10 Ways to Make Your Website Localized
The internet is the king in the 21st century, so, whatever you’re doing, must be found online if you want to make a business out of it. Digitization of your business does a great deal of work for you in almost no time and with relatively little effort. And internationalization, which is very important and becomes extremely trendy for business today, is exactly one of those things. In fact, you can go global without even going outside by using the internet. However, to make your website localized successfully, you should consider one very important point, which is localization.
Why Localization is the Key to Successful Internationalization
When you go global you deal with different markets and audiences, which inevitably brings you to the need in translating your textual content or otherwise altering your products. This is particularly evident when you internationalize your business online as you must translate all the digital content on your website as well as adjust your advertisement on the web to appeal to the local audience. At this point, localization enters the game.
By taking translation onto a whole new level, localization manages to alter your content in the most favorable way you can imagine. Instead of just translating your content online, localization implies that your representation on the web will be altered in a way to look more familiar and relatable to the audience in the given country. For instance, aside from translating the articles and other textual information on your website, the customers will also be able to select their currency, measurement system if applicable, and other elements to essentially make themselves at home.
Make Your Website Localized – 10 Ways to Localized Your Website
So, localization seems like a very reasonable thing to do when it comes to entering the international market through the online space. Yet, like almost with everything in this world, localizing a website successfully became a kind of an art form, which requires a specific approach consisting of a number of points to consider and measures to take. Here are some of them.
Make Research
By substantially researching your target country, you can easily identify the points to aim for, which aspects of your product and representation to alter, and how to speak to your customer. But do not overlook another side of the research as well, which is your own business. Think of how and what you can alter to achieve the most balanced and efficient results.
Make All Necessary Technical Preparations
From making sure your website looks user-friendly enough to manage your content management system, all of this is very important for the localization process and must be considered before you even start going global.
Make Your Website Localized – Work on Your SEO
Optimizing the content of your website prior to localization makes the process itself much less painful and much more efficient. Make sure your content is easily searchable and findable in your original language. This way you’ll be able to do the same for any number of localized versions, thus, boosting the efficiency of your SEO in the first place.
Hire Local Professionals
To make sure your website looks as familiar to your target local audience as possible, hire a specialist who is a part of such an audience. Check out IsAccurate to find a professional that is located in your target country and knows all the specifics perfectly. This will definitely ensure the high quality of localization and will likely be cost-effective.
Use the Latest Technology and Methods
Although localization seems like a very creative type of work, it’s also systematic. So, using translation memory tools and creating glossaries for your localization specialists to use is more than just a great idea.
Make Your Website Localized – Localize All Types of Content
Don’t stop after localizing just the text. Remember that images, audio, and video clips also bring large cultural importance and, hence, must not be overlooked.
Adapt Your User Interface
Depending on the country you target, the user interface might also be altered to ensure maximum convenience for your customer. For example, if you adapt your website to an Arabic or Hebrew-speaking audience, you might also want to change the orientation of your website from left-to-right to right-to-left. In other cases, you may need to allow your customers to select their language if you’re dealing with a multilingual country like Canada or Switzerland.
Localize in Multiple Directions
Again, don’t stop at localizing just the website. Don’t forget that such channels of communication as social media are some of the best spots to aim for. Create a Facebook or Instagram page targeted specifically at a certain country or region you want to establish your presence in.
Test Your Results
Prior to making a full launch of the localized version of your website, make sure that it’s fully suitable and convenient for the actual audience. And the best way to do that is field research, which can be easily and cost-efficiently done utilizing the focus group consisting of your potential customers that have very similar needs and know exactly what they like and what they don’t.
Maintain your Website Localized
As the initial phase of the localization is over, i.e. your website is fully localized and successfully launched, the localization process doesn’t stop here. In order to ensure the maximum appeal of your website to the local audience, localization must be maintained. That means that you should constantly update the content on your website, work on possible interface improvements, and so on. And if you approach localization appropriately and reasonably, you’ll be able to make such updates from time to time only, thus, hiring freelance specialists and keeping the whole process cost-effective.
Make Your Website Localized – Internationalization Taken Beyond
The synergy of an appropriate international strategy and localization can do some real magic. If both processes go in line with each other and get good calculation based on a considerable number of parameters, they will explode with success. The main idea of a successful localization lies in maintaining the balance between all elements of your business, including the website, and considering as many aspects as possible when making your website appealing and relatable to your audience. So, keep calm, think ahead, always keep learning, and never give up, and the success will start following you.
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