Your website is the gateway to your product or service. And, as first impressions are the ones that count, businesses make a big effort to stand out from other websites in their sector: having an appropriate and appealing design, being user friendly and displaying texts aimed at the target audience are some aspects to take into account.
Leveraging the invested time and money to internationalize your website is a great choice, as it opens the doors to your business all around the world. How important is a multilingual website? How many languages should you translate your website into?
A good translation service is essential to rank in a position that makes your site relevant and also transmits reliability and proximity to the target audience.
The language you probably first think of to translate your website into is English. No doubt this is the reference language at an international level, but it’s not the only one. Translating your website only into English is not a good idea if you really want to make your effort profitable. We’ll tell you why.
According to a study performed by the market research company CSA Research in June 2020, 76% of online buyers prefer to buy products with information in their native language.
This and other interesting data are gathered in the report about consumer preferences called Can’t Read, Won’t Buy - B2C, which also highlights that “(...) if a company does not localize the buying experience, it’s at risk of losing 40% or more of their target market: consumers would rather select and buy products on sites in their local language.”
Website translation is essential for expansion into international markets. Each business must analyze which are their target audience’s countries and prioritize the languages to translate and localize their website into. It’s an investment that will avoid being affected by the disadvantages of translating a website only into English. We’ll tell you about them next.
This is what happens to your internationalization project if you only get the website translated into English.
Translating your website into several languages makes it easier for you to be found anywhere in the world. Opt for quality website translation that is perfectly contextualized, like the one we offer at Linguaserve. We are experts in multilingual translation and communication.