Pursuing an online, eCommerce platform for your business is an intelligent way to reach potential new customers and partners, and expand your global reach overall… when done correctly.
Currently, 40 percent of worldwide Internet users have made purchases online via desktop, mobile, tablet or other connected devices. What this amounts to is more than 1 billion online buyers around the world; and this number is projected to continuously grow.
What does this mean for your budding eCommerce website? The opportunity for growth is extraordinary, as long as you put the time and energy into growing and operating with proper translation efforts overseas. The following are some of the most commonly found, often difficult challenges to overcome when it comes to eCommerce translations for businesses running online.
Payment Processing
It certainly pays to know your customer. With so many consumers worldwide turning to online purchasing options, the meaning of understanding your customers and appealing to their preferred payment methods (often country-specific) becomes much more complex.
In global eCommerce it’s important to offer a robust, accurately localized set of payment methods for all markets and languages, so that each target audience can understand, and follow through with, the payment. In many cases, customers prefer local options — these are considered to be more trustworthy and often more cost-effective than transferring money through other services.
Online Presence
Creating and maintaining a culturally accurate online presence is critical in reaching foreign customers within your target market. Not only should your customer or client-facing eCommerce site be fully localized in that specific region’s language, you should have developed social media pages and knowledge base information to support as well.
Once the initial localization of your online presence is complete, the next step is to plan for consistent and accurate updates in those languages. Providing no updates to your translated pages creates a major a disconnect between brand and customer perception — it is not only creating a presence, you need to keep it.
Translation Details & Accuracy
Expectations are another area that can often be difficult to manage when translating for eCommerce needs, especially if you’re new to language services. Understanding that translating 10,000+ words accurately for an eCommerce experience takes time and valuable human resources is the first step. Performing extensive research to ensure cultural, social and linguistic considerations are kept and expressed accurately is critical to success.
Another issue that frequently arises is that English translations into other languages often require up to 30% more text space — planning around this, and other linguistic hiccups, can help to avoid additional design and translation costs.
At Language Department, our experts will work with you to accurately translate all aspect of your eCommerce store— among other pieces of your online presence — to reach new audiences effectively.
Contact us for a translation quote!
