Website localization: 3 effective approaches to multilingual websites

Website localization is a topic that gathers marketing, localization and web development professionals around the same priority: to streamline web content management workflows for multiple languages.

Exploring today’s localization technology's pros and cons, we shed light on how to determine what localization approach works best for your content.

What is website localization?

Simply put, it is the process of refining your website content through culture and language to provide useful and relevant experiences to your users. It involves everything related with preparing your source site for internationalization and the actual management of multilingual content across all your new localized site versions. Some examples are:

• Adjusting layout to multilingual content accommodation (different languages impact content length and the web layout needs to be flexible enough to adjust)
• Assess the need of different images and icons (to ensure they are neutral or adjusted to the local culture)
• Conversion of currency, measures and date formatting for cultural compatibility
• Localization and linguistic testing

Why should you care about website localization?

You probably have many reasons for considering website translation. In today’s global and digital world having a strong digital presence is key to any brand. Regardless to your business or industry, a website is often the first touchpoint between your prospects and your company.

Whether you are focused on online selling or just informing about your products or services, you need to ensure your message is clearly understood by your visitors. This is where localization comes in – as the differentiator in your marketing and sales efforts. Content – and more importantly – localized content is just as important as user experience and design for a conversion-driven website.

Is there a “right way” to approach website localization?

There are three different proven approaches to website localization. While equally effective, you may find one solution that fits your needs and business workflows better than the others do.

1. If you are prioritizing a fast, fully automated solution...

...Then the website translation proxy may be what you’re looking for. Ideal when you want to outsource the entire process and when you are publishing the same pages across multiple languages as a translation proxy creates a mirror version of the source site.

2. If you have regular updates across multiple languages...

...A translation connector may also be an option. These are best suited to high translation volume sites with an in house development team and where granular control over what is published in each language is needed.

3. And last, if you have a small website with minimal updates...

The manual/traditional path will give you granular control for a minimal investment.

Final tip

Whether you are on the cusp of launching your website to new languages or struggling with the current web content translation workflows, we can help you go from local to global.