Why Website Localization Matters: Top Benefits Explained

Anyone looking to make a splash in a new global market will be aware of the challenges ahead. Even offering an amazing new product or service is no guarantee of success, and it’s easy to become disheartened when your efforts don’t bring results.

Tapping into overseas markets requires a completely different strategy to launching products at home. Your tried-and-tested domestic tactics may simply have no relevance to those with different cultures. And that’s where the magic ingredient of website localization comes in.

Localization goes far beyond simple translation. While translation converts text from one language to another, localization adapts your entire online presence to fit the cultural context of your target market. This includes language, visuals, user experience, and even the nuances of local customs and preferences.

Research shows that 65% of consumers prefer content in their native language, so businesses that fail to localize are turning down potential sales.

So where to begin? Right here, of course! In the following article, we’ll explore the benefits of localization and discover how this strategy can unlock the doors to international success.

5 Key Benefits of Website Localization

First up, let’s take a look at the key benefits of localization:

1. Increased Sales and Revenue

Website localization can help businesses expand into new markets and boost their bottom line. By making your website accessible to non-English-speaking customers, you’ll be widening your potential customer base and appealing to a greater number of people. And a bigger audience usually means more sales.

Localization allows you to tailor your messaging to meet local preferences and cultural quirks. This personalized approach can make your products more appealing to a local audience by understanding specific needs and user behavior.

To give an example, the Know Your Lemons Foundation – a global charity centered on teaching women the signs and symptoms of breast cancer – needed a way to display their images in different languages. The crux of their message was best experienced through visual means, and the foundation was stuck using time-consuming and expensive manual processes to manage its translations.

Know Your Lemons found the solution through Weglot. Combining machine translation with a frontend Visual Editor was the answer, removing the need for development work. In just a few clicks, the foundation was able to localize its website content and imagery to reach 99 countries.

“With Weglot we were able to translate a number of pages into 10 different languages within the first week of the website launch, dramatically increasing our international visibility.”

–  Corrine Ellsworth-Beaumont, CEO, Know Your Lemons Foundation

2. Improved Cultural Relevance

The localization process involves understanding and incorporating cultural nuances, idioms, and symbols into your content that are meaningful to your target market.

Adapting to local legal and social norms is another vital aspect. Different regions have varying regulations that may impact how your content is perceived.

Being mindful of these factors can avoid misunderstandings that could damage your brand’s reputation.

You’ll also be operating in compliance with local laws and so avoid any legal headaches.

3. Boosted Customer Loyalty and Engagement

Localized websites provide a more relevant and personalized experience for users, increasing the likelihood of return visits. When customers can navigate your website in their native language, they’ll feel more comfortable and valued.

Localizing elements such as customer reviews, FAQs, and support pages, is particularly important for boosting user engagement. These resources provide valuable information and social proof in a format that’s easily understood by local users, encouraging interaction.

Finally, content that meets the needs of a local audience is more likely to be shared on social media platforms. Organic sharing tends to increase engagement rates, effectively turning your customers into brand ambassadors and increasing your online presence.

4. Enhanced Brand Reputation

A well-localized website can give any brand’s global image a significant polish.

Businesses that demonstrate a genuine commitment to understanding and valuing different cultures tend to earn a positive global reputation. After all, who would engage with a company that disrespects your local customs and way of life?

A website that speaks directly to its audience – with culturally appropriate content and design – conveys a level of professionalism that sets a brand apart from its competitors. Such attention to detail can even make an impact in markets where local businesses dominate.

Maintaining a consistent brand voice and message across different languages and markets can help build a strong global identity. Brands ideally need to find the perfect balance between global consistency and local relevance. The former keeps your brand recognizable, while the latter ensures you can communicate with people from anywhere in the world.

5. Competitive Advantage

We’ve shown the benefits of localization as far as customers and brand reputation are concerned. But the SEO benefits of localization also deserve some attention.

Localized content and keywords can improve search engine rankings in local markets, driving more organic traffic. Optimizing for local search terms allows businesses to reach their target customers when their audience is still only at the product search stage.

High-quality localized content is also more likely to attract backlinks from local websites, blogs, and influencers. Backlinks drive targeted traffic to your site, improve your domain authority, and boost search rankings in local markets.

The Challenges of Website Localization Beyond Translation

As we’ve seen, translation is just one part of true website localization. Keep the following in mind when planning your own global expansions, as a little foresight goes a long way.

Complexity of Process

The tech aspects of localization present significant challenges, including managing multilingual content, adapting layouts for different languages, and ensuring compatibility across devices.

Website owners need a coordinated workflow involving translators, project managers, developers, and marketers, ensuring everyone can communicate with each other and share progress.

Content management becomes increasingly complex when dealing with multiple languages. Keeping all versions of your website up-to-date and consistent is a task requiring organization and considerable time.

Thankfully, translation management solutions such as Weglot can automate the process, as we’ll discover later.

Remember that quality assurance is of major importance in localization. Thorough testing is necessary to ensure that localized content is linguistically accurate and functions correctly across different regions.

Understanding Cultural Nuances

Anyone wanting to build relationships with a new target audience must understand local customs, values, and consumer behaviors.

A failure to do so can lead to embarrassing and costly mistakes, with several online sources highlighting an alleged faux pas from American brand Parker that’s well worthy of mention.

It’s claimed that Parker was marketing a new ballpoint or inkwell in Mexico, back in the early 1950s. The brand’s advertising slogan was supposed to read: ‘it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you’.

However, the company mistranslated the word ‘embarrass’ to the Spanish ‘embarazar’, which happens to mean ‘pregnant’.

Cue an ad that declared ‘it won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant’. This is a great selling point, but not quite the one Parker had in mind!

Localization involves adapting tone, humor, and cultural references. Some regions prefer formal communication, while others appreciate a more casual approach. Visual elements also play a significant role.

Colors, images, and symbols may need to be adapted to avoid unintended negative associations. For example, while yellow is seen as joyful and vibrant in much of the Western world, many Latin Americans associate it with both life and death. Advanced knowledge of such preferences can save a lot of heartache in the long run.

Cost and Resources

Effective website localization requires significant investment in financial resources and personnel.

Initial setup costs can be substantial. You’ll likely need to hire local experts and purchase a dedicated localization tool in order to build a solid foundation for your project.

Another aspect of localization that requires regular attention is ongoing maintenance. As your core website evolves, all localized versions must be updated to maintain consistency. You’ll either need a dedicated team to manage content updates across all language versions or use a dedicated platform that can do this for you.

A localization project without sufficient resources will inevitably fail to reach its potential. Companies must make a long-term commitment to ensure their localized websites remain accurate, up-to-date, and culturally appropriate.

Practical Advice for Optimizing Your Website for Local Markets

Adopting a localization philosophy is just the beginning – how best to put this into practice?

Conduct Market Research

• Understand the target audience: Identify the demographics, preferences, and behaviors of your local market. Use surveys, focus groups, industry news sources, and analytics tools to discover what your intended audience is talking about.
• Competitive analysis: Analyze local competitors to understand their strategies and identify gaps in the market that your brand can potentially fill.
• Local trends: Stay updated on local trends and cultural events that could impact your business. Social media platforms can help with your research. Make a note of any important calendar dates on which you can potentially piggyback a marketing campaign.
• Keyword research: Conduct keyword research to determine the most relevant local phrases using Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush.

Develop a Localization Plan

• Set clear objectives: Begin by setting clear objectives for your localization efforts, such as increased traffic or improved sales, and identify your target markets.
• Content prioritization: Prioritize content for localization, starting with your homepage and focusing on key landing and high-traffic pages, in order to deliver the most significant impact when localized. Depending on your industry, these may include product pages, customer support info, or your website’s knowledge base.
• Localization strategy: Develop a localization strategy that includes translation, cultural adaptation, and SEO optimization.
• Timeline and budget: Establish a realistic timeline and budget for the localization process, considering the scope of the work and the resources required.

Choose the Right Partners

• Technology partners: Select technology partners that offer tools and platforms to support your localization efforts, like Weglot. Automating processes can greatly reduce timescales and the costs of manually completing all the necessary tasks.
• Local SEO experts: Collaborate with local SEO experts who understand the nuances of each target market. It’s important to find people who truly know a country, not just speak its language. For example, a translator might be fluent in Spanish, but know nothing of the cultural nuances of Argentina.
• Translation services: Partner with professional translation services to ensure accuracy and cultural relevance. As we saw in the earlier Parker example, getting it wrong may be hilarious, but it can damage a brand’s credibility.

Ensure Consistency and Quality Assurance

• Style guides: Develop style guides and glossaries to maintain consistency in translations across all of your localized content. Depending on your countries of expansion, you may need to create a different style guide for every destination.
• Quality checks: Implement quality assurance processes to ensure accuracy and cultural relevance throughout all brand materials.
• Feedback loops: Establish feedback loops with local teams and customers to improve content and address any issues that arise. Adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement to ensure your content stays up-to-date and relevant.

Measure Your Success

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Identify KPIs such as website traffic, engagement, conversion rates, and customer feedback to measure the success of your localization campaign.
• Analytics reports: Use analytics tools to generate reports and track the performance of localized content over time. Statistics can demonstrate which content is performing, helping you understand your audience even further, and informing future campaigns.
• Continuous improvement: Regularly review and refine your localization strategy based on performance data and adapt it to reflect changing market conditions.

Streamlining the Localization Process with Tools and Technology

If you’re reading this as part of your first localization drive, the scale of the task ahead might be causing some sleepless nights.

But don’t worry. Localization was once an enormous – and pretty unforgivable – task, but the advent of dedicated tools has made the process far more straightforward.

Website translation tools like Weglot automate processes so localization projects can be managed with ease. More than 70,000 websites are using Weglot to translate their sites and reach international customers in more than 110 languages, and here’s why:

• Multi-platform integration: Weglot integrates with any CMS and countless ecommerce platforms, so you can translate and localize your website with minimal technical expertise. The user-friendly dashboard allows anyone to manage a localization project, with affordable flexible plans to suit businesses of all sizes.
• Automation features: Weglot automates the translation process by scanning and translating your entire website. It also automatically translates new and updated content on your core site into other languages offered. Consider the time saved by not having to manually monitor such a process!

• AI-powered translation: The AI-powered machine translation provides instant translation  by using DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator. From there, you can easily edit or send the translation to be reviewed by professional translators or your own team.
• Translation editing control: Weglot’s translation management dashboard gives you complete editing control to all your translations. Choose to add teammates or translators to your project to edit and approve translations, create translation rules, exclude certain pages from translation, and so on. You can also order professional translations directly inside Weglot. A centralized platform results in better workflows, with admins able to oversee entire projects without having to log-in to multiple screens.
• Multilingual SEO: Weglot improves global SEO by optimizing translated content for search engines. Features include automatic hreflang tags, language-specific URLs, metadata translation, and a choice of subdirectories or subdomains.
• Visual editing: The technical challenges of managing multilingual content and adapting website layout simultaneously are simplified by our Visual Editor, which allows you to translate your content directly inside your website design.

• Translating media: Non-textual elements like images can be translated, ensuring multimedia elements can be used across your different language web pages.
• Support for dynamic content: Weglot translates dynamic content generated by JavaScript or AJAX queries, ensuring all elements of your site are translated. Any changes made to your core site are automatically translated into other languages used.

• Efficiency and consistency: Our glossary function enables you to keep track of translation preferences, so words are used consistently across your site.
• Site speed: Weglot’s SaaS model – where translation happens on cloud servers, with the plugin acting as an integration layer – reduces the load on your site.

Take the Next Step in Business Localization with Weglot

As we’ve seen, website localization can help to expand your brand’s global reach, increase sales, and build a loyal customer base overseas. Weglot is a complete solution to the challenge of localization, simplifying the process and allowing businesses of all sizes to translate their websites into multiple languages.

Why make things harder than they need to be? With our no-code approach, Weglot’s user-friendly interface and automated features make translating and localizing a website accessible to all, reducing timescales and saving costs. Even those with no prior technical experience will have no trouble when working with Weglot.

Don't just take our word for it! Mike Robertson, Director of Sales Operations at Nikon, shares his experience with our platform:

“Weglot removed the pain of having to manage multiple stores for multiple locales. The integration was easy, and the support is incredibly helpful. I highly recommend Weglot to anyone looking for a simple and cost-effective solution to translate their stores!”

Ready to expand your own brand’s global reach? Get started with Weglot today to localize your website and unlock new opportunities in international markets with our 10-day free trial.