If you followed our recent website posts, you probably have known that setting up a website is important for the long-term success of your business. You also find the answer to what you should do next, i.e. making sure that the content should be of high quality. These two combinations as well as with other technical solutions, such as SEO, attractive web design, unique fonts, and clear call-to-action will boost your company visibility. It will make your website attractive to readers, potential employees, potential clients, and potential project owners. The exposure will finally results in more jobs coming in.
With now the world being a global village, you may consider to bring your business to the market with the highest growth. Take for example you want to market your products to South East Asia. To penetrate to this promising region, you will consider communicating it to unique dynamic and young audience of SEA. However, using your language may not be effective. You may wonder why.
The simple answer to that question is that not everyone speaks your language. They do not also live in the culture you’re in. However, the real-life situation is usually much more complicated than that and the reason why one needs to localize your website may differ from one person/business to another. The bottom line is, if you are considering localizing, you want your website to be read by more people. And as we have previously discussed, getting more audience is important regardless of your line of business.
Some people are content with the English-only website. To some degree, that’s fine because English is THE international language. And yet, if you really want to get closer with your audience, to speak the language they truly understand, you need to localize your website. Localization is not similar to translation. In fact, translation is just the first step in the localization process. You still need to adapt everything else (i.e. images, videos, text, color scheme, etc.) culturally so that it’s appropriate for your new audience. Next, you have to make sure that all the small bits such as time, currency, measurement, prices, etc. suit the locals. That sounds like a lot of works, so why people even bother to localize their site? Here’s why
To Foster Respect and Trust
Your website, as your online address, represents you or your business. Every visitor is a guess. If you can make their visit personal, you will gain their trust. The easiest way to make them feel welcome is by speaking their language. Great your visitors with their mother’s tongue correctly and appropriately and you will earn their respect. This also shows that you care enough about them.
To Maintain Brand Consistency
When localizing your website, you have to adapt to the local’s culture. That may involve changing your brand’s signature color, logo, pricing, and many more. Those are major changes that need to be done to penetrate a new market. At a glance, that would seem to make your brand less consistent. However, if you leave your website as is (i.e. not localizing it), that will make it open to translation, which eventually leads to less consistent branding. When you enter a new market, some changes are bound to happen and it’s best that you make those changes yourself so you can maintain the best possible brand consistency.
To Get More Exposure
Localization is a holistic effort to present your website with a new, completely different audience. It requires a painstaking effort to migrate the existing content into the new one. It means that you’re obliged to localize not only the visible part but also the hidden element too. For instance, you have to change your content’s metadata, hreflang, tags, and so on into the target language. These unseen works are no less important, serving as your website’s invisible tool to get more exposure via better online search results. Now people can find your website through organic search in various languages.
To Drive Better Engagement
Your website is a great place for you to interact with your audience/customers. In some cases, it doesn’t even need personal touch because your customers can consult the FAQ, Your Privacy Policy, or Terms of Service. If you really want to get better engagement with your audience, you can have an interactive conversation on your website in their native language. It takes more manpower and thus costs, but it is valuable to strengthen your customer loyalty.
Localization is a difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and overall laborious processes. It is a daunting work to adapt your website appropriately into a new culture, language, and customer behavior. The good news is it is doable despite it may be daunting. And if you do it right, you’ll reap a massive reward that strengthens the growth of your business.
