eCommerce can be a fickle business
A strong product can launch your eCommerce site into the spotlight at breakneck speed. With the advent of social media, news spreads like wildfire, and something previously unknown can become an overnight global sensation.
Concurrently, it can take time, dedication, and unadulterated graft to create a healthy revenue stream from your eCommerce business. The goal of building a brand with a dedicated customer base and achieve international recognition is on most businesses’ minds.
In both these situations, the question when you arrive at this juncture is the same: what do we do now?
You have the product and the platform. Now is the time to speak directly to your potential global audience and capture their attention. What better way to do so than by speaking to them in their native language? It’s time to translate your eCommerce store for the markets you’re seeking to gain traction in!
The Devil’s in the Detail
You may be tempted to simply shove a Google Translate plugin in for your website translations and forget about it. We’ve spoken before about why this might not be the greatest idea when it comes to multilingual translation. And eCommerce is no different. Translating product pages into Chinese or Hungarian via machine translation is a risky business.
Good written language comes along with idioms, analogies, and metaphors. When it comes to translation, the concept of localizing your content for your target language is highly significant.
“Tailoring one’s products to the user environment of the local market including jurisdictional levels demands attention to detail, adaptability, and flexibility.”
– Jake V.Th.Knoppers, Global Electronic Commerce Through Localization and Multilingualism
You may have found demand for your product on an international stage, however, how you present yourself, also matters.
Would your customers feel comfortable buying clothes from the store above? Think of your eCommerce site as a physical storefront – anything off-putting or offensive will simply turn customers away. Millions have been lost in potential revenue simply through poor translation failing to properly localize content to a market’s culture.
Sustainable Solutions
Now if you were exceptionally savvy, you will plan your multilingual international adventure well in advance. But even if you didn’t, translating efficiently, accurately, and with cultural context doesn’t have to be an expensive unaccounted-for nightmare.
At TextUnited, we’ve developed a suite of dynamic translation tools to handle translation projects of any size; eCommerce included. Whether you’re translating yourself, using your translators, or utilizing one of ours, TextUnited offers a fully dynamic service.
In terms of translation needs, eCommerce sites generally require more frequent updates as more product lines are added and changed. TextUnited continually extracts the content from your eCommerce site, rendering it instantly editable in situ. This enables you to translate eCommerce sites in-context rather than having to use strings or third-party plugins. These are often confusing, convoluted and add unnecessary steps to what – with the right tools – can be a straightforward process.
TextUnited strives to make the process as streamlined and accessible as possible. Especially with the added power of our Translation Memory aiding in reducing the redundancy due to punctuation from previous translations.
