Why Website Translation is Essential (1st of 4 articles)
Having a successful business and an effective website is a great achievement, and it is one that can be enhanced through professional translation to reach customers worldwide. You may be wondering:
Is it worth investing in a multilingual website?
For starters, did you know that 3 out of 4 people using the internet don’t speak English?
That’s 75% of worldwide internet consumers – and potential customers – who are unable to fully engage with a website written only in English. In an era of ever-increasing online shopping, as well as easier and more affordable shipping options, there has never been a better time to reach out to the international market.
Having a great product or high-quality service won’t guarantee customers will buy from you, however. In their extensive report Can’t Read, Won’t Buy, international market researchers surveyed consumers across 10 major economy, non-Anglophone countries and found that:
60% of consumers rarely or never make purchases on English-only websites
56% spend most of their time on non-English websites or boycott them entirely
75% preferred to purchase products in their own language
72.4% were more likely to make purchases from websites in their own language
Critically, there are significant socio-cultural differences across this diverse, global pool of consumers. Connecting with them requires both speaking their language and understanding their culture. A professional translator can handle both the linguistic requirements of translating your website as well as ensuring it is culturally relevant, appropriate, and fully optimized. This process is called localization, which means: adaptating a product or service to meet the needs (or expecations) of a language, culture, or specific population. The goal of localizing content is that the reader not realize what they are engaging with was created for and adapted from an entirely different market audience. The importance of localization has been known to researchers, who have concluded that localization “improves customer experience and increases engagement,” and have aptly described it as a “rigorously planned and executed business strategy for any company looking to grow internationally.”[1]
To summarize: consumers have a natural bias towards their mother-tongue, and translation and localization are critical to effectively reaching the international, online market. Stay tuned for articles 2-4 in this series all about website translation. For a free consultation about translation, localization, or any other language needs, please explore my website or send me an email: