Would you buy a product in a language you don’t speak? Although English is the most spoken language in the world, 40% of consumers won’t buy from e-commerce websites in non-native languages (that’s roughly 1 billion of the 2.64 billion global online buyers).
To increase sales and brand awareness on international marketplaces, translating product content is a must, but ‘localisation’ is not limited to linguistics. From currencies and cultural context to pricing and partnerships, brands should implement a localisation strategy that enhances international marketplace performance. Here’s how.
Not all marketplaces are equal. Depending on your product and sales strategy, some international marketplaces will be more important to your business than others. By analysing current marketplace performance and using SEO tools like Helium10 to discover which marketplaces are driving traffic in target regions, you should create a shortlist of marketplaces to prioritise. For example:
75% of customers prefer buying products in their native tongue, but how do you decide what that is? In the 27 EU states, there are 24 official languages. In the US, English accounts for 78% of buyers’ first language, but this varies state-by-state (i.e. Spanish is the first language for over a quarter of the population in the two most populous states, California and Texas).
When deciding on a localisation strategy, it’s crucial you factor in minority languages in each region too.
Marketing is not homogenous: what works in one country doesn’t necessarily hit the target in another. As a brand, you will want your core USPs - i.e. eco-conscious sourcing and highest-quality materials - to stand out in each market, but you also need to adapt your content to cultural contexts. In particular, this includes market-appropriate titles, product descriptions and images.
SEO doesn’t recognise international borders, but it does vary from country to country. To get your products in front of as many qualified customers as possible, you need to optimise your content for the local context. For example:
Localisation doesn’t end with product content. With the sales side complete, it’s time to turn your attention to marketing and customer success.
Be it paid content on social media, deals on your e-commerce site or even an advertising campaign on the marketplace itself, it’s important to take into account local context with your marketing efforts. This could be using adverts with local slang and references to local traditions or choosing direct or more nuanced advertising depending on consumer expectations and marketing regulations.
What’s more, your customer support should be set up for different time zones and preferences. Can you offer 24/7 support to the United States’s six time zones (four in the contiguous US)? If your team is based overseas from some markets and only working local business hours, consider the ramifications that will have with customer service questions and actions like refunds. Make sure you do not offer a poor experience or damage channel response time KPI’s simply because of a timezone miss-match.
At eManaged, we not only provide a bespoke service to help brands identify the right international marketplaces for their products, but we also offer numerous services to help with localisation, including brand management, transcreation, translation and performance localisation.
Get in touch to see how we can help with your localisation strategy.