Since the first online retail e-commerce transaction in 1994 until the present day, with massive e-commerce giants such as Amazon and eBay, e-commerce has become a large part of today’s economy. Over the years, e-commerce has also become increasingly multinational and globalized. This phenomenon underscores the importance of e-commerce translations for multilingual stores.
In order to maximize a business’s success operating in an international e-commerce environment, making use of the latest in data analytics to learn more about (and more effectively target) potential customers is one important part. Secondly, businesses need to replicate the sense that customers are actually shopping in a “brick and mortar” shop in their own country. In other words, the shopping and buying experience should be as similar to what they would experience from a local company, in their own language.
In fact, in a Common Sense Advisory survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, the Common Sense Advisory found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language.
While e-commerce translations for multilingual stores is a key part in this process, “translation” itself represents only one piece of this puzzle. The complete and most effective solution to building a truly successful e-commerce store that effectively targets international markets and customers is to implement a front-to-end e-commerce localization solution, which goes beyond simply translating the content in your e-commerce store.
What is E-Commerce Localization?
E-Commerce localization is about more than just translating product descriptions, blogs, reviews, and other types of content found on an e-commerce store. A front-to-end localization solution focuses not only on e-commerce translations for the store’s content, but also, it’s branding. By localizing your branding, you are much more likely to engage international markets and potential customers.
For example, what color schemes and images are you using on the Spanish-language subdomain of your e-commerce store? Simply put, they should not be the same as those on your English-language e-commerce store. Colors may implicate different feelings and emotions in other cultures. Not to mention, images depicting Americans, in an American cultural setting, will not engender the same sense of familiarity and connectiveness with a Latin American audience.
A localization solution will not only take these design elements into account in developing a localization strategy, but also other factors, such as local/regional laws and regulations, date-time formats, and currency conversions. To continue our example of a Latin American audience, the date-time format should be written using DD/MM/YY (i.e., 16/10/21 for October 16th, instead of 10/16/21 in the United States).
Not to mention, to support your multilingual e-commerce stores, you will, of course, need multilingual chat applications and customer service support to respond to emails (and even phone calls), and constant updates to the site. These updates include everything from social media postings, blog posts, new products and/or services, and more. Continually updating and enhancing your e-commerce store is important to keeping your content fresh and engaging (and also plays an important role in Search Engine Optimization), where “content is (still) king.”
A front-to-end localization solutions takes all the above factors that we have been discussing into consideration.
What is the E-Commerce Localization Process?
For businesses looking for translations for multilingual stores, it is helpful to understand the translation and localization process. On the front-end, the process begins when you send your website files to your preferred language service provider (LSP). At this point, a professional localization project manager typically sends a brief questionnaire/checklist to be completed. This questionnaire is used to confirm important details about your project. These details include the language pair(s) and direction (i.e., English to Spanish, English to Chinese, Arabic to English, etc.).
The questionnaire also will usually ask about any graphical elements that may need to be localized, either translating the text and/or replacing with more culturally appropriate graphics for your intended target audience(s). You will also need to clarify other details, such as whether to leave certain information (e.g., company names and other proper nouns) in the source language. Moreover, if you have video files on your website, do you want to keep the videos in English and add foreign language subtitles, or would you prefer foreign language voice over? Do you have any downloadable brochures on your website that also need to be translated? These are just some of the questions you will need to be prepared to answer.
Upon completion of the pre-project analysis, your project manager will provide a quote based on an analysis of the files you provide, and the information shared in the pre-project questionnaire/ checklist. Then, once the quote has been approved, the project manager will assign the project to the best translator(s) and editor(s) available based on subject matter expertise. The content is then translated, edited, and proofread in a comprehensive, multi-step Quality Control Process (QCP), before being re-imported into the original website files.
At this stage, additional quality control involves checking that none of the website code has been affected, and the site will then be uploaded to a secure test server so that post-localization Quality Assurance (QA) can be conducted by both automated QC tools and human QC specialists. Finally, at the end of this process, the final localized files are returned to the client for a final review and approval.
At Translation Source, we are experts in providing e-commerce translations for multilingual stores in more than 100 languages and dialects. Our team of expert project managers, localization engineers, translators, editors, and QC specialists are among the best in the business and have completed hundreds of complex localization projects. While the process described above may seem daunting to some, our dedicated project managers will guide you through every step of the process.
Once the initial project is completed, we can also assist with developing an efficient, fast, and cost-effective plan for making updates to your site. Furthermore, we can even assist with multilingual Search Engine Optimization (SEO), multilingual customer support, translating customer contact requests, and much more. In this way, Translation Source truly provides a “one-stop-shop” for all of your e-commerce translation and localization needs.
If you would like to learn more about Translation Source’s expert e-commerce translation services for your multilingual store, please email us at info@translation-source.com or call us toll-free at (800) 413-7838 to speak with one of our translation project managers.
