Creating a scalable localization strategy at 1stdibs
For any company’s growth, international expansion is important and can ultimately be responsible for the largest percentage of revenue. Internationalizing a marketplace is a long-term, expensive investment that a company must be comfortable with.
1stdibs is already a global marketplace with buyers and sellers throughout the world. However, the site performs best in the U.S. and is geared towards English-speaking, U.S.-based buyers: most traffic comes from the U.S, the highest conversion rates are from within the U.S., and most sellers are based in the U.S.
So, how hard can it be to apply the same tools and principles to other markets? Buy a new domain (1stdibs.de), translate the words, and then people will rush in from across the globe and buy up all products. Right?
NOT SO FAST!
I, along with rest of the 1stdibs international team of product managers, software engineers, QA engineers, and designers have discovered that there is much to think about when launching international sites and a carefully considered plan is crucial. As part of this plan, the initial focus is driving traffic to the sites before optimizing for conversion.
For the purpose of this post, I will be referring to our recent learnings from the development of the 1stdibs German site.
Key Areas of Focus
There are numerous areas around which to strategize when localizing a site, and below is a high level overview of how we tackled a few of them.
Define your country specific MVP
A large part of my focus as a product manager has been to work with company stakeholders to scope out the MVP, specifically for our German site experience. Over the past 6+ years, 1stdibs has continually added new functionality to the site for buyers, and some of which is not needed for the German site launch. Based on research and many internal discussions, we arrived at an MVP focused on building organic demand and brand awareness.
One part of the process was auditing the entire site experience and assigning each feature a different priority level (P0 = required for launch, P1 = follow-on…. P4). A feature was only assigned a P0 if it was critical functionality that could be operationally supported. We also worked very closely with design to audit these user experiences and see what the MVP would visually look like. This illuminated any cases that required change to the UI.
Additionally, it has been key to conduct research to put our assumptions around buyer preferences to the test. Since we are not located in Germany, everything had to be done out of New York. We originally relied on online research and remote discussions, which only took us so far.
As a next step, there were numerous third party agencies that could help with user research. We worked with one to get direct access to our target German buyers. While expensive, we were able to run tests on German buyers that yielded extremely valuable information.
To augment this research, the international product team took a trip to Europe to talk to local sellers and other marketplace companies (i.e. chrono24). This trip resulted in numerous “aha!” moments when assumptions we had (i.e. payment method preferences) were invalidated.
Have a scalable solution to manage translations
Like most sites, 1stdibs has various types of content that need to be translated in different ways. We audited the site to identify these distinctions:
- Static site copy (chrome, info text, etc.)
- User-generated content (item titles & descriptions)
- Marketing content (homepage content)
- Site taxonomy (categories and attributes)
For each type of content we explored whether to use human or machine translation. There were many different factors for us to consider. We chose to human translate any of the static or structured content such as chrome and site taxonomy. While expensive, we also decided to human translate all of our item titles because it is very important that we ensure a good user experience. We debated item descriptions, but ultimately decided to machine translate.
Human translations of our taxonomy are especially important to ensure they are reflective of the nuances within the 1stdibs brand. For instance, “Still-life Photography” could have multiple German translations and we had to pick the best fit. We gathered internal and external translations and combined that with search keyword analysis to choose the correct translation for each taxonomy term.
Additionally, it is important to have a scalable workflow to mange translations. A company can build their own solution or integrate with a number of third party companies. We integrated with a translation management system that controls the import and export of translations, and provides a CAT tool for translators to input translations.
Most of these workflow tools support utilizing a translation memory of existing and ongoing translations. Software that supports this can distinguish between content requiring new translations and content that can be partially or fully translated automatically using translation memory. It was crucial for us to partner with a company offering this, as it will provide significant cost savings overtime.
Use pre-existing technical solutions when possible; build from scratch only when needed
The 1stdibs codebase was internationalized (i18n) using the react-intl library so content can be translated in a scalable way. 1stdibs also implemented other front-end libraries to help format currency and phone numbers for each market. This was a large company-wide undertaking that required re-architecting much of the front-end code base.
Additionally, we built a new piece of back end infrastructure, called the “translation service”, that provides functionality to queue new terms for translation, and look up existing translations from our internal dictionary.
Lastly, to support the MVP, we built a framework to control the visibility of existing features across our non-English sites. This allows us to seamlessly enable features incrementally as they are ready for release on the German site.
There is much more to discuss around technology that merits a follow-up!
Have a localized support plan for each country
Because 1stdibs strives to provide a luxury experience to all buyers, having a plan for localized support is key to the success of our international sites. In the case of the local German site, hiring German speaking support agents, having a local phone number, having localized support hours, and creating a translated support center are important for success.
Allow buyers to pay in their preferred currency
To ensure buyers in our new markets can pay in their currency of choice, we worked with our payment processor and internal finance team to add functionality to charge buyers in pounds and euros, in addition to US dollars. We will be expanding this further to provide support for the pertinent local payment methods for the German market.
Next Steps for 1stdibs
We launched 1stdibs.co.uk for our UK buyers in February and and initial traffic numbers have been promising! We are marching towards the release of our first non-English site in Germany (1stdibs.de) and thereafter in France (1stdibs.fr). While completing features required for launch, we are also budgeting time for additional user research to identify conversion-driving features, and working to hire as much market expertise as possible to ensure we win in these new markets.
To summarize, it was critical to define a narrowly focused site MVP to ensure the project was manageable, to establish a scalable translation management workflow, to employ thoughtful engineering, and to have user-centric operations and marketing plans. These become the foundation of a playbook to be used now and in launching future international sites. Rinse and repeat.
Myself and others will dig in further to some of these topics in future posts. Has your company gone through a similar localization process? Please share with me at adam.handler@1stdibs.com.
Thanks to Lauren Logan & the rest of the 1stdibs’ international team!
