There are so many websites in existence nowadays that searching the web for products and services has become a necessity to most daily. But, with around 1.74 billion websites on the net, that’s a lot of potential competition for your business to compete with.
This guide will provide a brief introduction to website localization and the top tips to help localize your business online.
What is website localization?
Website localization is all about transforming a site to adapt to a specific audience. This is typical to those within a specific area where the business is based, but different from other parts of the world where the business may serve.
This localization involves several changes to imagery, colors, units of measurement, grammar changes, and more to suit the region or location in particular.
Top tips to localize your business online
By incorporating website localization into your online strategy, you personalize the experience to make it geographically and culturally relevant to the user in question. As a result, it makes the site more attractive and user-friendly. Let’s look at how to do that successfully.
Identify who and where you’re selling to
First and foremost, it’s important to identify who and where you’re selling to as a business. Some businesses may only sell to those within their own country – whereas others may have a market beyond their geographical location.
Identifying these markets is important to do – not only for website localization but for your business in general. Ideally, you don’t want to miss out on customers available overseas by not marketing or offering your products/services to them.
Understand the logistics of localizing in certain areas
Logistical challenges exist wherever you’re selling in the world – not all countries are going to be using the same software, tools, or programs to run their operations. So you must know the dimensions of this project. Planning is necessary to get the most out of your website localization.
Internationalize your website
There are several ways to internationalize your website. This includes preparing your CMS to have all the relevant plugins that support different languages. Using fewer images is going to help keep the website running seamlessly – and make it easier to localize the content.
Translate content
To internationalize your website, do so with languages. Identify what languages your website needs to convert to. You’ll want to get the help of translators to translate your content properly so as not to cause any offense.
Utilize SEO
Make your website easy to load and leverage a responsive web design that’s optimized for all devices. This will help improve the user experience. Make use of alt text and image descriptions and keep it simple so it’s easily translatable.
Website localization is one way you can improve the engagement, traffic levels, and conversions of your website. However, it’s not something that every business has done yet – or is even aware of how to do.
