Best Way to Localize a Website: Easiest Guide for 2024

Website localization is a must-have for any sized business. While our previous article covered 10 best practices for website localization, this supplementary guide focuses on some strategic approaches to implementing those practices effectively.

Benefits of Website Localization Process

Localizing your website offers numerous benefits for businesses with global aspirations. Consider the case of Airbnb, which has successfully translated its platform into over 60 languages. Doing so significantly boosted their international bookings and revenue.

Similarly, e-commerce giant Amazon has tailored its platform for numerous countries, adapting not just language but also product offerings, payment methods, and shipping options to suit local preferences.

You don’t have to be a multinational behemoth to start translating your website. Even the smallest bricks and mortar business can win new customers by adding a second language to their main website.

If your website is in English for your store in Texas, for example, a Spanish-language version is a no-brainer. If you run a dental practice in Cologne, I can almost guarantee that adding a Turkish or Ukrainian version to your site will bring in new bookings.

The Best Way to Localize a Website Step-by-Step

1. Set Clear Objectives and KPIs

Begin by identifying the language(s) you want to localize into. Research and prioritize the countries and languages that offer the most potential for your business based on factors such as market size, growth potential, and competition. Use market research tools like Statista or Euromonitor to gather data on your target markets.

Once you have your target market or languages identified, move on to defining what success looks like for your localization efforts. Are you aiming to increase traffic from specific regions? Boost conversion rates in new markets? Improve customer satisfaction scores? Use the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to set clear, actionable goals.

For example, a SMART goal might be: “Increase organic traffic from German-speaking countries by 30% within six months of launching the localized German website.”

Next, think about how you want to allocate budget and resources. You’ll need to determine how much you can invest in website localization and then dedicate those resources accordingly to translation, design, development, and ongoing maintenance.

Finally, map out your project timeline and milestones. I often like to use an old-school Gantt chart for this and then port it over to Asana where I create a realistic timeline for the entire localization project and break it up into manageable chunks and phases for my team.

This gives all of my stakeholders clear milestones to track progress and makes it easier for everyone to stay on top of timely deliverables. You could also use Trello or another tool to assign tasks, set deadlines, and collaborate with your localization team.

2. Conduct a Comprehensive Website Audit

Once you have your targets and KPIs locked in, it’s helpful to conduct a thorough audit of your current website. This simply gives you and your stakeholders a more comprehensive overview of what you’re dealing with and where your starting point is.

For a larger website, I recommend:

• Assessing your website’s structure, content, and functionality to identify localization needs and priorities. Use tools like Screaming Frog or Semrush to crawl your site and generate an inventory of your web pages and assets.
• Evaluating any existing translation and localization tools and processes. If you’re already using a translation management system (TMS) or working with a localization agency, review their performance so you can identify any areas for improvement. You might even determine that now’s an ideal time to migrate to a new tool or ditch your agency partner altogether.
• Defining the scope of the localization project, including the number of pages, languages, and content types involved. Prioritize the pages and content that are most critical for your business goals and user experience, such as your homepage, legal docs, product pages, and key landing pages. Also note any technical aspects you’ll need to internationalize, such as character encoding or date formats.
• Making a note of any UX elements that may need cultural adaptation. Colors of death, wonky buttons, “pride” flags: these are things that will need to be reworked or completely replaced. Start cataloging these items for your culturalization expert to review.

3. Prioritize Target Markets and Languages

Now it’s time to drill down into the best way to localize a website. Not all markets are created equal, and attempting to simultaneously localize for every language you identified in step one can be incredibly overwhelming and inefficient for a smaller business or brand. Instead, prioritize your target markets based on:

• Market size and growth potential
• Existing traffic and engagement from international users
• Competitive landscape
• Ease of doing business in the target country

Start by analyzing market size and growth potential. Tools like Statista or Euromonitor help you gather data on economic indicators and digital adoption rates in potential markets. A country with a large, tech-savvy population and a growing economy might offer more opportunities for an B2C startup, for example.

Next, examine your existing traffic and engagement. Google Analytics lets you identify countries already driving significant traffic to your website. This organic interest indicates a potential customer base that could be better served with a localized version of your site.

Consider the competitive landscape in each potential market. Sometimes, less saturated markets can offer quicker wins, even if they’re smaller. Research the level of competition and the strategies of successful competitors in each region.

Lastly, factor in the ease of doing business. Consider aspects like regulatory environment, payment systems, and logistics. Some markets might be more attractive due to favorable business conditions or existing trade agreements with your home country.

It’s often better to excel in a few key markets rather than spread your resources too thinly. So begin with one or two priority markets, refine your content localization strategy, and then use those learnings to expand further. This focused approach allows you to make the most of your localization efforts and resources.

4. Choose the Right Technology Stack to Manage Your Website Localization Strategy

Selecting the right tools and technologies is important, and it’s also difficult. You want your technology stack to support not just the initial translation process, but also ongoing management and updates of your multilingual content. You also don’t want to spend more than you need to. It can be tricky getting this right, and it’s not uncommon to switch gears after rolling out your first language or two.

At the core of your localization tech stack is a Content Management System (CMS) with robust multilingual support. Options like Drupal, Kirby, Joomla, WordPress or Contentful offer different strengths depending on your needs.

WordPress is widely used by startups and small businesses because it’s flexible, constantly being developed, and basically comes with a built-in website builder thanks to its Full-Site Editing feature. Plus, with the right plugin, it gives you a user-friendly interface for managing translations.

You’re definitely going to want a localization plugin with a translation memory or a Translation Management System (TMS) to streamline your localization workflow – it’s really the best way to localize a website. Platforms like Phrase, Weglot and Localazy offer features such as real-time collaboration, integration with popular development tools, and support for a wide range of file formats.

Don’t overlook the importance of SEO tools with strong multilingual and multi-regional capabilities, either. Tools like Ahrefs or SE Ranking give you country-specific SEO data and competitor analyses across different markets. These insights are invaluable for optimizing your localized content for international search engines.

When selecting your tech stack, consider factors such as scalability, integration with your existing systems, ease of use, and support for your target languages. It’s often worth investing time in thorough research and trial periods with different tools to find the right fit for your localization project, specific needs, budget, and existing infrastructure.

It’s a lot, I know. If you need a hand figuring out what’s best for your situation, Modilingua can help. Get in touch for a consultation on your website localization project and we’ll go over your options!

5. Build a Dream Team or Use a Translation Service

Successful website localization requires a diverse set of skills and it’s a team effort. In a corporate setting with a big budget, you’ll typically have a cross-functional team including:

• A program director or localization manager
• Project managers to oversee specific localization processes or languages
• Developers for the technical implementation
• Professional translators and local market experts
• SEO specialists for multilingual optimization
• UX designers for culturally appropriate user interfaces

Don’t be intimidated though if you’re a solopreneur or small business owner. You may not have the big budget to assemble a team, but you can still achieve great results with a lean, strategic approach.

Start by assessing your own capabilities. As a business owner, you likely wear many hats already. You might be able to manage the project yourself, especially if you have experience with your website’s CMS and basic SEO principles. However, it’s important to admit where you need external expertise.

Translation is one area where professional help is invaluable. While AI and machine translation have improved, human translation is more reliable for business-critical content. Consider working with freelance translators who are native speakers of your target languages and familiar with your industry. Online platforms like Legitt, Contra or Fiverr can help you find and vet qualified professionals.

For technical aspects like internationalization and multilingual SEO, you can also bring in a developer or SEO specialist on a project basis. Look for professionals with experience in website localization to ensure they understand the unique challenges involved!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of localization, or if you want to ensure you’re making the most strategic decisions, consider engaging a localization consultant. They’ll guide you through the entire process, from market selection to quality assurance and continuous localization, so that you can avoid common pitfalls and optimize your resources.

As a localization consultant myself, I’ve helped numerous businesses successfully tap into new markets. My services can be tailored to your specific situation, whether you need ongoing fractional program management or just some interim guidance around tooling, hiring and setup. Booking services like this on a retainer basis lets you work towards localization goals without the overhead of a large team.

6. Internationalize Your Website

My previous article went into more of the nitty-gritty around internationalization. In a nutshell, it’s the process of preparing for localization with a few key practices before you start work on the actual website translation:

• Using Unicode (UTF-8) encoding to support multiple languages
• Implementing flexible layouts to accommodate text expansion/contraction
• Separating content from design elements for easier translation
• Using language-agnostic image and file naming conventions
• Handling date, time and number formats programmatically/with libraries

All of the above lay a solid foundation for your multilingual website to grow on. They also save you a ton of problems down the road and make the overall user experience far better for an international audience.

7. Create a Localization Kit

You’ve heard of brand kits, but did you know you should also put a localization kit together for each of your target locales?

A localization kit is an invaluable resource for ensuring consistency and quality across all your localized content. It serves as a guide for translators, designers, and other team members involved in the localization process.

Much like with software localization or gaming translation, start with a style guide that outlines the tone, voice, and brand personality for each target market. This should cover writing style, brand voice adaptation for different cultures, guidelines for addressing the reader, preferred terminology, and formatting rules. Remember that your brand voice may need to be adjusted for different cultures.

Create a glossary of key terms and their approved translations. You’ll want to include product names, industry-specific terminology, common UI elements, and company-specific terms or slogans. Ensure that the glossary is regularly updated and easily accessible to all team members.

Provide guidelines on cultural sensitivities for each target locale. Include color associations, gestures or symbols to avoid, taboo topics or imagery, and appropriate use of humor and idioms – everything you worked out with your culturalization consultant in step two above. This section helps prevent cultural faux pas that could damage your brand’s reputation in new markets.

Also include detailed context for potentially ambiguous content. Screenshots showing where text will appear on the page can be extremely helpful to your translators, as can explanations of character limits for UI elements, and notes on the intent or meaning behind marketing slogans or idiomatic expressions.

If your website uses images, icons, or other visual elements, provide guidance on how these should be adapted for different markets. Include technical specifications that translators or localization specialists need to be aware of, such as character limits for UI elements and format requirements for dates, times, currencies, and measurements.

8. Check Your Website Content

Quality assurance is crucial for maintaining the integrity of your brand across languages. A robust QA process should include multiple stages of review where you test your website and weed out any localization mistakes. It usually comprises:

I strongly recommend exclusively engaging native speakers of your target languages to review all translated content. Have them check for accuracy of translation, adherence to your style guide and glossary, cultural appropriateness, and consistency in terminology and tone.

Follow this with functional testing of all localized website elements. Check links and navigation, forms and input fields, search functionality, and any e-commerce processes. Pay special attention to elements that might be affected by text expansion or contraction, such as buttons or menu items.

For a larger site, it’s also advisable to do some user experience testing with beta testers from your target markets. They’ll give you feedback on how well your localized site meets the needs and expectations of real local users. If you want to take this even further post-launch, you can use tools like heat mapping and session recording to analyze how users from different regions interact with your site.

Finally, doing SEO verification to ensure that all localized pages are properly indexed by search engines is a must. Check that hreflang tags are correctly implemented and that meta titles, descriptions, and URLs are properly localized and optimized for local search engines.

9. Plan for Continuous Optimization

If you’ve read any of my other articles, you already know that localization is not a one-and-done process. If you decide to take your business to international users, you’re going to be in it for the long haul so plan for ongoing maintenance and continuous improvement. Agility is the name of the game.

As your products, services, or company information changes, these updates will need to be reflected across the localized version(s) of your site.

Definitely also monitor performance metrics for each localized site. Use GA4 to track KPIs like website traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and average time on site for each language version. This data makes it easier to determine areas you need to optimize.

Qualitative data from ongoing user feedback post-launch can also provide valuable context to your quantitative metrics and guide your optimization efforts. Think surveys or simple feedback forms.

Lastly, it pays to stay in loop on any changes in local regulations, trends, and user preferences. Markets can evolve quickly, and you might sometimes need to update your localization kit or make changes to your SEO strategy or data protection docs.

Whatever size your business is, the best way to localize a website is to take a strategic, data-driven approach that prioritizes quality, consistency, and continuous improvement. By committing to continuous optimization, your localized website will stay effective, compliant, fresh and relevant for your target audience. And that will ultimately contribute to maximizing the return on your localization investment.