How to Master E-Commerce Localization: Bring Your Store to New Markets

If you already make a lot of sales in your domestic market, you might think that hiring a translation agency is all you need to grow in the global market. In reality, e-commerce localization includes the SEO aspects of your store, local currency, payment methods, imagery, and other things that should accompany the content translation.

Let’s talk about why e-commerce localization is important, how to do it with the help of localization platform, Crowdin, and what to consider before you localize your content.

Table of Contents

What Is E-commerce Localization?

Localization is translating your online store, products, and graphics into the language of the country where you want to grow, taking into account the people’s culture and habits.

E-commerce localization aims to create a shopping experience where your customers feel the store was created for them and in their language.

Localization is more than just translating content from one language to another. It is changing content to look like it was made by and for the local market. This means that the text needs to be changed to fit local interests, events, and ways of doing things. Images also need to be changed to reflect the local environment, and local rules, units of measurement, formatting, and other things need to be used.

It also means being aware of the different cultures in each market. This will change everything, from the products shown to the type of images used and the amount of text.

By changing the language and context of all content, an e-commerce company can build a strong global brand and make the most money in every market.

Why Is Localization Important?

The simple answer is that many e-commerce businesses think they have filled their product niches as much as they can in their area. They want to grow their business worldwide, so they are looking for new customers in other countries. WebInterpret research shows that for every dollar you put into localization, you can get up to $25 back.

You can take over as many markets as you can

By entering a new market, you can grow your business. You can reach people who need help buying your products. It also makes it easier and faster for your customers to find their desired products.

Engage more people worldwide

When a website is translated into a customer’s native language, they are more likely to buy from that store. Your foreign customers will interact more with you if your e-commerce page is localized.

Drive conversions

Try to get inside the customer’s head. Your localized e-shop should make people feel right at home. If you take care of your customer’s needs first, they will trust you and always come back to you. You will finish all the pre-purchase steps, which will increase the chance that you will buy.

How to Start to Localize Your Online Store?

Market analysis

First, you need to decide which countries you want your e-commerce to be available in. You can do it with the help of market analysis. You should list your possible countries and describe how big their markets are and how saturated they are. Market analyzes include more than looking at the target group and competitors. It’s also essential to understand how e-commerce works in the country, if at all, and how high the purchasing power of the customers is.

Identify your buyer personas

You must put the customer’s needs first.

1. What are their needs?
2. What are their characteristics?
3. Who are they?
4. How do they behave on your website?
5. What is the demographic of your target group?
6. What are they looking for on your website?

SEO

To grow your e-commerce business internationally, you need to use the same SEO techniques you already use in your home market. Search terms must be changed to fit the culture, not just translated.

This means that you need to be aware that a search term might be written differently in different parts of the world and that even between countries that speak the same language, like couch vs. sofa, word choices might be different. The most important things to look for may also change depending on the weather and the economy.

You have to think about how people in this new place think. When you want to target a foreign country, you need to:

• Find out how customers are looking for a product.
• Investigate the search terms they are using.
• You should not only work with a translation company. But with the one that cracks SEO in the native language of your new target audience, you can reach them more effectively.

Shipping costs

When putting the online store worldwide, it’s essential to know how much shipping will cost. The shipping cost symbol is significant for the user to know how much their order will cost.

Also, you should find out how long shipping will take to get to the country. Customers are most annoyed when they have to wait longer than expected for a new product they’ve been looking forward to. Make an accurate estimate of the shipping costs and delivery times and keep them as low as possible.

Address validation

Incorrect addresses or formatting at the post office can become a costly problem. Addresses on packages and letters can be written in many different ways and with many different accents. These incorrect details can cause a lot of mess.

Domain

The.com version of a website is the standard for businesses that do business all over the world. More than 37% of all domains use it. But some international shoppers trust brands more if they have a top-level domain for their country. 92% of international shoppers say they are worried about buying from websites they don’t know.

Currencies

Price is an essential part of the buying process. When your target customers buy things online, they often ask themselves, “Can I afford this?”

Imagine you’re a US customer shopping on a German e-commerce site. The price of something you’re interested in is 59.99 euros. How do you determine how much you’ll be charged in US dollars?

Even if we put the user experience aside, their bank will often charge them a lot of money to convert their currency or make a transaction. These extra fees make it harder for buyers to decide what to buy, which is why many customers are likely to abandon their online carts. People want to pay with the currency they are most used to in their home country. It’s why conversion rates go up by 40% on e-commerce sites that use localized currencies on product pages.

You can use Shopify Markets to do this for your online store. Store prices can be automatically converted into more than 130 international currencies using the most up-to-date exchange rates. You and your customers won’t miss out on e-commerce deals because of the uncertainty of currency conversion.

Payment methods

Currency exchange rates differ from one country to the next. Payment styles vary from country to country.

In China and Western Europe, digital payment systems like Shop Pay and Apple Pay are the most popular. Indian and Eastern European customers like to pay cash on delivery. In the Netherlands, a payment method called iDEAL is used for almost seven out of every ten transactions.

Site translation and localization

Three-quarters of people prefer to shop in their native language, and 60% rarely or never buy from an English-only website. Data from Shopify shows that buyers were 13% more likely to buy from a store translated into their language than from the same store in the default language. Those things are

• Navigation bars
• Titles of products
• Product descriptions
• Buttons that say “Buy” or “Add to cart”
• Email campaigns.

Localize Key E-commerce Components with Crowdin

Localization isn’t just for the home page of an e-commerce site, and it’s not even just for language. By looking at the site as a whole, localization gives visitors a level of understanding and comfort beyond words.

Here’s a quick look at how and why different parts of an e-commerce business are changed to fit the local market. Even though they are all different, they all have one thing in common: when the content is changed for a local market, the localized versions have the same effect and meaning as the original version.

Localize product pages

Localizing product descriptions for e-commerce is more complicated than translating text. For clothing, for example, the sizes must be changed to the local sizing system, which is also true of local currencies. The product’s name may also need to be changed, especially if it shows how it is used. Even the product itself could be switched out for something that works better on the local market. In the same way, different markets will choose different products to be promoted and put at the top of the list.

Localize Chatbots

If your chatbot can help users with everything from purchasing to getting customer service but only speaks English, you might turn away whole groups of potential customers. It is where a multilingual chatbot comes in.

Certainly

By using Crowdin+Certainly integration, you can automate replies in more than one language. Once a chatbot has been made in one language, it can be used in other languages. Send Crowdin the original texts and have them translated to then use as automated responses. The multilingual chatbot will use your translations to talk to people in other languages.

Running email marketing campaigns for customers around the globe

Send welcome emails and transactional emails like password resets and purchase confirmations. More with the help of these applications:

Don’t create a fractured experience. Each email element and the user’s next journey should be localized. Instead of returning them to the English (or native language) website, lead them to multilingual material that speaks their language.

Automate Localization of Your Online Store

Crowdin works with more than 200 other programs for programmers, marketers, designers, and customer service staff. Source material and translations are kept in sync automatically thanks to integrations with marketing tools. This means that your texts can be given to translators immediately in Crowdin, and translated texts can be sent to the tool of your choice with just a few clicks.

For example, you could try Crowdin+ Magento integration, you can read more here.

Make use of Crowdin’s eCommerce website localization tools

Crowdin and Shopify integration help you reach more customers

To reach more customers, you should think about localizing product descriptions for e-commerce is more complicated than translating text. For clothing, the sizes must be changed to the local sizing system, which is also true of local currencies. The product’s name may also need to be changed, especially if it shows how it is used. Even the product itself could be switched out for something that works better on the local market. In the same way, different markets will choose different products to be promoted and put at the top of the list.

You can translate your blogs, pages, and products with the Crowdin app. There’s no need to upload translated files to Shopify manually. With Crowdin, you can automate source content and translation changes to save time. You can send content in your primary language to your Crowdin localization project with just one click. You can get finished translations from the Crowdin app without leaving your Shopify store. When translations are synced, they can be used right away in your store’s published languages.

You’ll need to sign up for Crowdin and create a localization project to connect the app to your Shopify store.

Who does the translations for Crowdin?

Crowdin supports more than one way to translate. You can invite your translators, order translations from one of the translation agencies in Crowdin Marketplace, use machine translation (MT), or a combination of these options.

Crowdin Features that improve the quality of the translation and save you time

• Translations are done online in the Editor, where you can see everything in real time. Translators can look at the context of a file and ask questions in the comments.
• Use QA checks to make sure the translation is good. They let translators know when commas are missing, spelling mistakes are made, too many spaces between words, the text is too long, and other common mistakes that are easy to avoid.
• Add a glossary to make sure that terms are translated correctly.
• Use translation memory to reuse translations that have already been done, so you don’t have to translate the exact text repeatedly on your pages or products.
• With multiple integrations, you can translate your store, marketing materials, support documents, and other content to give your customers a complete experience.
• Any language or dialect can be translated.
• You can export and import source files and translations in different formats if necessary. Crowdin works with many file types, such as CSV, XLSX, HTML, TXT, and more.
• Support for RTL languages.
• 24/7 customer support.

So, with the Crowdin and Shopify integration, you can sync files for translation between Crowdin and Shopify, like blog posts, pages, and products. Once your team or an agency has finished translating something in Crowdin, you can download it without leaving Shopify.

Use Crowdin for E-commerce Localization

Give your customers a fully localized, in-language experience in their language to build a more substantial presence in international markets. Even though a simple auto-translation job might be enough to make your website understandable, it won’t give international customers a reason to switch from the brands they’re already familiar with.

With Crowdin, you can localize your product descriptions, video subtitles, email marketing campaigns, chatbots, live chats, and more.

Crowdin’s robust and scalable translation management platform will help you reach your localization goals, whether you’re just starting with multilingual eCommerce or looking for ways to improve your approach to new markets.