Localizing Your Website
Localizing your website can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools, it can actually be fairly simple and quick.
Your company’s website needs to appeal to a broad range of visitors — including those who speak a language other than English. While English is still the most widely-used language online, there are untapped markets that may be interested in learning more about your company –and ultimately buy your goods or services.
Here are three steps you can take today to translate your website.
1. Choose the Best Languages
Every company is going to have a different focus and audience, which will dictate the languages that you’ll use on your website. You may also wish to take into account the following:
- Your location. Which languages are commonly spoken in your geographic area?
- Past success. If you’ve translated printed marketing materials, which languages have proven to deliver results?
- Current website traffic. Where are you getting the largest amount of visitors outside of the country that you operate in?
You can easily check Google Analytics or other traffic analysis tool to see which countries your visitors are coming from. For example, perhaps 5 percent of your traffic is coming from France and 3 percent from Brazil. Google says this data is relatively accurate by country, but bear in mind that sometimes you’ll see a lot of traffic from another country for a short period. Check back over the past several months to get the most accurate information.
With these three sources, you can come up with a list that will help you determine which language you’ll want to translate first and that can produce the largest results for your company.
2. Select a Translation Management System
Localizing your website can be cumbersome, manual, and frustrating without the right tools. The process of extracting content from your website is challenging. As is finding your own translators to actually translate the content. A Translation Management System (TMS) will help solve many of these challenges.
You can integrate the translation process into your site’s development or you can easily extract the content on your existing site to be sent for translation. Once you have your translated content, you can export the files back into your website’s content management system.
Plus, our TMS includes tools like a translation memory database so you aren’t translating the same phrase or string of text multiple times. That saves you time and money on your translations.
3. Order Your Translations
Our marketplace of Professional Language Providers will make localizing your website easy and fast. You can ensure you’ll get fluent phrasing and correct translation of idioms and key phrases. That means you won’t have to worry whether an automated system has created awkward translations that might make a fluent visitor chuckle — or worse, misunderstand what your company can provide.
By providing a marketplace format, we’ve set it up so you can get bids for your project and choose the translators who are best-suited for the work you have. You also know you’re getting a competitive price. Paying by the project lets you budget more efficiently and avoid surprises that sometimes come with work paid by the hour.
In addition, we’ve created an analytics dashboard for each one of our customers, so you can see at a glance what stage your project is in and how your translators are progressing in real time. You’ll know when to expect your translations to be completed so you won’t waste time waiting.
Localizing your website doesn’t need to be on your marketing wish list any longer. You can localize your website with a literal click of a button and get translated results you can use to educate customers, get more leads and sell more products. Moving into other markets and localizing your marketing efforts can help you grow your business quickly.
Check out some of the reasons why you should localize your website.