More and more companies are choosing to build their website centrally and then roll them out across the world. Localisation projects deliver big benefits including consistency of message, cost and time savings as well as enabling central control of your web presence. However, there are lots of traps that global marketers can fall into. Content Formula has worked on many localisation projects and has learned a lot along the way. This article captures some of our top tips.
1. Build a master site first
Build a fully working master site before you start any localisations. This will make the localisation process quick, easy and cheap for your country managers. The site should include all possible content and functionality and should be fully signed off by your regional or worldwide team. Ideally, the master site should be in English in order to maximise the number of stakeholders who will be able to understand the content on the site.
2. Be realistic and resource the project properly
Building a master site first and then rolling out the localisations takes longer than a simple stand-alone site. A typical project can last 6-9 months. You therefore need to work fast to build your master site. Don’t over-commit on functionality and content. You don’t want to risk damaging stakeholder enthusiasm with a project that drags on and on.
3. Involve the country staff in the creation of the master
If you have local offices in each country, make sure that you consult with them and understand their needs when creating the master site. Some localisation projects can go horribly off-track if a local issue is overlooked.
4. Use a cookie-cutter but allow for local differences
Local marketers will always want to customise the site to adapt it for their country. This is a good thing as it helps increase their buy-in for the whole project. Some of these customisations can be subtle but one that is important to think about is allowing for customised homepages and special sections. Country marketers often want to feature local promotions and priorities on the homepage.
5. Use images instead of words where you can
When writing your English copy, instead of using complex terminology that may be difficult to translate, think about using diagrams. It’s a cliché but a picture really does tell a thousand words.
6. Develop the master site for localising
Make sure your developers understand how to create multilingual sites. They can ensure that things like error messages that are often inserted directly into the website code are instead referenced from a translation file that contains all the error messages in one place – this makes for much simpler and cleaner localisations.
7.Design the master for localising
Similar to the point above, tell your graphic designer that your site is to be localised. Design is always impacted when moving from one language to another. For example, imagine you have a button with “Click to buy” written on it. This button may be fine in English but when you translate “Click to buy” into some languages, you may find that the button is not long enough to accommodate all the words. The design needs to be flexible.
8. Choose your translator carefully
When choosing a translator, don’t just rely on price – ask for credentials. Experienced translators will provide appropriate examples and may even agree to translate a sample of your content that you can then show to a native speaker. Even better, get several samples from different translators and choose the best one. Most translation companies are used to translating websites – in many cases they can translate your code directly – this can save you having to reintegrate translated content, therefore saving you time and money.
9. Don’t forget keywords and search engine optimisation
Think carefully about your keywords and search engine optimisation. These are likely to vary across different markets. Ideally, prepare a list of your keywords and search terms in English and discuss these with your local marketer and your translator. A good translator can integrate your keywords into the copy as part of the translation process.
10. Don’t forget about usage rights
Before you give them the job, negotiate with your design agency and photographer so that they give you global usage rights to designs, graphics and photos. In the case of graphics and flash, this also means negotiating rights to the source files so that any text can easily and quickly be changed.
11. Take care of the law – be compliant
You need to think about the legal ramifications of launching your site in another country. Many EU countries have very strict privacy laws that you need to be aware of. Also, if your product or service is heavily regulated in your own country, the chances are it’s also heavily (and differently) regulated abroad.
12. Do a full review of the site with a native speaker
Make sure that a native speaker tests and reviews the finished localised website. Don’t just rely on linguistic expertise at the translation phase. Many different types of errors can occur between the translation phase and the launch. These range from obvious human errors to more subtle cultural blunders that may not have been picked up when the translator was simply working in Microsoft word. Be sure to create and run a detailed test script.
13. Plan and resource post-launch activities
This rule applies with any websites, not just localisations. Provide tips, tools and templates to help local marketers run post-launch activities in order to drive traffic. These could include banner ads, pay-per-click campaigns, email newsletter templates and so on. Another obvious thing to plan for but often overlooked is to integrate the site with your offline activities. Make sure all your offline materials such as TV ads, press ads, packaging and PR pieces all feature the web address.
Content Formula has extensive experience in website localisation projects. They can help out with all the topics mentioned in this article. Our most recent localisation project was for Compeed and you can read our localisation case study here.
