With global retail sales forecast to reach a record $26.69 trillion (£19.33tr) in 2022, the eCommerce industry is set to see year-on-year growth, despite the impact of Covid-19. In fact, the pandemic has encouraged consumers to spend more of their money online and eCommerce companies are in a better position than most during this time of crisis – especially international retailers with customers around the world.
However, managing a multilingual eCommerce website isn’t easy and, in this article, we look at seven of the biggest translation challenges online retailers need to overcome.
Biggest eCommerce translation challenges
Any online retailer has a task on its hands when it comes to managing their eCommerce website but the challenges for international brands are multiplied with every additional language or location targeted.
To get your content seen by audiences in each target market, you have to overcome all of the seven following challenges:
- Multilingual SEO: Optimising your online store for search engines and users in every target language.
- Website translation: Accurately translating every page with unique copy that encourages users in every language to buy products without running into any duplicate content issues.
- Website localisation: Building and optimising your website for the most effective translation process and delivery of content to users in every language.
- UX design: Creating a consistently positive experience in every language while localising for the unique needs of each audience – a key aspect of this is designing an interface to show the correct language for each audience but allowing them to change language settings where necessary.
- Content localisation: Catering to the needs of each audience and delivering localised content to address these needs across your site – e.g.: which products you promote on your homepage, the key selling points of individual products and the copy in your CTAs.
- Multilingual customer support: Providing a consistent level of support for customers in every language.
- Multilingual marketing: Inbound marketing campaigns that capture the interest of consumers in each market and bring them to your website.
Failing to achieve any of these means your messages will fail to reach the right audience, leaving you unable to hit your sales targets and maximise business performance in foreign-speaking markets or international locations.
Specialist eCommerce translation
To overcome these eCommerce translation challenges, it’s important to work with a company that has specialist experience in translating and localising online stores for multilingual audiences – from the technical infrastructure and optimisation stage to the marketing campaigns that generate leads in every target market.
Simply translating product pages isn’t going to maximise sales. You need a more strategic approach to translating your site and localising content to deliver the most effective messages based on the unique needs of each consumer base. So, for example, instead of translating one product page or blog post into every language, you create unique content that satisfies the interests of each audience and produce it in their native language.
When these interests are the same, it’s fine to create one piece of content and translate it into each relevant language, as long as you can identify which interests and needs are unique to specific audiences because this is where international eCommerce brands set themselves apart.
If you need help with translating your eCommerce website, please free to contact us.