We hear more and more about UX writing. By spreading the word and communicating about its value, product teams have found that hiring a UX writer results in a more consistent, simple, and smooth user experience.
But as you can read in my last article, UX writers must do more than just writing microcopy and product content. As UX writers at Doctolib it’s not just a matter of thinking about content that works in one language. We have 3 languages and cultures to think about.
We also have to ensure that our polished-to-perfection piece of content is working well in other languages with completely different grammatical structures, vocabulary, and cultural sensibilities.
What is localization and why is it important?
Product localization means adapting or modifying a product to a local audience and culture. Many confuse localization with translation. But the truth is, translation is only one part of the process.
To trust and buy a product, it has to look and feel local, too.
According to CSA Research, up to 60% of non-native English speakers rarely or never buy from English-only websites. Users expect a seamless experience and aren’t afraid to abandon their journey immediately if their expectations aren’t fulfilled. For a new target audience to trust and buy a product, it has to look and feel local, too. This includes using local address and date formats, displaying the correct currency, choosing appropriate symbols, and much more.
For an e-health product like Doctolib, localization is not only important, it’s crucial.
Each country has different healthcare systems including different payment, resources, and healthcare services. In Europe, there are as many healthcare systems as there are countries. These differences have to be taken into account by adapting some elements:
- In Italy, we have a personal identification code called “Codice fiscale”. It’s assigned by the authorities based on personal data, such as surname, name, sex, birthplace, region, and date of birth. The code is necessary for any procedure in Italy, for example, to buy a cell phone, open a bank account, book an appointment with a practitioner, and above all it’s required to be able to work. Design and legal teams should work closely: even if it seems easy to improve the user experience by calculating the “Codice fiscale” based on the user data, it’s illegal to do so.
- In France, we have a chip card called “Carte Vitale”. It contains administrative information useful to manage personal healthcare and treatments. This card allows French people to prove their rights to health professionals and to be refunded within 5 days without any formalities.
These elements are essential to access and manage healthcare in Italy and France. And so is their integration in the booking flow at Doctolib.
Our products must be 100% localized. Not just on the surface, but in the UX.
Localization at Doctolib is about carefully refining and adapting content to resonate with each culture and meet local characteristics. For us, it’s essential to let people interact with our product as intuitively as possible by creating a conversational user experience.
Doctolib operates in three countries: France, Germany, and Italy. As neighboring countries in Europe, they have a lot in common, such as the same currency (Euro), date format (DD/MM/YYYY), and script direction (left-to-right).
Still, we have to understand their specific needs and expectations like the date format in Germany, the phone number format in Italy, or even the usage between “vous / tu” in French. This is a crucial part of personalization. It’s not just about calling users by their first name in sales or marketing email communication.
How do we manage the localization process?
Start on the right foot with user research
User research insights help us create a product based on people’s needs and mental processes. Therefore we localize by making informed decisions.
Whether creating a product from scratch or testing and improving a feature, user research is key to avoid a biased product. User research asks users the right questions without pushing them in the desired direction, includes a wide and diverse range of users, and chooses the right methods to test products, such as field trips, surveys, or focus groups.
Thanks to user research, we aim to build a gender-neutral and equal product. Our users don’t have to adapt to our products, but our products have to be adapted to our users’ habits.
When launching a new feature at Doctolib, we help create prototypes from scratch and we participate in user interviews. Based on our findings we iterate and update content before new feature development starts.
We’re testing content in each country where a feature will be launched. If a feature is dedicated to the French market, and won’t be available in Germany or Italy, we would still share our learnings from user research within the UX writing team in order to constantly learn from each other.
It also brings out similarities and differences among the markets: we observed that German users seem to be a little more careful about personal data and security than French users. Even though these insights won’t change each product significantly, it’s still essential that we learn more about our users and how they perceive Doctolib and interact with it.
Share our knowledge using guidelines and glossary
We’re constantly creating guidelines for our Content Design System and localizing some of them, for example with dedicated tabs on how to use date formats and neutral language in French, German and Italian.
We created a glossary that standardizes important and confusing terms. We have the original term in English, and the French, German and Italian terms including a definition. We’re working with other content teams, such as Marketing and Content Strategy, to determine whether cultural sensitivities require changes to product copy or terminology.
Use the right tools with Figma and Phrase
We use two different tools to manage UX content at Doctolib: Figma and Phrase.
We collaborate with product designers on Figma to create flows and a first draft in English, our source language to be aligned within the UX writing team. Our features often have the same flows, but some may differ from one country to another. We take into account users’ habits, market specificities, and localization issues.
When the prototype is refined and the English flow validated by the UX writers, our developers create the English key-source on Phrase. Once this is done we can translate the English keys into different languages.
Each UX writer has their assigned language and every key has its own ticket providing more context about the project. With full access to Phrase we are autonomous and can update keys according to the evolution of the products and the consistency of the terminology.
Managing a multilingual product is a great lesson in empathy from a local point of view. It means to put the user first at every step, understand their needs in order to create a product for all, and then localize the global product according to some more local and specific market needs. Thanks to our proactive approach in design and UX writing we are able to localize our product in a simple and efficient way.
👉 Find out how user research helps us get precious feedback on usability early in the production
👉 Find out why UX Writing is the key to a better user experience
