You might consider expanding globally if you’ve already expanded your business and feel like you’ve conquered your local market. Why not? You can increase your traffic, sales, and revenue by taking your business to a global audience.
However, to ensure that your expansion to these new markets is successful, you have to consider a localization strategy. So, what exactly is a localization strategy, and why do you need one?
In this article, we’ll look at what localization is, why it’s critical for your business, and the benefits you can expect. We’ll also cover what you need to do to get started and the tools you might need, like translation and proxy services.
We’ll be covering the following topics on localization:
- What is localization?
- What are the benefits of localization?
- What can businesses do to start localizing their website?
What Is Localization
Localization is adapting your digital content for a new country or area. While many believe that localization is just translating your website for a new audience, the truth is it goes much deeper than just translating.
While it’s important to translate your website, you must also adapt it to meet the new cultural expectations. This includes adapting your product prices, design, and even media. Less than 27% of web users speak English. It makes sense to translate and localize content to reach other markets.
What Are the Benefits of Localization
There are many benefits to carefully adapting your content for new audiences and countries. Some of the benefits include:
- Targeting a larger audience
- It makes content more appealing
- Improves local SEO
- Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Lower competition on local keywords means higher ranking opportunities
What Can Businesses Do to Start Localizing Their Website
The number of internet users grows each year, and the non-English markets show the most growth. Currently, Asia leads with the most internet users, with 54.2% of internet users coming from Asia. If you want to start creating a localization strategy, here are a few ways to begin.
Plan for Localization
Start by planning what audience/country you want to target first. You don’t have to expand to the whole world at once. That would be a mammoth task.
Choose one or two new markets to start with, and you can add more as your strategy starts taking hold. It’s a good idea to focus on the markets where you know it’ll be easier to break into first.
Research New Market
Next, you need to do market research to discover more about the new audience’s language, culture, and buying tendencies. Part of this research would also be conducting new keyword research.
Since people phrase search queries differently in different countries, this is an important step to ensure you improve your SEO for the new audience.
Translate Content
Translation of your content is an important step of localization. Many consumers won’t buy products if the website isn’t in their language.
This makes sense because how can you be confident in a purchase if you can’t read or understand the product description? It’s best to use professional translation services for this step to ensure the translations are correct and account for cultural nuances.
Evaluate Images and Media
Make sure that your images and media are also adapted for the new market. For example, you can’t simply reuse images with English text when trying to target a Spanish market. You want to ensure your images are text-free.
If they aren’t, you want to ensure that the text is a translatable layer overlaid using CSS so that it can be adjusted. Also, make sure that you use media suitable for your new audience. Your market research should have indicated the type of media (photos, videos, infographics) your audience prefers.
Check How Site Displays
Finally, you must test your localized website once you’ve launched it. The best way is by using a proxy service. A proxy service will enable you to change your IP address and make it appear that you’re accessing the web from your target country.
This will allow you to see the website just as your intended audience will. Ensure that the text, layout, and images appear as they should.
Final Thoughts
Localizing your content for new markets in other countries will ensure that your brand reaches the audience better.
By localizing your content, you’ll be able to rank better within that country, thereby increasing your website visitors, leads and sales. Now is the time if you haven’t thought about how your content appears in other countries.