Have you ever visited a website and the page appears in another language other than your native one? If yes, then you know this can be extremely frustrating and is often the reason for closing the website tab on your browser and never looking back.
Having the desire to explore a webpage or a need to receive information on it and not being able to simply because you cannot understand the language it is written in can feel defeating. Because of this, many major players and small businesses alike are offering multilingual options to cater to the needs of all of their customer groups, whether they be current customers or a potential new lead. Having a multilingual website allows the user to have the best experience possible and can generate more leads for the website itself, as visitors can actually understand your purpose.
How does having a multilingual website translation cause such a positive reaction? There are three main areas of focus that help us make sense of why they are so important.
1. They allow you to reach a much bigger market.
Your business always wants to maximize its reach in the global market; creating an internationalized website with multiple target languages allows you to do just that. Research shows that a specific product or service will not reach higher than 80% of the world’s population because the website on which it was offered was in only one language. Simply put, not offering a multilingual website could cost you thousands of potential customers and sales.
Neil Patel conducted research in 2015 to see how much traffic would increase on his site just by implementing a multilingual website. He originally only wrote the blog in English; however, for the purpose of the experiment he chose 82 other target languages to translate the copy to. The results of the experiment showed a staggering 47% increase in traffic to his website, as well as positive results in his bounce rates and time spent on each page.
2. They boost search engine visibility and SEO strength.
By progressing your site to reach a multilingual audience, you are opening yourself up to the benefits of growing into previously untapped markets. This includes better SEO power with every keyword, and even automatically increases your SERP with almost no effort beyond translating the site. Although the competition is great in ranking for the best keywords in English, it’s not the same case in other languages spoken around the world, making it exponentially easier to climb in the rankings due to less competition.
Another way that website translation helps SEO is through decreasing your bounce rate. Bounce rates are the percentage of visitors to a specific website who quickly leave the site after viewing one page. To rise up within the rankings on Google, your business must have a low bounce rate because it shows in hard stats that you’re engaging your visitors page after page; therefore, having an untranslated website makes it almost impossible to have a low bounce rate, which is key to a high SEO.
3. They improve communication and accessibility
Despite English being the dominant language in the business world, still, not everyone prefers to conduct business outside of their native tongue – this rings especially true online.
Not every person will choose to visit strictly English websites, or even use a search engine in English when looking for products or services to meet their needs. In fact, research shows that over 75% of non-English speakers who regularly participate in online shopping prefer to buy things with descriptions listed in their native language. It is all-important to embrace the diversity that surrounds us, and absolutely crucial to localize websites in different languages to improve global communication.
Businesses need to be able to communicate effectively in a number of languages, and multilingual website translation is one of many steps needed to be taken in order to be truly successful at it. Access to foreign markets can completely change the trajectory of a company, and our experts at Language Department are able and ready to assist you with all your translation needs. Reach out to us at any time to get a free quote for your next project, or to learn more about our past work.
