Expanding sales into international markets was once quite a daunting task. However, with the advent of technology, new opportunities have opened up. These new doors have been opened vis-a-vis eCommerce. Consequently, businesses are elevating their game and strategizing new ways to enter global markets effectively. One method adopted by various organizations before entering foreign markets is to localize their websites for consumers in other countries. That’s where you need website translation services. To accomplish this task efficiently, it’s imperative to take into account the local dialects, values, and cultures of your target audience.
Let’s take a look at 5 key tips for Ecommerce Translation.
Planning For Word Growth
Localized content can take up between 20% and 45% more space on the screen if you are translating online text from English to other languages. This phenomenon is known as “word growth”. Broken Page templates and on-page text misalignments can take place due to this word growth. Moreover, within smaller user experiences such as drop-down menus, buttons, or image captions, Word growth is very disruptive. Customer experience can be wrecked if these design inconsistencies create a messy and unprofessional look on translated sites. Hence, building fully dynamic page templates that allow word wrap in text boxes should be given serious consideration.
Personalizing customer experience
One of the most powerful ways for eCommerce translation is website personalization based on individual preferences. Hiring professional website translation services would be helpful in this scenario. Every product caters to a different market. One should localize product descriptions to suit the target market. Hence, in certain markets straightforward translation of the English description might not work. Moreover, something that might be appropriate in one country could be inappropriate in another. Different standard measures may be used for various markets. Thereby, another key tip for Ecommerce Translation Services is to think about the customer before planning to enter into a particular market.
Externalizing Text From Images
An immersive customer experience often depends on compelling visuals, hence the reason why a lot of retail sites are rich with imagery and photography. But the real challenge is to localize them. The less savvy translation services can find it difficult to localize visuals and images due to the embedded text in flattened image files, such as. jpg. Consequently, the text under the images will not be translated and an amateurish, mixed language format will be experienced by the end consumer. This will not only disrupt the visual continuity but will also tarnish your brand image. Therefore, using solutions like Scene7/Adobe Dynamix will not only externalize text from images but will also reduce costs and diminish these challenges.
Planning an SEO Strategy
Businesses need to analyze and revamp their SEO strategy to fit the needs of the target audience if they want to step out of their local market and enter into global markets. A key tip, in this case, would be to completely localize one’s search results to stay afloat in the global race for success and that would be achieved by opting for website translation services. The translation of your keywords needs to be paired up with keyword research since keywords are unique in each international market. Therefore, thorough and detailed research is a must if you want to translate and localize your keywords for international markets. Another important thing to understand is that you need to know about each country’s search engines. For example, China does not use Google as its local search engine. Thereby, do your homework before stepping into foreign markets.
Providing Global CMS
One of the most important tools that can be used for extending an E-commerce store globally is Content Management System or CMS. However, challenges are something that businesses have to face while using a global CMS. And maintenance that needs to be done as a result of adding more languages to your CMS, is an extremely difficult task. Using a CMS which is fully compatible with Unicode support is an effective way of dealing with this issue. So what it will do is, that without any errors or glitches, it will enable your site to handle all characters in the languages that you have chosen. So it will do the job of language translation services as well. Moreover, the key tip here is that a global CMS will not only enable a smooth workflow but will support all the languages that your customers speak.
Conclusion
Even if you are dealing with a single market, it takes time, investment, and thought to develop an end-to-end experience that succeeds for customers and the company. The real goal here is to connect with people while understanding their needs, wants, and culture. And any e-commerce business that intends to enter into other global markets, will have to manage workflows, content, and embed technology that streamlines its processes. Thereby, it’s imperative to plan an SEO strategy along with using the help of language translation services, externalize text from images, and plan for word growth if you want to stand out from the crowd.
