How to translate your E-commerce site to boost sales
Words matter when selling online.
I know, I’ve said this before, and I say it every time that someone asks me what’s the most important thing when selling online.
When you land in a website, all you can see is words and pictures. Words represent the communicative side of any online business, and that’s what makes people buy.
Actually, without words, no one would be able to sell on the Internet.
Good copy boost sales and makes online business sell more and better. But what would happen if you invest in good copy in different languages?
- You can double the sales of our business.
- You can reach new countries and markets.
- You can be better positioned on the Internet.
- You can go global.
The Internet is a great tool to reach people who would be inaccessible otherwise. And most online businesses know it. But so do sellers.
That’s why online sales have dramatically increased during the last years. And they are still on the raise.
But so are online businesses, and the competence is getting more and more fierce.
[Tweet “Good copy can make you stand out and increase the sales of your business.”]
And the translation of this good copy will have the same effects in different marketplaces.
But it’s not as simple as putting some words into a different language. There are different aspects that should be considered to maximise your investment in translation services.
What’s the main difference between a local store and an e-commerce site?
When you go to any store, you’re able to see the product in person. You’re probably able to touch it, feel it, taste it, notice if you like the fabric or not, if it’s the correct size, etc. You can even talk to the staff if you have any doubts about the product.
However, all this customer experience is missing when selling online. That’s why the words we use on our websites must compensate this lack. Your words must tell your audience what they’re going to feel like when buying from you.
Because they can’t probably notice for themselves.
But still…
Why it’s so important to translate your e-commerce site?
As I said before, the Internet is the perfect tool to reach people who would be inaccessible 10 years ago. Why would you miss this out?
Imagine that you have no idea of Chinese. Would you buy in a Chinese e-commerce site full with characters that you can’t recognise? Probably not.
This is because you can’t understand what that business is trying to convey. Pictures may help, the Chinese copy may be amazing, but the message doesn’t come across if you can’t speak or read Chinese.
This online business would be constantly missing new clients.
You can’t trust this site either if you can’t read about the people behind it, how the payment is going to be processed or how the product is going to be delivered.
Actually, it would dare to say that it would be impossible to sale in that site if you don’t even recognise the “buy” button, or the name of the fields where you should enter your details.
Do you know how to say “buy” in Chinese? I don’t.
Actually, if you check the analytics of your E-commerce site, I’m sure that you’d be able to see that your website is attracting traffic from different countries in the world.
Are you getting any sales from these visits? If not, then you may have the problem I’ve just mentioned.
But to maximise the results of the translation, there’s some planning to do first:
How to translate you e-commerce site
If you really want to guarantee results during the translation process of your E-commerce, follow these simple tips:
1// Define a sales funnel for your e-commerce
Your site must de designed according to a strategy of sales optimisation. And the same applies for a translated version of your website.
A sales funnel is what is going to allow you to define how you’re attracting people to your site and the process that they must follow to become clients.
If you’re implementing an email marketing strategy to attract subscribers to your offer, make sure that this is also translated or you may lose some of your subscribers.
You should make a list with every single step that your visitors should take since they land to your home page until they buy from you, and make sure that they are translated.
You don’t need to start with a very sophisticated strategy. In some cases, a landing page with an offer is enough and then you can start to build it up from this landing page.
A good translation is an investment and requires planning. It’s better to plan it small at the beginning than going from the cheapest supplier from the start.
2// Pay attention to multilingual SEO
One of the advantages of translating your E-commerce site is that you’re generating new content, and search engines can consider this very positively when ranking your website.
However, to maximise results, make sure that you hire someone with knowledge of SEO. Otherwise the translated version of your website may not rank as high as it could.
3// Not just translate, but culturally adapt your content
Cultural adaptation is very important during the sale process. Just a simple detail as showing a different currency can make the different.
I have no idea what Swedish crown equals in Euros or Pounds – do you? People navigating on the Internet may be too lazy to convert the money and you’d be losing more clients for just that simple detail.
Remember to hire someone who specialises in the culture or country that you want to target.
For more information about culture adaption, you can read this post.
4// Pay special attention to these sections
There are certain sections on your website where words are especially important. These are the section where your clients are going to decide if your product is what they are looking for.
- Home page/landing page. You should answer the question “is there something on this website for me?” Otherwise, people may not be patience enough to keep digging.
- Product descriptions. And this is something that people normally forget. Here is where you should make an effort. The product description will make your visitors to add your product to the cart or leave your website. Read this post to write the perfect product descriptions.
- Payment section. People should forget about this as well. If people see something dodgy or something that they can understand when they’re introducing their personal details in your website, they will simply not complete the selling process.
5// Invest in human translation
I’m sure that you have stayed in a hotel or gone to a restaurant in a different country, and have come across with this ridiculous translations of menus or holidays packages, or even signs and ads, right?
Do you want your website look like that?
As you probably know, there are plugins that will automatically translate your website, but do you really think that Google Translate can do all this work?
Human translation isn’t probably cheap, but it’ll bring you a good return of your investment. Real results.
Something that I’m afraid these plugins won’t do, so consider hiring a professional translator to invest wisely in the translation of your e-commerce site.
Now it’s time to take some action. If you’re thinking about getting your e-commerce translated into a different language, start planning and contact the right person to manage all the process. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this below!
