Website localization is an intricate process that requires cultural understanding, market knowledge, and linguistic expertise. You must navigate the language barrier and localize your website’s content to expand your business beyond borders.
In this guide, we will discuss five website localization best practices to help you succeed in targeted foreign markets.Â
So, without further ado, let’s get started!
Invest In a Multilingual Website
The first website localization best practice is to invest in a multilingual website to reach global netizens. Starting small is a good initiative, but when you deal in the entertainment business, there are many territories that you can win over with localized content.
Yes, we understand there is always something more pressing on your to-do list, diverting your focus from expansion. However, delaying website localization will only cost you in the long run. Every day without it is a day of missed opportunities.Â
There are potential audiences out there that may love your content for some wholesome entertainment. However, the language barrier can get in the way, making them reluctant. People prefer engaging with websites in their native language.
Quick Tip: In a world, full of opportunities, deciding where to start and which country to target can be overwhelming. Here, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, go for the reverse-engineering. Identify your competitors, see where they have expanded, and try to target those markets first.
Be Ready for Global Expansion
If expansion is on the card for you immediately or later in the years, the second best practice for localizing your website is to choose a content management system (CMS).Â
For the unversed, CMS is a software application that enables you to create, modify, and manage content on a website without technical assistance. Simply put, you can build a website using a CMS without any formal training in coding.
Your CMS needs to offer ease of use and enable team collaboration. As your team grows, many team members will require access to it. Thus, while choosing your CMS, research its features, perform a comparative analysis, and go with the one that has an intuitive interface to help you customize, grant permissions alerts, etc.
Besides, it should enable you to add multiple languages to your website to facilitate localization.Â
Another thing to look for in a CMS is to make sure it has domain control based on extensible markup language (XML). It makes it easier to separate content from page elements and offers flexibility to create a multilingual website under the same or a different domain.
Quick Tip: It may seem a lot, but remember while selecting a CMS, ensure that its features can be tailored to suit your website’s back-end development and user experience. Besides, internationalization is a crucial step in website localization. Therefore, the more you prepare your content from the start, the easier it will become for you to localize.
Keyword Research for Targeted Market
Once you have finalized your target markets, and before starting the localization process, perform a thorough keyword research, which is another best practice for localizing your website. It is a crucial step for ensuring success in your targeted markets because it provides insight into the terms your targeted audiences use while searching on the web.Â
Once you start doing the research, you will be shocked at how the preferences and behaviors of people vary from region to region.
Based on your research, create a list of terms and phrases you want to use in your website’s localized content to increase your chances of appearing in the search results. This multilingual search engine optimization (SEO) will help you rank higher on the results page, leading to more organic traffic to your website that you can convert into revenue without spending on paid ads.
Quick Tip: During website localization, amateurs may believe they need to translate the keywords. However, that’s not the case! You must perform separate keyword research for each region you want to target. For example, most Americans and British are native English speakers but often use different words to describe the same thing – “Holiday in Hawaii” vs. “Vacations in Hawaii”.Â
That’s where multilingual keyword research comes into play. If you take it for granted, you are set on a path to failure as you won’t be reaping the fruits of website localization to its full potential.
Thus, linguistic expertise, SEO expertise, market knowledge, and purpose-built tools are needed for successful website localization.Â
Localize the UX and UI
The next website localization best practice involves optimizing the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). A good UX can help you improve your conversion rate and customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is crucial to consider how your website localization efforts will affect your UX.
On the other hand, user interface (UI) elements play an integral role. You must ensure there is enough space to fit longer sentences in other languages before you start localizing your website. And if your current website design fails to work well with different languages, you should adapt the design before moving ahead with content localization.
Quick Tip: Research the targeted market’s local and cultural preferences, and based on the information, you may need to perform the following activities:
- Change the color scheme of your websiteÂ
- Rearrange some web page elements
- Replace graphical elements to align with the target audience’s culture
- Redesign the entire UI
Furthermore, you should consider the internet speed in your target market. A region with low-end devices and a slower internet connection may not support heavy UI designs. In this scenario, you may need to simplify the user interface. For example, in 2015, Meta (formerly Facebook Inc.) launched Facebook Lite in developing markets, which had a stripped-down interface for compatibility with slower internet connections. Â
To cut it short, localizing UI and UX ensures all your targeted users feel at home while navigating your website regardless of their region, internet speed, and cultural differences.
Testing Before Website Launch
Verifying linguistic and functional accuracy is another best practice for localizing websites. Testing guarantees the UI functions work as intended and technical issues are resolved before launching the website in a targeted market.
Here’s a checklist for testing the website’s linguistic and functional elements:
| Functional Localization Testing - Checklist | Linguistic Localization Testing - Checklist |
|---|---|
| Broken strings/design | Cultural appropriateness |
| Download time | Misuse of keywords |
| Encryption algorithms | Punctuation errors |
| Entry fields | Readability and appeal of a message |
| Form functionality | Spelling and grammar errors |
| Hardware compatibility | Untranslated strings |
| Hyperlinks | - |
| Image appropriateness | - |
| Loading time | - |
| Names, time, date, weights, measurements, etc. | - |
| Payment processing | - |
| Shopping cart | - |
| Upgrades | - |
Quick Tip: Your testing team must include a native speaker with extensive experience in the target market and localization and a UI/UX design expert to oversee the glitches. Once, you have a QA team ready, create a test strategy, compile all necessary testing materials, set up the testing environment, and begin. Â
How Limegreen Media Can Help Localize Your Website?
Do you want to localize your website but the amount of work it takes overwhelms you? Worry not! Limegreen Media offers professional website localization services.Â
- Our team helps you create multilingual versions of your website to ensure technical stability and cultural relevance for each targeted market.
- We have a global pool of native language speakers who adapt your content for different target markets while preserving your brand voice and the original message.
- Our SEO experts conduct comprehensive multilingual keyword research, ensuring your website attracts high organic traffic.
- We also adapt your website’s UI and UX for each target market based on their cultural and local preferences for optimal user satisfaction.
- We perform functional and linguistic testing to guarantee a seamless user experience for your global audience.
Bottom Line
Website localization best practices help you expand your business in foreign markets. If you want to succeed, you must keep your options open from the very start to avoid doing extra work in the later years.Â
Thus, choose a CMS that helps you customize and onboard a large international team, invest in a multilingual website, perform multilingual keyword research, localize your UI and UX, and conduct rigorous functional and linguistic testing before launching your website.Â
However, if all this overwhelms you, you can hire a media localization firm like Limegreen Media to localize your website and set foot in foreign territories.Â
