Globalization has significantly changed the business landscape and increased the potential of growth in new markets. This can be beneficial to businesses on any scale in many ways. The only problem is that it introduces a new problem: the language barrier. And language is such a crucial element in human communication and connection that you can’t afford to ignore it.
This is especially important when venturing into global markets. Language is essential for enhancing business growth in an international context. Fortunately, there’s a way to overcome this challenge through website translation. Translating your website to multiple languages acts as the bridge between you and customers who use a different primary language. In this article, you’ll learn what website translation is and its benefits for your business.
What is website translation?
Translating a website involves adapting your content to other languages. However, website translation is more than changing the content from one language to another. It’s a bit more technical than that. You must ensure that the content is culturally relevant and in the correct context.
You need to adjust the content to make it easy for local audiences to understand and interact with, ultimately converting to customers. Translating a website is a massive task that requires you to maintain accuracy and content context. It will help if you know how to translate an entire page or website to make your work easier. Let’s take a look at the five ways translating your website benefits you.
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Improved customer trust
When you translate your website to multiple languages, you don’t just adopt the languages. You consider other things along with the local dialect you’re translating your website to for relevance. This shows that you recognize and appreciate your audience wherever they are, which helps to build trust. If web visitors can read and understand web content well, it can dramatically increase their confidence in your brand to satisfy their needs.
In addition, when you have a multilingual website, you break both the language and cultural barriers. Research shows that most people prefer to engage with content in their native dialect than in another language because it makes navigating your site easier. It also puts them in a familiar and comfortable zone to learn and make decisions about purchases, sign-ups, and other digital processes. This boosts engagement with your brand, which eventually leads them to buy into your brand, products, or services.
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Expanded customer reach
Another significant benefit of translating your website is increasing your reach geographically and culturally. Having your website in more than one language increases the number of people you reach and communicate with effectively. This is keeping in mind that even at the domestic level, your audiences’ dialects vary due to immigration.
But even when you’re targeting a global market, there’s no better way to reach potential customers than in a language they understand. That means translating your website opens you up to a larger audience you wouldn’t reach otherwise. Offering your products or services on a multilingual platform will win you more reach locally and globally.
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Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Translating your website is one of the smartest ways to improve your SEO. Your site’s visibility depends to a large extent on the amount of content that shows up through search queries in the same language. Constantly appearing in these searches is something that can help your site to rank higher.
Your business can benefit significantly from improved clicks and consequent traffic. As more people visit your site, search engines signal that you’re a credible brand offering value to visitors. Web translation is an excellent way to optimize your content to keep showing up through search queries.
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Giving you a competitive advantage
Your business niche could be flooded with numerous other companies, each trying to get a share of the market. Making your brand stand out in such a highly competitive business environment is hard. You should consider anything that can help you gain a larger market share. If your competitors are yet to translate their sites, having a multilingual site can create differentiation and set your business apart from others.
However, it’s also a smart move if your competitors have translated their sites because it gives you a competitive advantage. Instead of lagging, you’ll be competing on the same level. You want to ensure that you’re not losing your market share by not offering your products or services in languages that your audiences prefer.
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Increased sales and revenue
Ultimately, you’re in business to make sales, boost revenue, and grow your profits. Website translation is one of the best avenues to reach this goal. A multilingual site is a necessary element for increasing sales and revenue in your business. Reaching a wider audience, getting higher brand visibility, improving traffic, and search engine ranking can lead to higher conversions and sales.
Typically, web users, instinctively or out of habit, conduct searches in their native languages. A user is more likely to leave a site immediately if they realize they can’t understand the content. Consider translating your site if you’re having a problem holding your visitors on your site long enough to create meaningful engagement.
Offering your site content in multiple languages will help you to give as many visitors as the languages you provide reasons to stay. Otherwise, most of them will click page links and leave right away. Having a multilingual site gives you the perfect opportunity to grab user attention and keep it. The longer a visitor stays on your site, the higher the chances of them purchasing your products, ultimately boosting your conversion rates.
However, with translation, ensure that you also localize your website and the translation to gain local SEO benefits. By localizing content, you can improve the likelihood of raising your conversion rates even higher. It clearly shows that customers are inclined to purchase from websites in their native dialect than in any other language.
Takeaway
Translating your website may look like a huge business undertaking, and it is. But it’s a worthy investment in the long run. The benefits discussed above are not exhaustive but only some of the benefits you get by making your site available in multiple languages. Consider translating your website to grow your reach, improve SEO, boost customer trust, remain competitive, and improve conversions, sales and revenue.
