Once, it was considered very difficult to expand the business across the borders. At present, due to the advancement in digital technology, you can expand your business in any region in which you want to. Digitalization has led to rapid growth in e-commerce. Moreover, it has changed the entire way of doing business. If you are manufacturing products in China, then you can display and sell your products in different regions of the world. You must be wondering how. For this, first, you have to move from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce and translate your website into the language of the target market.
Market Dynamics in 2021
Coronavirus has hit the world badly. We lost many lives. Moreover, people have gone through financial turmoil. Many global companies downsized to meet their cost. To mitigate the spread of this lethal disease, many companies asked their employees to work from home. Moreover, people are restricted to their homes. To survive in the world, people require to fulfill their physiological needs, but how when different countries have levied lockdown. Markets and shops are closed. Here, the companies that have translated their website have taken leverage from this market situation.Â
People view different websites and make their purchases from the website which is translated into their native language. Interestingly, in 2021, the number of digital buyers increased up to two million. E-commerce has changed the market dynamics completely. After the unprecedented year-commerce will stay in the market for long.
We are living in a fast-paced world, the companies that don’t adapt themselves to new market situations will lag. Digitalization and globalization are shaping the future of eCommerce. Website translation in the e-commerce industry provides a lucrative opportunity for entrepreneurs to take advantage of. Â
Approximately, a whopping 7139 languages are spoken around the world. According to one of the surveys, 70% of people tend to buy products and services from a website that is in their native language. Therefore, e-Commerce website translation provides a great opportunity to global businesses to boost their sales and earn revenue.
Why is e-Commerce Website Translation Important?
Each entrepreneur likes to expand and grow their business. In this era of globalization, online sales are increasing tremendously. It is expected that it will reach 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022. If you are a small entrepreneur doing well in your niche, then probably, you will wish to take your business to the next level. For this, e-commerce provides you with a platform to expand your business across borders. Do you know that retail e-commerce sales worldwide are 4.28tr USD, and it is expected that the share of total global retail sales will be 21.8% in 2024?
Let’s get some more inspiration; the top global brands of the world like IKEA, Nike, and Amazon have their multilingual eCommerce websites. Their brands didn’t get recognition overnight. They translated their websites into multiple languages that made them a trusted and successful brand in the international market.
One of the noteworthy examples is the iconic Amazon.com. Amazon was a local book store once. It became a global store with the help of an eCommerce platform through translation and localization. Apart from its range of products, it provides a native shopping experience to its international clients. This is because they have translated the website into multiple languages and provide innovative mobile apps according to the requirements of the potential consumers. In short, to survive in a competitive world, you require a solid platform that enables you to translate the website into multiple languages to reach a global audience.
Assume, yourself as a customer, you will browse a website that is in their language. If you are unable to understand the language, then you will prefer to open another site that you can understand. Â Do you know that language is more important for consumers than price? Â So why not take the assistance of a translation company to attract potential customers.
Expands Customer Base
Have you ever thought about why hotels have welcome notes in different languages? This is because they want to be polite and friendly. Moreover, in this way, they can attract many people that want them on board. Â They know the fact that the language barrier is a great obstacle, so they have to mitigate it by speaking the language of potential customers. Â The digital world is no different from it. Social media, websites, app, and other digital communication should be available in multiple languages. In this way, your e-commerce store reaches and attracts potential customers not in the local region but all around the world. Â This is one of the most important benefits of eCommerce website translation and eCommerce localization.
Entrepreneurs have to face many problems when they decide to tap into foreign markets because they also have to compete with local business players. No matter, if you provide great services and your customer services are very efficient, even then local and regional big stores are your rivals. You need to provide potential customers with a great shopping experience. For this, you must go beyond. Local stores have priority over foreign stores.
Native Language: They are born in the same region. Therefore, they speak the language of the customers.
Knowledge about Consumer Behavior:  They know the customers’ likes and dislikes and provide services accordingly.
Gain Trust of the Customers: By providing services to the customers according to their preferences, they have developed their trust over a long period.
The best part of e-commerce website translation is that it gives the native feeling to the browsers. Translation and localization services make them realize that the website is designed for them. They feel more welcome and respected because their regional and cultural nuances are considered. Â Thus, it results in growing your customer base.
Establishes Good Public Image
E-commerce translation not only helps you to reap profits, but it also establishes a good public image of your brand. The objective of every business is to earn profit. Therefore, if you invest in the translation and localization of the website, then it will bear many benefits for you. It shows that you give value to your potential customers, Moreover, it also shows that you are serious and professional in your business.  At present, consumers are more aware than before. They check similar websites and read customers' reviews before making a rational buying experience. In short, reviews help to increase your company’s image and enhance sales. However, this happens when reviews are positive. In case, if reviews are not positive, it damages the image of the company and result in a loss of sales. Therefore, in the world of digitalization, apart from translating the product description and promotion, it is also significant to translate the reviews. In this way, global customers will trust your brand and purchase products and services from your company.
How to Go for Website Translation
If you use best practices in the website translation, then it will make the tedious task easy. Moreover, you will come up with state-of-the-art website translation systematically without any hassle. Let’s have a how-to translate a website in the best way.
Start with the 5 Most Spoken Languages
English is a lingua franca. Therefore, it is imperative to have your site in English. However, apart from English, you must translate a website into four other most spoken languages, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic. No doubt that English can reach more potential customers but to grab a market share, you cannot ignore other languages. Chinese is spoken by 1.117 million speakers; Spanish is spoken by 534 million people. Additionally, Arabic is spoken by 274 million people. With these statistics, you can easily decide which language to go for to reach maximum potential customers. Moreover, you can add other languages to reach a broader demographic. There are around a whopping 7139 languages spoken around the world but do you know that only 23 languages are spoken by the population of the world?
Go for SEO Optimization
Before going for website translation, you must do different types of analysis on your online website. This analysis will guide you on how you can increase traffic on your site. It guides you about a keyword that people use to search the specific products and services on Google and the search engine of their choice. Surely, you must have done this analysis in your native language but to enhance website reach you must hire a team of experts to look for keywords in several languages so that you can start with website translation systematically.
Pay Special Attention to Customer Support
Some people think that website translation is about the translation of landing pages only and the translation of product descriptions and menus. Do you know that in the digital world, bugs can appear at any time? So, customer service is very important. As per the survey of HubSpot, 60% of customers become upset after an unpleasant business experience, so they decide to stop buying products from that company. On the other hand, 50% of the customers that get good customer service continue their business with the same company.
This is indeed a big number. Customer support is not a luxury but, to succeed in the fierce global competition, is the best way to make your business successful. It matters to the customer that if they write a complaint in their native language, and they get an instant solution in the same language. In the pursuit of website translation, it is achieved in several ways. You can hire a multilingual staff so that they can cater the complaints in multiple languages. Moreover, you should make available the customer services 24/7. If you automate all your processes, then providing customer services for 24 hours becomes possible.
According to Van Belleghem in his brilliant paper, The Self-Serving Economy shows that 70% of customers would like to find the solution to their problem themselves instead of placing a former query at customer services. This is a global phenomenon. For an e-commerce business, you can develop a page with Frequently Asked Questions or even make a multilingual chatbot. The chatbot will help you with the following things.
- Assists them in simple issues.
- Helps visitors to use resource material like blogs.
- Helps in making a website design in such a way that it becomes easy to navigate.
- Improves customer engagement with the website.
The important thing to note is that going into a chatbox and FAQ page translation is an effective strategy to mitigate the communication barriers.
Develop a System of Multilingual Reviews
Although machine translation can manage a large amount of data in a fast turnaround time. Still, it is not encouraged because it causes misunderstandings. It may help you in starting the website translation process in no time. In the world of e-commerce, you must be looking for this. For example, it is very beneficial for user reviews. Translation of the reviews manually seems rational, but it is not a realistic approach. Machine translation will assist you in loading reviews on your website in any language. Moreover, it translates into whatever language other customers are currently reading. Â If you prefer quality, then the truth is that you cannot achieve 100% quality from machine translation. It does not mean that machine translation always provides poor quality. If machine translation is combined with post-editing, then it will come up with the best quality results. Because machine translation will increase the speed and linguistic touch will give it a professional touch.
Hire ECommerce Translation Experts
If you want to translate a website, then do hire a professional translation agency. They have a team of native translators that are born in the same region. Therefore, while translating the content in multiple languages, they also consider cultural and regional intricacies. One of the advantages of hiring a translation company is that they also work on desktop publishing so that the text and the localized ideas are adjusted accordingly. Additionally, they work on SEO to position websites high in search engine results. To get impeccable e-commerce translation services, you have to open up a translation agency. They will ask you several questions, and you must provide the relevant information to translation project managers so that they can develop their translation strategy. The more you provide them with information, the more they understand your business. Their understanding of business will enable them to provide you with seamless e-commerce translation services to all the problems that might occur during the process.
Wrapping Up:
Are you ready to invest in e-commerce translation services? It is a need of the hour. You can easily expand your business outside the borders if you try to communicate with the customers in a language that they understand. One of the most important perks of e-commerce translation is that you can cater to any region with ease. It will save your traveling and space costs that you can invest in other parts of the business.
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