Your website without e-Commerce translation is as useful as a lock without a key. Your potential customers cannot properly “unlock” your content and go away.
All right, there’s a bit of an exaggeration. Let’s better put it like this. If your website is English-only, you give a single “language key” to merely 25.9% of English-speaking audiences over the Internet. But what about the rest? Are you going to neglect them?
In this article, you’ll discover all the whys behind translating an e-commerce website. We’ll also give you the know-how to do that. And even more! We’ll show you the sub-world of translation for eCommerce. Wait for it.
What Is E-commerce Translation?
In simple words, eCommerce translation is adapting and localizing your site to the different linguistic needs of your web visitors with its multilingual versions.
It touches literally every online nook your eCommerce website has:
- Homepage
- Product listings and descriptions
- Testimonials
- Case studies
- Privacy policies
- Blog articles, etc.
E-commerce website translation is just the right step to your business growth. If you still consider it overstated and doubt its potential, read on and let your mind be the judge.
Why Translate an E-commerce Website?
Whether you only launch an online business or have it running for a while already, you have the same principal reasons for translating your eCommerce site.
Reach Larger Audiences Globally
A multilingual website you get as a result of eCommerce translation is virtually a gateway to a myriad-star galaxy of prospective customers. It helps you overcome language barriers, increase your international reach, capture worldwide attention, and attract more leads from the global market.
Target Language-first Customers
A language-first customer is a person who prioritizes language when choosing an e-store.
And here it goes: language is the top priority for 60% of non-Anglophone consumers. They rarely or never buy from English-only eCommerce websites. And 75% prefer to choose products in their native languages. With effective translation in e-commerce, you give in to customers’ demands and meet their specific wants and needs.
Get a Sharper Competitive Edge
E-commerce translation opens the door to non-English-speaking markets, often overlooked by competitors. It sets your company apart as an industry leader.
Suppose you run a business in the beauty and fashion industry. While your competitors have their eCommerce sites only in English, you decide to invest in a multilingual e-commerce store so customers from different locations may think, “Compared to other brands, this one speaks my language and understands my local fashion needs. I’d better shop here.”
Generate More Organic Traffic
Translating your eCommerce site can also improve your global SEO efforts. Localized content with proper keywords will help you rock the search engine optimization on your multilingual e-store. Eventually, you’ll rank higher in different languages and drive more people to your website.
Enhance User Experiences
E-commerce content available in the user’s language boosts browsing and shopping experiences. Users can easily navigate the e-commerce store, understand product descriptions, and finish transactions without language roadblocks.
For example, a customer from an Italian-speaking country may feel more comfortable buying from an eCommerce shop that offers Italian language support. This improves the international user experience.
Reduce Customer Churn and Boost ROI
In fact, 40% of consumers will not purchase from a foreign-language website. At this rate, eCommerce translation will help you retain more customers on your web pages and increase the likelihood they will eventually buy from you.
Then, there’s one more fact. A multilingual eCommerce website is an investment with a high potential return. For a single dollar spent on content localization, you can reap $25 in revenue.
Your Ultimate Guide to E-commerce Translation
Take these steps to effectively reach international audiences and pave the way to eCommerce success.
Determine Your Target Audience’s Languages
What languages do your target markets speak?
Currently, the top five languages used on the Internet globally are:
- English
- Chinese
- Spanish
- Arabic
- Portuguese
However, these are not necessarily the ones for you to aim at. You should understand where exactly your targeted customers come from.
There are several ways to do that:
- Segment your audience via an online form (ask to indicate the preferred language)
- Analyze your competitors’ multilingual e-commerce websites
- Perform thorough market research
Localize Your E-commerce Website Content
Linguistically diverse customers are also diverse geographically and culturally. That’s when a strong need for eCommerce website localization arises to ensure cultural sensitivity.
Localize Your Product Pages
The essentials for eCommerce product localization are:
- Description
- Image/video
- Price
- Shipping cost
- Delivery date
- And measurements (size, weight, length, etc.)
Localize Your Marketing Messages
Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, stresses the importance of localizing your site with adequate promos. She says, “E-commerce localization is incomplete without culturally resonant marketing messages. Particularly, it is vital for your holiday marketing calendar and local holidays.”
For example, if you translate your online store to Hebrew, you may want to schedule a lightbox or a floating bar with happy Hanukkah greetings (a significant holiday in the Hebrew calendar).
Localize Your Legal Texts
Surely, you’d want to expand your online business across borders while complying with the law. So, don’t forget to translate your legal documents and materials, such as Terms of Service or Purchase of Goods Agreements.
If you’re not 100% sure about the accuracy of your legal translation, you may turn to contract review software to make sure your contracts are accurately localized in different languages and legally sound.
Approach Web Design Localization with Nuance
E-commerce website translation isn’t solely about converting and localizing your texts phrase by phrase. UI/UX design localization is likewise critical for the overall look-and-feel of your eCommerce website.
When you strive for successful multilingual UX design, you should modify the user experience to smoothly align it with linguistic needs, cultural peculiarities, traditions, and societal norms.
What UX elements require proper localization?
Localize the following in your eCommerce design:
- Logo
- Navigation
- Layout
- Visuals
- Fonts
- Symbols
- Colors, etc.
For example, let’s take the symbolism of color.
While red is one of the luckiest colors for Chinese customers, signifying good fortune, health, and joy, it is the color of unluckiness in Nigeria. As for other cultural groups, it typically stands for caution and danger.
Or –
Think about layouts. You will need to mirror the banners for the Arabic version of your eCommerce site because it reads right-to-left, unlike left-to-right in most other languages.
Take Care of Multilingual SEO
It’s high time to localize your SEO materials from metadata to keywords. Shall we?
Metadata
Metadata holds great promise as it enhances your SEO for multiple languages.
The fundamental website metadata components are:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Audio and video transcripts
- Alt texts for images
- And other meta tags.
“If you want to exhaust all possibilities of metadata in e-commerce website localization, you must use the hreflang HTML meta element. It tells the search engines the exact region and language your web page targets and helps you serve the correct version to your multilingual customers,” remarks Michael Donovan, Co-Founder of Niche Twins.
Keywords
Take a careful and scrupulous approach to keyword translation to localize your eCommerce site for effective global SEO.
Imagine you deal with reverse commerce, aka recommerce, and sell previously-owned items like luxury vintage Rolex watches. One of your targeted keywords is “old Rolex price.” If you opt for machine translation to convert it to French, you’ll get this variant: “ancien prix Rolex.” It is not quite how the French customers search. The proper keyword for SEO would be “Rolex ancienne prix” in this case.
Test and Ask for Customer Feedback
How well have you translated and localized your eCommerce website? How can you know that?
The surefire method is localization testing through A/B tests and other activities in the website quality assurance process to spot drawbacks, oversights, and mistakes.
Then, there’s customer feedback to rely on and use constructively for improvement.
Gather feedback on your multilingual site effectively with the following:
- Survey popup
- Focus group
- Live chat
- Feedback form
- Feedback button
The latter is typically placed at the far right side of the screen. For example, look at the German version of Samsung’s eCommerce site.
In English, the question sounds like this, “Based on your experience at Samsung website, how likely are you to recommend visiting Samsung website to your friends or colleagues?”
After that, Samsung asks to explain why the visitor gave a particular score to improve user experience in the future.
Up Your E-commerce Game with DayTranslations
With DayTranslations by your side, you’ll be able to fully translate and localize your website or app with the help of professional human translators.
No more fretting about a lack of cultural sensitivity or poor quality often frequented in machine translations.
Your global audience is waiting!