According to CSA Research, two out of three internet users worldwide prefer to read content in their native language; 40% will not buy online if a website is in another language. In addition, approximately 60% of the top 10 million websites are in English, only 16% of the global population speaks English as their native language.
“Companies are missing out on an enormous opportunity by not having an optimized multilingual website,” comments Jon Greenhalgh, Managing Director at Adapt, a Welocalize division and multilingual performance marketing agency. “Doing so provides businesses with many benefits, including increased global sales and improved user experience, in addition to meeting legal and data privacy requirements.”
To help organizations maximize their online opportunities, Welocalize has produced, “Global-First: Your Guide to Performance-Led Website Localization”, a guide on how to plan, develop, and drive traffic through successful localization and multilingual web optimization.
- Successful web localization. Website localization is a massive undertaking. This guide details how to excel at all stages of website localization, from pre-planning to post-localization.
- Setting up for global success. From images and language to character sets and meta descriptions, the guide pinpoints the areas that a global-first website should address to succeed.
- Capturing and converting international audiences. Content is just one component of website localization. It also needs to be optimized for search engines and users, conversion, web analytics, and tested.
“Localizing your website is essential to succeeding in international markets. You can offer a much better customer experience by adapting your content to local audiences, yet website localization, translation, and optimization is often an afterthought. We are here to help change that,” adds Greenhalgh.
The complimentary guide is available for download here.