Great products, attractive deals and good translations of your offers. Isn’t this strategy a recipe for rocking international ecommerce markets? Won’t it guarantee you will attract thousands of foreign buyers to your online store?
Far from it! Ecommerce life is not that easy.
Of course, your offers should be translated properly and should advertise great products. But this is just the beginning. There are a few other aspects of ecommerce translation and localization that must be taken care of.
These are, among other things, currency and size conversion, local marketing & SEO as well as communication with foreign buyers.
What is successful ecommerce translation & localization and which keywords will sell your product? How to make your offers easy to find on international markets? Karolina Kulach, Content Specialist from Webinterpret, provides some insight into these (ecommerce-)mind-boggling questions.
Translation is just part of the international ecommerce journey
To sell online internationally, merchants need a well-thought-out localization strategy. It goes beyond submitting briefs to translation agencies or using standard automated translation.
For starters, let’s emphasize that translation focuses only on the language aspect. A broader term is localization.
Localization is more complex and encompasses all processes needed for preparing your online store for international sales growth. It involves many impactful aspects, for instance:
- translation of listings
- converting prices into the buyer’s currency
- creating conversion tables
- creating customized translations for specific categories and brands
- considering country, culture or even merchant-specific contexts.
To grow your sales, make it easy for international buyers to find your products. Customize your SEO strategies. For example, American and British buyers may both speak English, but use different keywords (e.g. trousers vs. pants) in search boxes, browsing for the same product.
If you fail to recognize such differences, you may lose some good sales: your product may not be found!
Keywords are here to sell your products
When taking care of ecommerce localization, think like a potential buyer and trust big data. The best dictionary translations may not correspond with keywords people use when browsing for products.
Consider this example. Das Handy, the translation of a mobile phone from English into German, although super correct, may not be the best word to use in your listings.
The reason being, Germans are likely to enter other keywords to buy a mobile, e.g. smartphone, Android or iPhone.
A word can make or break your sales deal, however fantastic a product or price you may offer.
Which keywords will bring more sales?
Let’s take this example. According to our big data analysis, on eBay UK the item described as fancy dress in the Fancy Dress & Period Costume category is likely to have a 250% bigger chance of being sold compared to the item described as costume.
Can such information make a difference to your conversion rates? You bet!
Keywords in titles are exceptionally important. After all, you have about 2 seconds to grab a potential buyer’s attention and the title should be an attractive and welcoming gate to your offer. Also, keep words commonly used on ecommerce platforms and domain-specific vocabulary in your titles.
Additionally, bear in mind that translated titles may be of different lengths. For instance, German words/sentences tend to be much longer compared to English so you may have to drop a word or two.
Successful ecommerce translation & localization
If successful, i.e. growing your sales, ecommerce translation & localization is your objective, don’t waste your time and resources on breathtakingly correct listing translations.
You don’t localize to prove there’s a bunch of linguists behind every text you produce. You localize to grow your sales.
Successful ecommerce localization will help to sell your products. It will make your products easy to find on foreign markets. That’s not part of the value proposition of translation agencies.
It’s crucial to investigate which keywords are searched for most often in given categories, among particular audiences and cultures and which keywords generate most sales.
This kind of analysis has helped thousands of Webinterpret’s customers grow their online sales to unprecedented levels.
We check how particular words (e.g. trousers vs. pants) and their synonyms correlate with generating revenue on particular markets. We examine millions of titles to check which title sells and which words we can drop.
We translate product offers, applying the search terms that buyers enter in search boxes. We also use the amazing developments in AI to build our automatic ecommerce-oriented solution.
We translate and localize your products so that the relevant buyer finds them and decides to order from you. If this happens, translation and localization is considered successful.
In a nutshell
Selling online internationally successfully goes beyond your product offer and the language aspect.
In fact, what international online sellers need is full ecommerce localization. Some big data analysis will also help to understand which keywords are effective with ecommerce buyers on specific marketplaces.
The great news is that thanks to today’s technology, there’s no need to guess. You can optimize your online sales strategy and ecommerce translation in a conscious way that has proven successful with thousands of online sellers.
The best recipe for ecommerce translation and localization? Forget about linguistic purism, take into account the ecommerce context and the buyer’s perspective. And do it in a way that sells!
Author’s Bio:
Karolina Kulach is a content marketer and non-fiction writer, specialising in global ecommerce and online sales trends. Educated in Linguistics (MA) and Business Studies (BA Hons). A well-travelled individual with international education & work experience gained in London, Scotland, Poland and Germany. In her spare time buzzing with creative content ideas, including funky rhyming poems.
