You probably consider your website to be your most important tool when expanding into foreign markets. However, how many visitors end up leaving or never even finding your website, because they don't read English? Below you will find the top five reasons that will highlight for you how a website translation can quickly improve your bottom line:
1) 56.6%* of Internet users speak a native language other than English!
Today, the demographics of Internet users have considerably expanded to include non-English Internet users. We can watch the dominance of the English language on the web slowly ebbing, while foreign languages on the Internet are rapidly expanding. According to Wikipedia the use of the Spanish language has increased by 743% in the last ten years, while Chinese grew by 1,277%, Russian by 1,826% and Arabic comes in with an astonishing 2,501% in the same period!
*Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com
2) Web users are four times* more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer's language!
Translating your website and other marketing materials highlights your company's commitment to non-English speaking customers and their unique needs. No matter how much time and effort you spend on creating website content and marketing your online presence, potential customers who find your website need to understand the products and services you offer. Using the web as a marketing tool is an important decision, but failing to take into account the non-English speaking community means you are literally missing out on millions of potential customers from markets that might be very lucrative for you.
*Source: http://idc.com
3) Visitors stay for twice* as long if a website is in their own language, which means that "site stickiness" is doubled!
Even though your company can ship products anywhere in the world, you might notice that your website visitors are currently only coming from the UK or the US. Having your website translated and localized for other markets can dramatically improve your exposure to other countries. People who have little or no English skills are said to be six times less likely not to buy from English-only sites, particularly when the values of the products are high. Furthermore, 56.2% of people surveyed have said that when making a purchase decision, information written in their own native language (as translated by a translation agency), was more important than a low price.
* Source: Forrester Research
4) You can increase your profits and broaden your scope of action by way of a small investment!
Companies that report increased profits after a website translation point out that the actual translation cost was small in comparison to other expenses. Hence, investing in translating your website increases overall expenses by a little, while driving new sales in new target markets and expanding your customer base.
5) Your site can obtain a higher index in the major search engines, as a result of a richer content and local indexing!
When translating websites, translation agencies also localize all elements that are exclusively viewed by search engines, such as:
- meta tags (titles, descriptions, keywords, etc.),
- alt tags (image descriptions),
- links and
- anchor texts.
Localization helps you to increase the effectiveness of your keywords, their ranking significance and their compliance with marketing objectives in your new target market.
---
To get an insight into worldwide Internet user statistics , visit http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
To ask questions about having your website translated, connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter (@PremierFocus) or let's just chat about it over a cup of tea!
To obtain a quote for getting your website translated and localized, please email us at Info@PremierFocus.com or call us at +1(519) 591-8802.
- Log in to post comments