A website is the most important tool to expand business globally. In a fast pacing market, the information about your product and services has to be disseminated to your potential customers. In a globalized marketing trend, it is important to make the information customized for your customer base. Around 75% of your customer base is attracted by the products available in their native language, and hence giving you an edge over them.
Multilingual website increases your market presence and makes connecting with a diverse customer base easier. One should keep in mind certain tips before opting for a website translation, and be ready with a tailor made plan for their business.
These are the top practices a website owner must follow to get optimum results from professional translation services.
1. Right approach
Every business works on different products, scales and target audience. Depending on this diverse categorization, different approaches can be utilized to translate a website. Apart from the regular battle of choosing website translation through AI or human, one must also consider the best suitable approach for them. You can opt for the following by looking at their pros and cons:
Full website translation
This approach is usually opted by high budget businesses. It is a comprehensive approach that translates the entire website including the text and images in multiple languages. It is the most recommended approach, as it makes the website truly user friendly.
Pros :
- User Friendly
- Easily accessible
Cons :
- Expensive
- Time consuming
- Not suitable for small business
Mini translated sites
It is a great tool for small businesses that guarantees high quality professional translations. Unlike spending huge budget on full website translation, or compromising with the quality of translation using AI, this is a safer option.
Pros
- Keeps budget under check
- Professional translation
- Provides key information in multiple languages
Cons
- Multiplicity of in-bound links and pages
- Some information remains in original language
Automated AI translation
This is a fast option that is being utilized by small businesses with generic information on website. It uses AI Plugins like Google translate, and immediately translates the website into users language of choice. However such translations are often under scrutiny due to their lack of context.
Pros:
- Minimum cost
- Fast
- Easy translation in multiple languages
Cons:
- Poor quality
- Risk of mistranslation
- Context less translations
2. Not just translation
A website translation alone would not become beneficial unless, it is accompanied by localization. The visual content, design and layout should is also an essential part in expanding business reach. With website localization services your website becomes adaptable to cultural nuances of a place.
When your customers find a website in their native language, that is also respectful towards their culture and adapts to their digital requisites, they develop a sense of trust and are ready to invest in a long term relationship.
3. Customer service/ accessibility
The key to establish brand trust through website is creating best user experience. The customer going through your website must get easy access to translated pages; you must strategies your design and layout in such a way that not just the content but the visual aspect also provides maximum translated language comprehension.
Your CTA should be available in such a way that it can be easily comprehended by non-English speakers. A website with multilingual translation should tend to the needs of both native and non-native speakers.
4. Brand message
It’s important to keep one’s brand message and objectives intact in all languages of translation. Certain approaches to translation might leave you in a pickle, where your brand message gets lost in the translation.
To stay away from this risk, it’s important to use professional translation and localization services. While doing so one must also keep in mind the cultural nuances of the targeted demography, your brand should not portray anything that may hurt the cultural sentiments of your targeted customers
5. Research
Before opting for foreign language translation services, you should do a thorough research on the languages that are best suited for your business. Here is a list of top 10 languages for Website translation that may narrow down your research.
You should know about the functionality of the translation languages you choose, it’s better to invest in a few relevant languages instead of using translation in multiple irrelevant languages. The website translation services follow language trend, targeted customers, targeted demographics, and cultural diversity.
6. Promotion
Development and outreach are important aspects of marketing a website. A multilingual website has to be promoted amongst the users to get your website on the search pages. You can understand more about it through our digital marketing services, where our team strategizes your content to help you get ahead in the Search Engine Ranking.
7. Professional help
A successful business always invests in professional services, instead of putting extra burden on their core team. There are a number of service providers who work on providing a wide range of web services like translation, localization, SEO content creation, digital marketing etc.
Such content solution is time efficient and saves money in the long run. Professional service providers cater to all your translation and localization needs making your websites easily accessible.
8. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the first and foremost aspect of any webpage, it helps you get higher ranking on Search Engines. Your original content might have efficient SEO, but during the process of translation, it does not get the same attention. Technical SEO, Local Keyword Optimization in multilingual translation help your website get on front page of Google result.
9. Legal issues
Websites aren’t bound to a particular space and hence their legal compilations have to be adjusted according to the legal diversity in different regions or countries. Depending on the nature of business, a website has to comply with local regulations and restrictions. It is important to understand and present these clauses and regulations in accurate native language.
10. Layout
An efficient website is one that provides best user experience. This goal can be achieved by considering the language and design preferred by your potential customers. Content translation in different language may also increase or decrease the character numbers and spacing on a website significantly, your site should be able to adapt to these changes without hampering the layout. The images used should also be reviewed for regional and cultural sensitivities, and should be placed properly to get best results.
