What is Lean Localization

Lean Localization is the word I created.
It is new style of app development where developers actively localize their apps from early stage of app development.
I came up with this idea back in 4 years ago when I was working on a running app for a famous sports bland.
When we started the development, there were already apps like Nike+ and Run Keeper in App Store. Our app was late comer to the market.
In the beginning, the number of daily downloads were small and not increasing.
After a couple of months, my client asked me to localize the app to German, French, Dutch, German (Switzerland), German (Austria), French (Switzerland), French (Belgium), and Dutch (Belgium).
At that time, I thought it’s better to make more features which were in our To-Do list instead, but my client put more priority on the localization so I did it.
After releasing the update, I saw the number of downloads started increasing in Europe. Moreover, the number of downloads started increasing in the US and Japan for which we had provided language support from version 1.0 release.
From this experience I got an assumption that localizing app to various languages from early stage of the app development might make good impact on user acquisition and help you further with business development.

In this Publication, I will share information, know-how and experiences of localizing apps from early stage.