7 Things You Need to Keep in Mind when Localizing a Website

One of the best ways to engage with your consumers is to create an easy-to-use, appealing website. Quite often, you spend a lot of time thinking about how to deliver your message to a global audience when your website has users from all over the world.  It's easy for your message to get lost in translation or for the website's backend design to differ from country to country.
Consumers are more inclined to buy products and services if product information is available in their native language, according to 75% of respondents. Moreover, 87% of buyers who cannot speak or read English will not consider buying from an English-language website.
Localizing your website to fit effortlessly with the target culture, language, and environment is always a good idea, whether a sales portal or a social networking site. When you localize your website, you change every part of it to match your target markets, from customer-friendly payment procedures to a style that allows for many languages as well as the use of pictures that correctly reflect the market. The process of localization entails more than just translation.

Localization Strategy

Determine your localization plan before you  begin the website localization process. This refers to your entire strategy for adapting your services, message, and content to new nations and markets while staying true to your brand, as well as how you'll track your progress. This means conducting market research to identify which languages you wish to localize. You'll need to figure out who your target audiences are, as well as take into account diverse languages, cultures, and social conventions. This is because expanding your global presence entails more than just translating words; it's all about how you present information and whether or not potential clients would buy your goods in international marketplaces as a result of this. Understand the cultures, shopping patterns, and payment methods of the markets and nations of your target audience. Decide on your brand's tone, voice, and mobile vs. desktop designs, and consider translating into local languages. From designers to engineers, figure out who on your team will be in charge of localization.

Language

Users like to read and engage with websites that appear to be written in their native tongue. According to the Harvard Business Review, three-quarters of customers prefer to spend most of their time on websites in their native language. More than half find that reading in their native language is more important than the product prices. The most effective way to keep users coming back to your website is to localize the language.

There are a few options for localizing the language of your website. Providing a toggle bar where visitors may switch to their chosen language is a more classic approach, but these might be challenging to locate and drive people away from the site. Alternatively, you might identify a user's browser language and save their preferences in a cookie or local HTML storage. However, certain countries demand that you warn users if data is being stored. If you use this technique, make sure someone on your translation team is familiar with the country's data regulations!
The most frequent  ̶  and certainly the simplest  ̶  method of localizing a website's language is to include it from the start. You may avoid the hassle of managing a family of separate websites by creating a website that incorporates a translation portal and a website developer. Users worldwide can see a version of your website in their native language without the need for cookies or for manually selecting a translated version of the site. Don't forget to translate any buttons, links, or instructions when localizing your website!

Fonts

Now that you've localized all of the text on your website, make sure it still reflects your company’s brand” depending on whether you want to emphasise the company’s style or company’s values. Choosing the correct font goes a long way toward making a website written in a native tongue. There are two primary considerations when localizing fonts: ensuring that the typeface is legible and appropriately spaced. Many typefaces, particularly custom-designed fonts, may not convert well into other nations' codes and might result in incorrect characters. It can be challenging to find a font that suits your style across websites, given the difficulties of switching between Latin typefaces and Asian ideograms on websites, plus the fact that many Asian websites employ a blend of Asian and Latin types. Google and Adobe have created typefaces like Noto Sans that will read wonderfully to people worldwide to help alleviate this problem. Keep in mind that while translating from English, your word length may change drastically. It's critical to plan for adequate space on a website to allow for longer or shorter localizations. Font selection is equally important in this case. For example, if you choose a wide font, the space may look excellent in English but feel tight when translated to German. On the other hand, Chinese characters are more intricate and require a greater amount of room to read. When you design a website with your target nation in mind, you'll be able to give your typefaces the space they require.

International SEO and Information

If you want your brand to be known and your website to be readily found by your customers, you must improve your online presence by making your website relevant to the target audience. 
You'll need to figure out what your target audience searches for online and utilize those words or phrases as keywords on your site.  This way, any time a relevant search is conducted, search engines will pick it up. Now that your website is ready for people worldwide, you must ensure that they can discover it. This is where a solid multilingual SEO strategy comes into play, and multilingual SEO procedures may quickly become quite complex. To make it easier for your end-users to locate your website, you should employ the country's native keywords and search technology. Not every country, for example, is as reliant on Google as the United States. In China, Japan, and Korea, Google has stiff competition. Therefore, any optimization should also apply to other important search engines such as Baidu, Yahoo Japan, and Naver. Then there are the tools for optimizing your website's backend code and site mapping. To interact with search engines and identify the target nations for your website, you may utilize hreflang attributes, localized URL directories, and ccTLD (country code top-level domain). Finally, you'll need to establish a network of high-quality inbound connections from credible websites in your target nation. A little research into media, opinion leaders, and high-traffic websites will bring you to the appropriate sites. Users will trust you more if you have a robust network of inbound links pointing to your site. Investing in multilingual SEO techniques, just like you would for domestic marketing, is an essential component of developing a viable localized website.

Addresses and phone numbers do not cross borders as effectively as URLs and email addresses. Check all of the contact information on your website to ensure that consumers are directed to the correct local office if one exists. If you're providing foreign contact information, be sure to include a brief explanation of international calling and mailing procedures. Thinking from the perspective of your target audience will help them trust you.

Translation

The next step after internationalizing your website is translation. Human translation can be a reliable, yet rather long-winded process. Therefore, this stage should be completed with the assistance of a translation management system (TMS). A software program that automates as much of the translation process as possible is quite feasible. For instance, you might reuse prior translations for words or sentences you've already translated. A competent translation service can assist you in selecting, installing, and maintaining the TMS and translation memory database configuration that is best for your company. For example, suppose you have hundreds of product descriptions submitted every day in several languages. In that case, you'll need a Translation Management System that interacts with your Content Management System and sends product descriptions to be machine-translated before being reviewed by humans. As far as possible, employ tools to allow translators to work directly with the site's content. Allowing translators to collaborate directly with programmers will result in a more fluid and collaborative translation process.

When it comes to translation, businesses must exercise caution. You need 'TEP,' which stands for 'translation, editing, and proofreading.' This type of website translation isn't exclusive to websites, but it does impact the quality of the translation you'll receive. When comparing translation quotes, it's critical to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Translation, editing, and proofreading should all be included in the scope of work.

Localizing Multimedia

After you've taken care of your words, don't forget about your images. As important as words are, multimedia content and audiovisual translation is arguably even more important. Multimedia content needs to be translated and localized as it is what connects the audience most. If you use automated translation technology, any text in pictures, subtitles, or embedded text will not be automatically localized. Fortunately, you can avoid this issue by removing any text from your photos or saving them as SVG files, which your localization team can quickly translate. Even if you've successfully translated your pictures and associated content, double-check that the image is culturally acceptable and relevant. In one nation, a fashionable photo or professional scenario may be good, but in another, it may offend. Remember to translate and localize all multimedia components, including videos and infographics, in addition to all website content. Although video translation is a time-consuming procedure, it is worthwhile: Customers prefer to learn about a product or service via a video 72 per cent of the time. Multimedia is a very effective mode of communication.  Due to its immersive characteristics, it reaches individuals on a far deeper level than words. As a result, if you can localize this material, you'll be able to forge a far stronger relationship with your consumers.

Measure Website Localization

After that, it's time to test and iterate. This means checking for usability, market-friendliness (things like color, layout, and word choice), and any linguistic or typographical mistakes in a specific target market. Fortunately, there is some software which makes the work easy for you. Create a collection of quantifiable and comparative success measures — key performance indicators (KPIs) — that indicate how effectively a project or organization is accomplishing its business goals. You may wish to calculate sales growth in new locations, other markets' SEO keywords, share of the market, the expense of translation, other markets' pageviews, rates of conversion, other languages' social media involvement and cases of customer service.

The global economy is becoming more interconnected by the day. Businesses and customers can now engage across much greater distances than in the past. So, it's no surprise that when your internet business grows in your home market, acquiring customers from other countries will eventually become a component of your next growth plan. Word-for-word translations will not suffice if you're launching a product or service in another language. For starters, unless you're a professional translator and native speaker of the target language, recreating the delicate subtleties of your original language, such as tone of voice, would be exceedingly tricky. If you get these details incorrect, you risk confusing or alienating your consumers. As a result, your website should not just be translated, but also localized to suit the linguistic and cultural requirements of the target audience. While some companies hire employees to assist them in localizing their websites, the majority choose to work with a reputable language service provider (LSP) that provides a variety of language services and has a large pool of trained linguists who specialize in their industry.
One of the most frequent inquiries in the localization industry is, "Can you translate my website?" Typically, the answer is yes, but to do so efficiently and obtain the most exemplary service possible, localization is also required.
Localizing your website to appeal to an international audience takes more than just pasting your HTML into Google Translate. Thorough website localization will guarantee that your message and branding are consistent across many languages and cultures and that you make the desired impact on diverse audiences worldwide.

Want to get your website localized for a region-specific audience? We at Lingual Consultancy provide solutions to every type of language translation to help you cross the language barrier and reach the global audience effectively. 
For any website localization requirement/queries, drop an e-mail at [email protected]