Detailed Guide: How to Do Website Localization?

If a business sets its target customer base as international market users, then website localization becomes extremely crucial. Imagine a customer visiting your website and being greeted with a disorganized page layout in a language that is difficult to understand. Even if you have a great product and it's exactly what your customers want, chances are they won't stay on your site. And website localization is a great solution to these problems.

So, how should you go about website localization? Next, this article will introduce the advantages of website localization and bring you a detailed guide to website localization.

What is website localization?

Website localization is not simply a translation, but a much broader process. It is a process of optimizing the linguistic expression, visual presentation, and user experience of a website for different regional audiences, to trigger emotional resonance and identification with the target region.

65% of consumers are more likely to visit a website that is available in their local language. By localizing your website, you can effectively penetrate international markets and attract more international consumers. At the same time, it ensures that users have a high-quality experience when browsing and using your website, which in turn increases their trust and loyalty.

Advantages of Website Localization

Website localization can bring multiple advantages, specifically:

1. Enhanced User Experience

Website localization is an important measure to optimize user experience. By deeply matching the language habits, cultural heritage, and user needs of the target market, localization allows website content to resonate with local users. Users can browse the website more smoothly, easily get the product information they need, and quickly locate content that is closely related to their cultural background. Such a localized website makes users feel close and familiar, which in turn improves user engagement and overall satisfaction.

2. Expanding Brand Influence

Localization is a bridge to enter different markets and establish effective communication with non-English speaking users. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be significantly improved through the precise use of keywords customized for the target audience. By investing in website localization, companies can directly address the needs of their international customers, thereby gaining a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

3. Enhance brand loyalty and trust

Incorporating brand messages with local flavor helps to create a strong connection with users on an emotional level and builds a trustworthy brand image. Localized websites demonstrate a company's deep understanding of and respect for the needs of its audience, helping to enhance brand credibility and trust. This commitment and respect for international customers is a key factor in building brand loyalty and trust.

4. Increased conversion rates

The benefits of all of the above are ultimately reflected in increased conversion rates. By optimizing the user experience and expanding a brand's global reach, localized websites are often able to engage more users and increase conversion rates. Additionally, localization helps businesses reach more potential customers around the world, which directly drives revenue growth.

Website Localization Implementation Guide

After clarifying the concept of website localization and its benefits, how to efficiently advance the website localization process? Below are the specific implementation steps:

1. Planning Localization Strategy

Before launching website localization, you need to develop a clear and forward-looking localization strategy. This strategy will help your organization define its goals and generate real business growth for your website. The strategy should focus on the following areas:

• Market research: Provide in-depth analysis of the target market's cultural characteristics, language habits, consumption patterns, and regulatory requirements to provide precise direction for localization.
• Goal setting: Set specific and quantifiable goals for optimizing user experience, expanding market share, and enhancing brand influence to ensure that localization efforts are targeted.
• Differentiation of strategies: To formulate differentiated localization strategies for different target markets to better meet the needs of local users.

2. Promote website internationalization

It is recommended to implement website internationalization first to enhance the adaptability of the website to different languages, cultures and regions. Website internationalization covers technical architecture optimization, multi-language support, and integration of cultural factors.

• Technical Architecture Adaptation: Adopting key placeholders instead of hard-coding language-specific text improves code flexibility, enables seamless switching between languages, and reduces the need for major code modifications.
• Incorporation of cultural elements: Incorporate cultural elements of the target market into the website design, such as color preferences, image selection, and use of symbols, to enhance the localized features of the website.

3. Establish localization workflow

Establishing an efficient localization workflow will help streamline the process and save time and effort. The specific implementation steps are as follows:

• Define the division of responsibilities: Determine the person in charge of each stage of the process, usually including translators, localization experts, technical engineers, and marketing personnel.
• Formulate project plan: Define the tasks, time nodes and responsible persons for each stage, and formulate a detailed project plan. For example, set the translation cycle, review time, and online release date.

4. Start website translation

After the website localization settings are completed, you can start translating the website pages. Website translation can be realized in three ways: machine translation, human translation, and AI translation.

• Machine translation and AI translation: applicable to basic translation content, which can significantly improve translation efficiency.
• Human Translation: For specialized and highly localized translation content, human translation is recommended. Human translation is better at handling complex, creative, or sensitive content.

Artlangs provides professional website localization translation services, matching native-speaking translators with manual translators according to customer needs. It supports more than 200 languages and 30 industries and has provided localized translation services for many websites.

5. Test and Publish

After the translation is completed, it needs to be tested and perfected. This process is designed to ensure that the localization is effective in each target market and includes the following:

• Usability check: Verify the usability of the website in the target market to ensure that it is accessible and usable by users.
• Cultural relevance assessment: Checking that colors, layout, vocabulary choices, etc. are culturally appropriate for the target market.
• Language and Formatting Issue Capture: Capture and fix any language or formatting issues to ensure the quality of the website.

Testing a website is crucial to improving its quality and ensuring that the target audience can use it without any problems. This process helps avoid potentially costly mistakes such as missed translations or spelling errors.

Localize your website

For businesses to remain competitive in today's global marketplace, they need to make website localization a part of their development. Of course, website localization is challenging, and finding a translation company that offers a one-stop shop for website localization is vital if you want your website localization to go smoothly.

With a global service network, Artlangs Translation is committed to providing website localization services to clients around the world, catering to the localization needs of different regions and languages. Professional Artlangs Translation will review and proofread to ensure the quality of the translation and make timely revisions according to customer needs, providing a strong guarantee for localization.

If you are looking for a website localization solution, contact Artlangs today!