It’s a statistic we often repeat on this blog, but the fact is that online customers are four times more likely to buy from a website in their own language, so companies who have multilingual websites soon reap the rewards of the time and resource investment they make in website localisation.

Here’s how localisation of even just a few pages can power your export sales to new heights.

While the internet is a boon to international trade, many companies in English-speaking countries are failing to be forward-thinking by communicating internationally.

Localising websites entails adapting products and materials for a particular market and includes - but is not limited to - translating text into the markets’ relevant languages.

A fully localised website shows shows appreciation and respect towards a foreign culture and conveys that you are interested in your potential customers and their respective cultures. It likewise takes into account conventions and preferences specific to each country such as currencies, measurements and cultural differences.

The benefits of localisation are enormous and include penetrating overseas markets you most want to succeed in, increasing market share - and muscling out the competition. It also ensures you can be found in the most popular search engines in each specified market, country or language.

With English accounting for less than 30% of website content, closely followed by Chinese with 22.6% with ‘other languages’ making up 17.8% - the opportunities for growing your business via localisation are unprecedented.

Reaching out to customers in multiple languages brings both short and long term ‘wins’.  In addition to the immediate boost to sales, a multilingual website is excellent for testing new markets and opening new doors to international trade.

Summary of key tactics to achieve success

Localise your website - just a few pages will demonstrate serious intentions and improve your search engine ranking in the country you are targeting.

Always use a professional translation service - avoid being tempted to use a free machine translation which is not geared for translating marketing copy which has been carefully crafted to stimulate interest and sell to readers.

Focus on core products and services - launching a selection of your bestselling products or services increases your chances of success in a new market.

Conduct multilingual keyword research - pinning down what customers are actually searching for and adapting your website and online advertising accordingly is critical to ensure your site is the one they browse and then buy from.

Measure results - As you would with your UK site. Visitor statistics are invaluable in evaluating your return on investment and deciding where to concentrate further resources.

Are you planning to take advantage of international opportunities by localising your website? Then let’s talk - email sales[at]web-translations[dot]co[dot]uk or call +44 (0) 113 8150460.

Live Translation is now integrated with popular Wordpress plugin qtranslate. qtranslate is a multilingual content management plugin for Wordpress that allows you to manage multilingual versions of your blog and facilitates the translation process.

With the combination of Live Translation and qtranslate you can now choose to have your blog posts professionally translated in a matter of hours.

qtranslate comes with several key languages already configured, and is really user-friendly, making it the plugin of choice for many international bloggers.

For more information, contact sales[at]web-translations.co.uk.

Translation is a complex service that often doesn’t quite get the recognition it deserves. Many people who buy translation may never have lived in another country and so have no frame of reference for the level of skill required to complete a good translation.

Consequently many fall into the trap of buying translation as a commodity, as if buying rice or cotton. But translation is a service, and like all services, it is performed by people so education, skill and time all contribute to delivering the final ‘product’ (for want of a better expression).

While it’s logical that you would want a service to be performed by the best people, it’s actually quite alien to most of us to buy a service from a) someone you don’t know b) aren’t ever likely to meet and c) where you as a buyer do not actually consume or experience the service first-hand.

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We’re going to take you step-by-step through a localisation project to explain how it’s done. The example we’ve chosen is the multilingual site we did for Loc8tor.

Loc8tor.com is an ecommerce site where customers can buy Loc8tor devices to help them keep track of keys, mobile phones, pets and all sorts of other belongings. This is an ideal showcase for the different elements involved in the professional localisation of a website.

With any website, the first step is to get the content into a format that translators can easily work with.

There are two main ways of translating content from a CMS - the translators can work directly into the system and input translations as they go along, or an export can be obtained from the system - usually either XML or Excel format.

Translation is not always done in a linear fashion - starting at the beginning and finishing at the end - a translator needs to be able to skip parts and come back to them later, raise queries if something is unclear etc. When it comes to proofreading the translation, a file will usually be easier to work on and edit than the content within the CMS. With this in mind, an exported file is often the best method.

So, the Project Manager will deliver the file to the translators, or give them access to the CMS as necessary. Once the translation is complete, the proofreaders do their part. Any images or other parts of the website not already part of the CMS/export file would be localised at this stage too - a professional localisation includes everything, not just the obvious text components of the website.

If an export file has been used, then this needs to be imported back into the CMS. This is usually done by the client’s web team, but sometimes we are given an access login to the system and can upload it ourselves.

The published sites we localised for Loc8tor can be found at www.loc8tor.eu, www.loc8tor.fr and www.loc8tor.es.

With some projects, this is where our involvement ends, but there are other stages that are recommended in order for the localised website to be a success:

Usability testing - this is especially important for eCommerce websites or any others where transactions take place. The localised site is tested from the user’s point of view to make sure all functions work correctly, links lead to the pages they should, etc.

Multilingual SEO & eMarketing - just because you’ve invested in localising your site doesn’t mean that customers in that particular country know it is there! Submitting your site to local search engines, building some inbound links and promoting the new website online will all help get more traffic, and these initial measures are included as standard in our Strategic Approach to Localisation packages.

Managing updates - it’s important that you consider how updates to the website will be managed. Many CMSs can be configured to send updates for translation, which minimises the delay in keeping the multilingual site current.

Keyword Research - Knowing the most popular search terms for your product or service is critical. We help to capture maximum exposure by identifying not just your keywords, but also complementary keywords and competitive keywords to help you optimise your website, and maximize the effectiveness of your multilingual Pay Per Click campaigns.

Pay-Per-Click - ideal for giving your web traffic a boost, for promotions, sales and to announce new content. In most industries it will be expensive to stay at the top of results using PPC alone, but it should form part of your overall web strategy if you have sufficient budget.

A good localisation strategy will consider these additional elements of the process as well as simply translating the main body of text on a website.

If you have any questions about website localisation, or any comments about this article, please let us know.

We’re proud to announce that Web-Translations has become a member of the Association of Translation Companies.

As one of the oldest and most respected professional bodies in the translation industry, members of the ATC are carefully vetted before admission into membership, adhere to a strict code of professional conduct, are subject to the rulings of a professional ethics committee and carry full professional indemnity insurance cover to safeguard the interests of the translation purchaser.

Membership bestows upon Web-Translations some well-earned recognition of the excellent service we offer - it’s great to hear from an independent party how great a job we’re doing!