Expanding your website’s reach to international audiences can be a game-changer for your business. With over 75% of consumers preferring to buy products from websites in their native language, translating your site isn’t just a courtesy—it’s a necessity. Poor translation of your website can alienate users, hurt your brand’s reputation, and lead to missed sales opportunities. But when done correctly, website translation enables you to connect meaningfully with global audiences, boost your search visibility, and grow your revenue.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know when it comes to translating your website effectively. From identifying your audience to localisation strategies, SEO, and beyond, we’ll break everything down in 7 simple steps to help you expand your business into global markets.
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
Before you begin translating, you need to know exactly who you’re targeting. Are you expanding into a specific country, region, or demographic? Defining your target audience is critical to choosing the right languages and tailoring your website’s messaging.
Here’s what you need to consider:
- Market-Specific Trends: Markets from different countries will have different consumer behaviours and preferences. Researching these thoroughly will allow you to align your content strategy accordingly, in order to get you both more leads and more traffic to your website.
- Languages & Dialects: A single language can vary significantly across regions. For instance, Spanish spoken in Mexico differs from the Spanish spoken in Spain. Similarly, Arabic is widely spoken but has significant dialectical differences across the Arabic-speaking countries.
- Cultural Preferences: Understand the local culture to ensure that your content resonates. For example, certain colours, images, or phrases may have different connotations in different regions.
Step 2: Define Your Localisation Strategy
Translating your website isn’t just about converting the text from one language to another. There’s a lot more at play when it comes to targeting foreign online markets, as it’s not just the language that changes, but the culture, customs, and norms are different too. Most of the difficulty when it comes to translating your website comes from this process, which we call localisation.
Translation vs Localisation: Translation converts text from one language to another, but localisation adapts the content to the cultural, linguistic, and regulatory nuances of your target market. Localisation ensures that your website doesn’t just read well—it feels native to your new audience, ensuring natural and seamless engagement for foreign users. Without localisation, it’s usually very easy to tell that your website was originally meant for another market. And that could make the user feel less inclined to browse your website.
Key localisation elements include:
- Legal Compliance: Legal regulations will usually be different in other countries. Align with local regulations like GDPR in Europe or CCPA in California for data collection.
- Currencies & Dates: Adapting currencies and date formats is an essential step when it comes to localising your website for local standards (e.g., DD/MM/YYYY in the UK vs. MM/DD/YYYY in the US).
- Cultural Sensitivities: When translated literally, certain phrases or idioms may have a completely different meaning in another language. Tailoring content to avoid cultural faux pas, for example, avoiding using certain hand gestures or phrases that may be offensive in other cultures is an important step to keep in mind when translating your website.
Step 3: Choose the Right Tools and Team
The success of your project depends on having the right people and tools in place. Here’s how to decide:
- In-House vs Outsourcing: In-house teams offer full control but may lack expertise. Translation agencies or freelance linguists like us here at LITS provide specialised skills to ensure the job is done to its best possible standard and, as a result, will be pricier.
- Translation Management Systems (TMS): Online tools like Lokalise, Crowdin, or Weglot streamline translation workflows by managing content, automating processes, and ensuring consistency, making them essential for maintaining quality and efficiency in multilingual projects.
- Native Translators: Always work with native speakers for accuracy and cultural relevance. For technical content or content that requires any type of specialised knowledge, always reach out to a translation company with native speakers that have the required qualifications to ensure your technical, legal, or medical content is accurate and precise.
if you’re feeling ready to get started with translating and localising your website, get in touch with us today for a free quote or to discuss your requirements.
Step 4: Translate the Website Content
This step involves translating all relevant sections of your website. Proper planning and execution will ensure your content resonates with your target audience and performs well on search engines.
- Checkout Pages: Localise payment options and forms to improve conversion rates. For instance, mobile money payments are popular in many African countries, whereas PayPal dominates in the West, so make sure the correct payment options are in place for an intuitive and seamless experience for your userbase.
- Product Pages: For product pages you want to ensure that product descriptions both are clear to read and culturally appropriate, ensuring your target users have an easy time navigating your webpages.
- SEO Content: Work with SEO specialists to optimise content for local search engines. For instance, Baidu dominates in China while Yandex is popular in Russia. Use local keyword research tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to identify high-ranking keywords in your target market.
Step 5: Localise Visuals and Multimedia
Your website’s visuals—images, videos, animations, and infographics—are just as crucial as the text when it comes to localisation. Neglecting this aspect can lead to content that feels out of place, reducing trust and engagement with your audience.
Key Areas to Focus On:
- Layout Adaptation: Languages like Arabic (read from right to left) or German (with longer phrases) can alter your site’s visual structure. Adjust your layout to ensure clarity and usability.
- Culturally Relevant Imagery: Replace generic stock images with visuals that resonate with your target audience. For example, imagery that aligns with local traditions, dress codes, or lifestyle can create a deeper connection.
- Embedded Text: Translate text embedded in visuals or videos to ensure nothing is overlooked. Subtitles, captions, and voiceovers must also be carefully localised to maintain accuracy and tone.
Step 6: Test and Launch
Before launching your translated website, thorough testing is essential to ensure everything is working as it should.
Key Testing Steps:
- Payment Systems and UX: If applicable, test local payment methods and ensure forms follow regional conventions like address or phone number formats.
- Layout and Device Compatibility: Confirm that your layout adjusts properly across different languages and devices. Ensure no broken elements due to text expansion or direction changes.
- Accuracy Check: Verify that all translations and visuals align with cultural and linguistic norms.
- SEO Validation: Test SEO performance to ensure optimised meta tags, keywords, and alt text are tailored to local search engines.
Step 7: Continuously Optimise
Your work doesn’t end at the launch. There’s tools you can and should be using to regularly monitor your website’s performance such as:
- Analytics Tools: Use Google Analytics or similar platforms to monitor key metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and conversion rates for each language. These insights help identify what’s working and what needs improvement.
- SEO Tracking: Monitor keyword rankings and visibility in each market using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush.
- User Feedback: Actively gather feedback from local users to identify pain points and improve user experience.
It’s important to use analytics tools to monitor key metrics like these for your website and business, as they provide valuable insights into what strategies are performing well and what areas need improvement. Without analysing these metrics, you’re essentially operating blindly, like throwing darts in the dark and hoping for the best. Conducting thorough analytics research is particularly crucial when entering foreign markets, as it enables you to identify underperforming aspects and make data-driven adjustments to optimise results and drive better outcomes. Ultimately leading to more traffic to your website and more sales for your business.
Can’t I Just use Google Translate?
While Google Translate is useful for quick and rough translations, it is not a viable solution for professional websites. Automated tools often fail to capture the cultural nuances, idiomatic expressions, and tone required to engage your audience effectively. Literal translations can distort your message, misrepresent your brand, or even lead to errors that may alienate your target market.
For businesses, precision and cultural relevance are essential. Human translators bring a depth of understanding that ensures your content is not only accurate but also resonates with your audience. This includes adapting things like technical terminology, legal language, and marketing messages to suit the expectations of each specific region.
At LITS, we go beyond basic translation. Our team of native-speaking, industry-specialised translators delivers culturally nuanced, SEO-optimised website translations that maintain the integrity of your brand while connecting you with global markets.
Why Choose LITS for Localisation and Website Translation Services?
Translating your website is a strategic investment in reaching global audiences. By defining your audience, crafting a localisation strategy, and testing rigorously, you can create a seamless experience for users worldwide. At LITS, we make this process effortless and effective by offering:
- Expert Linguists: Our team of native-speaking professionals ensures translations that are both accurate and culturally relevant.
- Tailored Localisation Strategies: We customise every project to meet the unique needs of your target market and business goals.
- Extensive Experience: With over 25 years in the industry, LITS has the expertise to deliver seamless, high-quality localisation and website translation services that drive results.
If you’re ready to expand your website’s reach into global markets, Contact us today for expert website translation and localisation services designed to connect your business with audiences worldwide.