Why Website Localization Matters: Key Benefits for Global Growth
Global customers engage more with culturally relevant, localized marketing. Are you connecting in their language?
 阅读需8分钟 |  Reagan Evans |  2025年3月12日 |
| 阅读需8分钟 | Reagan Evans | 2025年3月12日 |
Today's digital technologies make it easier than ever for global customers to find the products and services that meet their needs. And they're searching for that information online, in the languages they speak.
A recent study found that 56% of consumers rated the ability to obtain product information in their preferred language as more important than price. If your company’s website isn’t localized, you’re missing a significant opportunity to connect with international customers—and handing your competitors an advantage.
Brass tacks: When you’re expanding globally, investing in website localization services isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s mission-critical.
When introducing new products to a global market, localization is key to success. While translation converts content to another language, localization goes beyond that—it adapts your content to resonate with local cultures, preferences, and market conditions. It’s not just about language; it’s about connecting with customers on a deeper level.
Localization involves more than just translating words. It might include adapting images, changing measurement systems, adjusting time zones and currencies, or even reformatting for different reading directions (like right to left).
Localized websites and other digital content enable you to make genuine, authentic connections with consumers and “level up” into advantages like these:
You can show that your brand respects other cultures through website translation and localization. According to CSA Research, 60% of non-native English speakers rarely or never buy from English-only websites. In fact, 64% of buyers say they value localized website content. You can gain genuine trust from your target audience through cultural adaptation.
In turn, when trust is enhanced, key performance indicators (KPIs) see a sizable lift. KPIs measure the performance of a company, its activities, processes, and the progress of projects. In order to be significant, KPIs must correlate to quantifiable business goals. Determining the success of any localization program is tied to the overall expectations of the expansion project or business strategy.
The increase in trust localization creates can lead to important retention KPIs improving, including
Customers’ lives are influenced by what they use every day—including their preferred social media platforms, mobile sites and more. Content localization makes your online presence available in multiple languages, across all channels, and ensures that your company will be able to reach more people where they live and work. This enhances a positive user experience for global customers and helps them trust your brand.
A positive user experience directly results in an increase in sales conversion rates and engagement rates, as well as lower bounce rates. User experience has become incredibly important, especially when looking at statistics that show how 74% of customers can switch brands if the purchasing process is too difficult for them; or, that 86% of users are inclined to pay more for a great customer experience. It's no wonder that global spending on customer experience has been estimated to reach $640 billion by 2022.
Localizing your online presence isn't limited to what customers can read on your website. With the right translation solution, everything can be localized-images, multimedia, social media, dynamic PDFs and more. Keywords, metadata, and hreflang tags can be localized to improve global SEO efforts and drive engaged global traffic to your website. Once there, global customers will benefit from an enhanced user experience and content that speaks directly to them.
Translating websites for your global markets gives you full control of your message, and delivers a consistent brand experience across all markets. It's easier to ensure your brand messaging is being communicated as you intend, rather than miscommunicated by third-party companies or agencies. Without localization, your brand message could be misinterpreted-or worse, ignored. By adapting content to local cultures and languages, you maintain brand integrity while resonating with diverse audiences.
Today’s leading website translation services and localization solutions make it easier than ever to share customized messages to customers in different global markets. You can keep control of your online message while catering to regional customer needs-and expanding your business's digital footprint at the same time. A localized strategy lets you segment and target markets more effectively. Customizing messaging for different regions improves relevance and boosts engagement in key demographics.
Localized websites are not only great resources for consumers; they're great for local sales and support teams as well. A localized site can highlight market-specific products and services, comply with local regulations and legal requirements, and provide information that local marketing teams can draw on as they pursue leads.
Why does culturally relevant, localized marketing matter so much? For starters, it can make or break your ability to create genuine connections with consumers.
A prominent example of a failed international expansion due to poor localization is Target’s entry into Canada in 2013. Despite being a household name in the U.S., Target’s venture into the Canadian market fell flat, costing the company billions of dollars.
Key reasons for failure:
Supply Chain Issues: Target struggled with its supply chain, resulting in empty shelves and inconsistent inventory. This left customers frustrated and gave them little incentive to return.
Product Assortment Misalignment: Target did not localize its product offerings to meet Canadian consumer preferences. Products that were popular in the U.S. didn't resonate with Canadian shoppers, and local competitors like Loblaws and Walmart Canada were better at meeting local needs.
Pricing Confusion: Target's pricing strategy didn't fully account for the difference in exchange rates between the U.S. and Canada. Many Canadian customers were unhappy with the higher prices at Target compared to what they saw in U.S. stores, despite the proximity of the two markets.
In just two years, Target closed all 133 of its Canadian stores, marking one of the largest retail failures in North America. This example underscores how failing to localize product selection, supply chains, and pricing strategies can lead to disastrous results, even for well-established companies.
When your website is translated and localized for global customers, however, you're proving you understand and care about them. You create stronger bonds with customers that way.
These days, global customers expect online content in their preferred language. They quickly navigate away from websites and brands that fail to provide it. Consider these globalization stats:
While 60% of all content on the Internet is in English, native English speakers only make up about 5.4% of the world’s population. Only 25.3% of the Internet market share prefers English-only content, which leaves nearly 75% who prefer to consume content in another language.
China and India are still winning the Internet. China currently has over 1.02 billion online users, while India ranks second with over 658 million. Neither nation uses English as its first language.
Global shopping has gone mobile. More than 55% of global smartphone owners use them to shop online, and they like to do so in their preferred language. Trends like these prove that speaking your customers’ languages through localized content is essential to your marketing success.
These days, your company must speak the local languages of your global customers. And you only strengthen your marketing team's reach and success by offering localized online content across every channel, in every market you serve.
To make the most of your online localization efforts, partner with a digital-first translation agency that employs expert human translators hand-in-hand with advanced technology solutions such as translation memory, to get your marketing message to your customers in the languages they prefer. Translation memory is a part of a larger system called a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool, which describes software used to increase translation productivity, catch mistakes, and improve consistency.
Utilizing translation memory helps support the localization process by allowing the re-use of translations for other projects, such as document translation, app localization, image translation, or for translating emails or other content.
MotionPoint provides website localization services that support business localization goals anywhere. MotionPoint's technology minimizes operational complexity and maximizes translation and localization impact, and can provide you with flexible and consistent brand imaging, messaging, and marketing content through global markets.
