No, this is not another blog post about what content localisation is or how to implement it. You must already have heard and read so much about that by now. 

Rather, this blog article aims to teach you one important tip - that localisation goes beyond words. If you would like to fully benefit from what it offers, such as improved brand image, conversion rates, and increased revenue, then let’s see how you can start acting on it!

Localisation is Everywhere

Localising your own texts is important, there is no denying that. But if you want to be on top of the game and ahead of competition, texts should not be your final stop. 

Pictures, logos, and consumer-generated content all require and deserve your attention because they carry meaning that conveys something to the audience. Content diversity should also be reflected in the way you localise.

The human brain generally absorbs visuals better than any type of information. Pictures are also a main part of social selling, as they play a key role in establishing connections with prospects or relationships with customers. 

Just think about your own habits, don’t you feel more inclined to engage with a company if their social media presence speaks to you?

But you need to be aware that images are culturally filled, so what works in one place might not work in another. The same goes for colours: while in China red is a sign of joy, in Japan it is perceived as aggressive and symbolising anger. 

Another aspect that can set you apart from competition is user-generated content. Did you know that it provides social proof, by making your business seem more trustworthy and open to communication?

Your company is more than you say about it, it is also what others say about it. According to a recent study, customers are more likely to purchase from a website that has customer reviews compared to one that doesn’t, and 88% of the value online reviews just as they would personal recommendations.

Accurately translated and localised reviews can truly make an impact on your business, as you will get to discover in just a bit.

Localisation in Practice

We’ve laid down the facts, we’ve shown you how the theory works. But you know the business world is a lot about practice, so let’s see how actual companies do it. The focus here is on one of our clients, Sinful, a Danish company operating in the e-commerce sex toy industry. When entering a new market, the French one, Sinful had high ambitions regarding their success. They knew that high-quality content localisation is a must in this sense. So that’s what Sinful did, they localised and localised.

Acknowledging how powerful consumers’ voices are, they decided to translate their product reviews on their webshop to French on sinful.fr. The company took the matter into their own hands, as to offer their French prospects the most accurate translation possible. They wanted to instil trust in their products by showcasing numerous customer experiences and creating a sense of an established brand.
Instead of relying on consumers to translate the product catalouge themselves either by using some program or by the linguistic knowledge they have, Sinful made sure to translate it in a professional manner that ensures the right message gets across. By doing so they avoided words with vague meaning or ones that leave a lot of room for misinterpretation.

And their strategy worked, as the company experienced its conversion rate increasing and its profits growing accordingly.

Why Go Big?

There are many ways of localising - you can do it yourself, you can rely on your internal team, or you can use a professional translation and localisation platform for this job.

All of these options work well, depending on what you aim to achieve. 

If your goal is to go big, then using professional translation and localisation services poses the greatest benefits for your company. How so? Because it helps you achieve scalability.

By collaborating with such a platform, you can derive a lot of value from accessing the right tools for this process. And this is highly important when you have a wide and diverse range of items to localise.

Think for example how useful Translation Memory software is since it stores sentences or segments of texts and their translations which you can automatically reuse when translating similar or identical content in your projects. Or consider what Custom Machine Translation can do for your business as it is specially adapted for a certain domain/topic. 

Consequently, this implies that the right amount of time and effort will be dedicated to the translation and localisation process, allowing you to also channel your energy onto the other areas that require it. Hence, you will be able to both save time and increase the quality of your output, which will also positively affect revenues and costs. This is exactly what happened with Sinful.

And don’t worry about the process - it can still be a customised and collaborative one, because most of the time, you have the opportunity to interact with the translators.

Now that both theory and practice have shown you how and why having a variety of localised content works, there is just one question left: are you ready to build your own success story using localisation?