Website Localisation: 7 Tips for Creating A Global-Friendly Website
Going digital and going global are names of the game when you are business competing in this new digital era. A website that caters to consumers’ evolving needs and reaches international customers is no longer a good-to-have, but a must-have. With website localisation, it is more than just hitting the language selector. Adapting your content to the needs of foreign markets is vital if you want to amplify your reach.
Here are a few tips to help you out.
Optimise Content for Multiple Languages
To reach, attract, engage, and market to consumers effectively, your website needs to display content in a language they understand. If your visitors hail from multiple countries and speak different languages, you would need to display your websites in the correct language to continue to be relevant and appealing to them.
Keywords that rank well in local market may not rank well in other markets — and their direct translations might not also. Foreign keyword optimisation and regular content generation are excellent ways for your website to rank high in the organic results of search engines in your target markets, thereby reaching consumers and acquiring unique visitors. For online stores, consumers can easily find your products through online searches if product descriptions are translated into their native language.
Even in terms of design, make sure your text (in all the languages) is tuned to adapt to the website’s layout.
Create Country-Specific Domain
Make your domain name to be country-specific, which is helpful to your global SEO and effectively reach your local customers. For instance, ecommerce sites like Amazon already do this. For the Indian market, they use https://www.amazon.in/ as the URL, while for the US market, it’s https://www.amazon.com/.
When you use country-specific domains, it tells the user that the site is optimised for their region.
Keep Producing Fresh Multilingual Content
Create fresh content specifically for the local markets you are targeting. It can be tempting to just rehash all your old content. However, you need to be relevant and your old content may not resonate with local audiences.
So, your best is to generate new content in the local language. You may even have to create a separate blog for the new market in order to create an authentic experience.
Optimise for Local Searches
A major part of website localisation is keyword localisation. Like we stated earlier, the keywords applicable to one market may not apply to another. People who speak different languages and come from different cultures obviously use different search terms. So, carry out the necessary research and analysis to identify the keywords that work best in the market you’re targeting. In other words, optimise for local searches.
This means localizing your SEO strategy as a whole. When it comes to online visibility, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plays a major role. SEO is what helps your site show up in a Google search result and needless to say the parameters change when you’re optimizing for another market.
The SEO strategies that worked in your home market may not work here. So, you need to rework your strategies. For instance, find out what kind of search terminologies local customers prefer to use and make sure all metadata has been translated and localised.
Optimise for Speed
The loading speed of your website, in general, must be a priority. However, you need to pay greater attention to it when it involves international marketing. You see, the state of internet connectivity varies from place to place. So, see what needs to be fixed and optimised for a fast and smooth user experience.
Localise the checkout process
If you are an ecommerce business, you may already know that the checkout process is where most of the abandonment happens. So, you need to be much more careful when designing the checkout process for international customers. Make sure they’re informed about shipping, associated charges and the value of the product in the local currency. Also, offer multiple payment options.
Reduce the Use of Text in Images
Finally, get rid of text in images. Images with text make website localisation hard because they cannot be translated easily. You have to re-edit the images all over again, which can be expensive and time consuming. So, keep text-embedded images to a bare minimum.
Deploying the website localisation demonstrates that you are an international player. It increases reach, promotes engagement, and improves user experience by breaking the linguistic barriers with your international visitors and buyers. Visitors feel more comfortable navigating websites in their native language. With improved user experience, average time on site increases and online customers are more likely to complete transactions.
