DOI : 10.17577/
In today’s globalized world, where you can find everything online, it’s typical for companies to operate in several countries and regions. This creates a growing need to understand each other better, not only linguistically but also culturally.
Research conducted by CSA shows that if people are unable to understand the language of a product website, they won’t make a purchase. Therefore, it’s crucial to localize the website, i.e. adapt it to the local language and culture of customers in a target market.
Website localization essentially means customizing your website so that you can reach a local market segment or audience in their native language. This may involve translating the site’s content into another language and adapting the site to better match the local culture. Localizing their website can also help companies serve their existing customers in other countries by providing a website that’s easily accessible and easy to understand.
In this article, we’ll examine the importance of website localization and look at the most important factors which will ensure that your target audience is interacting with your localized website successfully.
Use localization tools
Localization can be tricky so before we dive into this article, we want to stress the importance of using the right localization tools when addressing a new foreign audience. To make your content, web design, and messages familiar to international potential consumers, you must consider adding cultural idioms and nuances and adjust certain seemingly insignificant details for the new market.
A solid localization strategy includes all tools that ensure that your product fits in well with different cultures and leaves a good first impression. Reliable localization software will help you serve a wider audience, scale your translation process, improve your user experience, adjust your product for the global market, and ultimately boost company sales.
Create quality content
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when localizing your website. The first thing you must consider is how you localize your content to successfully communicate the values of your brand.
You should translate all textual content to ensure that the content on the web page is linguistically correct and culturally appropriate. Consider word choice, grammar, punctuation, and tonality so that the language used appeals to the target audience and reflects their culture and society.
Localizing your website isn’t just about translating content. It also requires you to adapt it to different languages and cultures. Customize your content for everyone, and change any images so they look appealing and match the native demographics. Your company or product may unknowingly convey negative connotations that may annoy or even offend visitors. Images must therefore be carefully reviewed and perhaps adjusted to reflect the company and its message positively.
Stay aware of cultural differences and write locally relevant content that is engaging and useful for all those who are visiting your website. By maintaining high-quality content, your website will gain credibility and local potential customers will recognize your professionalism.
International SEO
Organic traffic is the biggest source of traffic for most successful online businesses. Therefore, it’s important to have an efficient SEO strategy in place.
By now, everyone knows that in order to succeed, businesses must optimize their websites for both search engines and customers. It requires a proper understanding of the customer and, therefore, it’s best that you create the content in the customer’s native language.
International SEO focuses on optimizing content for different languages for search engines. With a sound strategy, visitors from different countries will be able to find your website for their market in their native language.
Keep in mind that your international SEO strategy must consider the linguistic and technical requirements needed to show the right pages of your website in search results in pages to the target audience in the relevant market.
Cultural sensitivity
The devil’s in the detail and if you want your brand to stand out from the crowd and remain competitive, you must apply cultural sensitivity to your wider marketing strategy.
Cultural sensitivity is the awareness and ability to understand the cultural factors that may affect how you run your business, promote your brand to potential customers, and build relationships. This involves a lot more than just idioms or slang terms. You should adjust many things when creating culturally sensitive content. For instance, you might have to completely change your marketing strategy or specifically tailor your content to the cultural demands of the particular market.
When tackling these details, try to consult native speakers of your target market as they’re best equipped to navigate the unclear waters of cultural adaptation.
Website localization helping you on the road to success
Entering the worldwide market can be challenging. So, if you want to ensure effective marketing of your product in new territories, leverage your brand against foreign competitors, and foster brand loyalty with local customers, then you should localize your website effectively with the help of the above-mentioned tips.