If you’re looking to go global, ensuring that your company has an online presence is probably going to be top of your to-do list. And to do that, you’re surely going to need website translation services! Although you might imagine that everyone around the world is happy doing business/shopping online in English, that’s not quite the case. 56.2% of consumers stated that being able to obtain information in their local language is more important than price, which means that translations can really help your international expansion to pay off.
How to handle website translation services
When deciding what languages to translate your website into, it’s important to make an informed decision. Perhaps you have a vision of where you want to expand into, but even if you don’t, there are a number of different ways to determine which countries/regions might be a good choice, for example:
- Talk to your current clients/customers and see whether they think having materials in their native language would encourage them to buy more. You could also find out whether they think website localisation will help make your company more accessible in their home country.
- Ask your marketing department to take a look at analytics. There may be some regions you receive a lot of visitors from. There may also be some countries with a high basket abandonment rate, for example, which could be down to a lack of localisation.
- Speak to your sales department and see whether there are any regions they can identify for you.
Put together a plan
Next, put an appropriate plan in place. A website translation services partner can come in really handy here. You need to decide:
- Do you want all of your content to be translated? If not, which parts do you want to leave out, and will this affect your clients’ user experience?
- How are you going to make your website multilingual? Are you going to use a plugin or have separate websites for each locale?
- Are you going to do the manual work yourself, or would you prefer your website translation services provider to extract the content for you?
Once you’ve made a decision, it’s time to get down to work!
Getting started on your website translation services
Now you’re good to go, it’s time to get translating! Make sure you use a provider with native speakers specialised in marketing texts. As in English, if you use a technical person to write your texts, they might sound a bit forced and lack that little sparkle that will entice people to buy.
As the translators will be writing on your behalf, it’s important to be ready to help them. Prepare some reference materials and glossaries so that they fully catch the content and can convey it as accurately as possible.
Also, be aware that your content may vary from language to language. Certain languages are longer than others and so need to be adjusted to fit into text boxes, for example. Moreover, some metaphors, etc. may need adapting to be culturally relevant.
Final thoughts
While this may sound like a lot of work at first, getting your website localised can be a really rewarding process. If you’d like to explore how website translation services can help you, how about getting in touch with us? We’d be glad to help.