10 Ways to Make Your Website Localized

The internet is the king in the 21st century, so whatever you do must be found online to make a business out of it. Digitization of your company does a great deal of work for you in almost no time and with relatively little effort. And internationalization, which is very important and becomes extremely trendy for business today, is precisely one of those things. You can go global without even going outside by using the internet. However, to make your website localized successfully, you should consider one critical point: localization.

Why Localization Is the Key to Successful Internationalization

When you go global, you deal with different markets and audiences, which inevitably leads to the need to translate your textual content or otherwise alter your products. This is particularly evident when you internationalize your business online, as you must translate all the digital content on your website and adjust your web advertisements to appeal to the local audience. At this point, localization enters the game.

By taking translation to a whole new level, localization alters your content in the most favorable way you can imagine. Instead of just translating your content online, localization implies that your representation on the web will be altered to look more familiar and relatable to the audience in the given country. For instance, aside from translating the articles and other textual information on your website, the customers can also select their currency, measurement system if applicable, and other elements to essentially make themselves at home.

Make Your Website Localized – 10 Ways to Localized Your Website

So, localization seems like a very reasonable thing to do when entering the international market through the online space. Yet, like almost with everything in this world, localizing a website successfully became a kind of an art form, which requires a specific approach consisting of a number of points to consider and measures to take. Here are some of them.

Do Research

By substantially researching your target country, you can quickly identify the points to aim for, which aspects of your product and representation to alter, and how to speak to your customer. But do not overlook another side of the research: your own business. Think of how and what you can alter to achieve the most balanced and efficient results.

Make All Necessary Technical Preparations

Ensuring your website looks user-friendly enough to manage your content management system is vital for the localization process. It must be considered before you even start going global.

Make Your Website Localized – Work on Your SEO

Optimizing the content of your website prior to localization makes the process itself much less painful and much more efficient. Make sure your content is easily searchable and findable in your original language. This way you’ll be able to do the same for any number of localized versions, thus, boosting the efficiency of your SEO in the first place.

Incorporating local keywords into your content is also essential if you are aiming to capture local market segments. By using location-specific terms, such as city names or regional identifiers, you can effectively target local audiences searching for your products or services. For instance, if your business operates in Los Angeles, integrating local keywords like “Los Angeles,” “LA,” or neighborhood names such as “Santa Monica” or “Beverly Hills” into your content can effectively target users in that specific area. Moreover, engaging the services of a Los Angeles SEO agency can boost your efforts in keyword optimization and overall search engine rankings.

Hire Local Professionals

To make sure your website looks as familiar to your target local audience as possible, hire a specialist who is a part of such an audience. Check out IsAccurate to find a professional that is located in your target country and knows all the specifics perfectly. This will ensure the high quality of localization and will likely be cost-effective.

Use the Latest Technology and Methods

Although localization seems like a very creative type of work, it’s also systematic. So, using translation memory tools and creating glossaries for your localization specialists is more than just a great idea.

Make Your Website Localized – Localize All Types of Content

Don’t stop after localizing just the text. Remember that images, audio, and video clips also bring significant cultural importance and must not be overlooked.

Adapt Your User Interface

Depending on the country you target, the user interface might also be altered to ensure maximum convenience for your customer. For example, if you adapt your website to an Arabic or Hebrew-speaking audience, you might also want to change the orientation of your website from left-to-right to right-to-left. In other cases, you may need to allow your customers to select their language if you’re dealing with a multilingual country like Canada or Switzerland.

Localize in Multiple Directions

Again, don’t stop at localizing just the website. Remember that social media channels are some of the best spots to target. Create a Facebook or Instagram page targeted specifically at the country or region where you want to establish your presence.

Test Your Results

Prior to launching the localized version of your website, make sure that it’s suitable and convenient for the actual audience. The best way to do that is field research, which can be easily and cost-efficiently done utilizing a focus group consisting of your potential customers who have very similar needs and know exactly what they like and what they don’t.

Maintain Your Website Localized

As the initial phase of the localization is over, i.e., your website is fully localized and successfully launched, the localization process doesn’t stop here. To ensure the maximum appeal of your website to the local audience, localization must be maintained. That means that you should constantly update the content on your website, work on possible interface improvements, and so on. If you approach localization appropriately and reasonably, you can make such updates from time to time only, thus hiring freelance specialists and keeping the whole process cost-effective.

Make Your Website Localized – Internationalization Taken Beyond

An appropriate international strategy and localization synergy can do some real magic. If both processes align with each other and get good calculations based on many parameters, they will explode with success. The main idea of a successful localization lies in maintaining the balance between all elements of your business, including the website, and considering as many aspects as possible when making your website appealing and relatable to your audience. So, keep calm, think ahead, always keep learning, and never give up, and success will start following you.