E-ging Solutions is a world-leading translation company with specialties in website translation.

There are currently around 3 billion internet users worldwide (40% of the world’s population). Statistics from the Common Sense Advisory show that37% of online users spend more time on sites in their own languagethan they do on just English language sites, while 19% avoid English-language URLs altogether.

It may be obvious to state, but there are large pockets of customers using the internet who need to be communicated with in their own language. Your company website is no longer just a need-to-have shop window to present your offer and values, it is the first tool of communication with the wider world, and your competitors are already waking to this fact.

Content translation has been the most common means of making a website multilingual, however it is limited, and website localisation goes one step further, by altering as many features of the website as necessary to conform to the needs and cultural expectations of the target audience.

The aim is to produce a website that looks like it has been specifically designed for a particular target locale.

Here is Eging Solutions and Interpreting’s ten step guide to localising your website in order to help grow your business:

1. Analyse your target market

Before you set off on the localisation journey, plan your route first. In this case it means doing your homework. Market analysis should begin by understanding the answers to the following questions:

 What geographic markets are you targeting?
 Who is your target customer?
 What languages do they speak?
 What are the consumer habits in the regions you are targeting?
 What market opportunities exist for which your company has a product or solution?

Identifying and understanding the characteristics and needs of your market segments will help you to connect with your potential customers.

2. Keyword and SEO planning

A lot of companies tend to leave multilingual SEO campaigns until after they have localised their website, which often requires more effort and is less effective than devising your SEO localisation plan up-front. This is where a strong planning process bears fruit.

You may be surprised to hear that Google is not the number one search engine in all countries…

For each identified market, you need to build a list of relevant keywords. This must be done by a native speaker with knowledge of SEO, who understands the target market and their search habits, as very often, a direct translation of an English keyword will not be the best keyword to use in your target language. It would also be useful to seek advice from translation teams within the target locale, as they will be able to recommend search-engines that are frequently used in that specific country. You may be surprised to hear that Google is not the number one search engine in all countries…

A local domain name (.ru, .nl, .br, .ae) can also prove to be very effective for local search engine results, more so than global domains.

The right keywords and domain set-up can help you to effectively connect, engage and interact with your target audience.

 3. Select the site structure

If your international marketing is country-specific, then your site should be structured first by location and then by language. If you plan to market to all speakers of a particular language irrespective of location, then you may only need to incorporate language translations into your site architecture.

It is important to decide on how you want to make your local sites available – either through using top level domains (e.g. site.fr), sub-domains (e.g. fr.site.com), or sub-folders (e.g.site.com/fr). There are advantages and pitfalls for each option, and your final decision will depend on the factors that affect your business. Look out for our up-coming blog on website domain strategy.

Landing pages are more often than not the most visited pages on your website. It is important then to ensure that all content on these pages are relevant to your target in the local market.

4. Choose the content

The content you publish for your international audience should be directed by the results of your early planning, market analysis and keyword research. Much of the content will be similar to that which you provide for your English-language visitors. However, a few new content pages will most likely be required based upon specific market needs.

It is essential to ensure that all content selected for translation isculturally correct, as you will achieve maximum success in your target markets if you can grasp the locale-specific cultural values. We can help you with this process and it is a part of our package of website localisation services.

5. Let the professionals translate the content

If you are serious about marketing to an international audience, employing a professional translation provider to localise your web content is essential. Although using free translation services might be quick, they can often return text that is incorrect to a native reader, as they do not translate the nuances that local languages take on.

Getting the translation right, first time, is going to save you a lot of time, money and resources, and will ensure that you make a good impression when your multilingual site is visited for the first time.

6. Localise the content and design in parallel

In addition to language translation, be aware of the effect of cultural differences on web design. If possible, design your website so that the pages can be scaled based on dynamic content.

In the Russian language, for example, content is typically 60% longer than the English language, while content in the Thai language tends to be 50% shorter than the English equivalent.

And of course, these days, websites are not only accessed by desktop computers, but also by mobile and tablet platforms. Make sure that this is taken into account when setting up new languages and locales in your websiteContent Management System (CMS). Website containers and design templates should allow for text expansion, but find this out at the outset, to avoid technical difficulties in your project.

Text expansion is not the only thing to consider with your website templates. Certain designs, colours, and writing styles work better in different countries. Colours for example can have different meanings in different countries, so it’s not only words that you could be offending people with!

It is also beneficial to localise location and language icons on your website. Visitors to your site will benefit from being able to quickly select their geographical location and which language they wish to view your pages in.

Consider the multimedia options on your website too – do images and videos require localisation? Will subtitling be enough, or should each locale have a different video? The cultural appropriateness of images and videos should be reviewed and adjusted, or even replaced as required.

Make sure that you take into account the ways that different countries would want to pay for their purchases too. The wrong options at the check-out could lose you a sale.