you global business exposure.
About TS24
Translation Services 24 (TS24) is a professional London translation agency offering expert services in over 200 languages. We work with clients in all corporate and public industries and specialise in sector-specific linguistic solutions. With over a decade of industry experience, 15+ million words translated every year, and 100,000+ projects completed, TS24 is a leading provider of expert translation and interpretation services and an officially certified member of the ATC. Contact TS24 here.
Follow Translation Services 24 on Social Media
