Localizing Your Website: Right Step or Not?

There’s no hiding the fact that global customers can improve your business ten folds and add much required value to your company. One of the most common problems faced by numerous businesses when dealing with global customers is that of miscommunication. Localizing your website helps in eliminating this problem so that you can optimize your profit.

Understanding Localization

Before we proceed to evaluating whether you should localize or not, let us understand what Localization stands for. For example, if you are a business company established in India with many potential customers in France, localization would mean having a version of your website which is user-friendly for customers in France. Localization helps you attract customers all around the world and you get to compete with companies worldwide.

Do I Really Need Localization?

By answering some basic questions, you can determine whether or not your company can benefit from localization.

Where is the audience you would be targeting?

Localization revolves around the target audience. If you are focusing on a region in your own state/country where people speak the same language, localization isn’t a requirement. There are cases where people speak different languages in the same region, although we see this rarely.

What culture does your audience belong to?

Identifying the culture of your audience helps you further in understanding whether you would need localization. Let’s say your website revolves around selling wholesale car parts. Customers all around the world would be car repair shops and garages who would like to see the specifications in their own language.
On the other hand, if your website is about an IT product, creating a website in English would be sufficient as most IT professionals are adept at understanding English.

What is the budget of your project?

Localization in itself demands a lot of time and resources as you would require to convert the entire content of your website into another language. Thus, if you are working on a tight budget, you should choose wisely. Budget-friendly businesses need to focus elsewhere as localization is more suited to enterprises and high-budget projects.

Implementing Localization

Suppose you have assessed everything and decided localization is a must for your online business. What then? Firstly, you need to do a pre-localization check of the content on your website. Solving problems beforehand would help you streamline the entire process.

Next, you should reduce the use of jargons so that the meaning of your content doesn’t get lost in the translation. Jargons can risk your localization efforts as they make a text hard to break down by foreign audience. With proper guidance and skilled efforts, localization can be done hassle-free.