Staying competitive in today's global marketplace means having a digital presence that's customised, optimised and relevant for international audiences.
A modern multilingual website's success depends on so much more than just translating static content. That means making a plan-one that considers everything from what you translate to how you should translate it-and selecting partners and technology that create a recipe for long-term, scalable success.
Read on to learn about the nine pillars of website translation best practices, and ensure that your multilingual site is planned, designed and executed with your global business goals in mind.
Your website is a living marketing channel that never remains static for long. The site you need today will probably look quite different from the site you’ll need even a year or two from now. Your translation approach needs to grow along with you.
Traditional translation approaches can handle the content on your site today, but over time—as content changes—you lose the consistency of your brand voice and the ability to adapt your content and translation workflows to increases in traffic and demand.
Read more about how MotionPoint can help you think long-term about your website translation.
When considering website translation, don’t limit yourself to thinking about the process as merely changing words from one language to another. Think in terms of localisation-making your website relevant to new audiences in new markets-and making a long-term commitment to a global business.
Localisation is a nuanced kind of translation. It reflects locally-preferred phrases, makes reference to local cultural practices and holidays, and more. This helps you create loyal buyers within new global markets, simply because your content feels authentic, personal and customised to their needs. Your local promotions and marketing will be more effective, increasing the return on your investment and establishing a strong foothold in international markets.
Read more about the difference between translation and localisation, and how MotionPoint can help you apply both effectively to your growing global business.
Digital marketing moves fast. Your global website needs to keep up, which means you need a translation approach that’s nimble and can adapt to the ever-changing demands of your global business.
Delays in translation create gaps on your localised sites. Untranslated content appears on your sites, wrecking the immersive in-language experience and turning off customers. That's bad news. Those ever-important first impressions count big, and customers are unlikely to return to your site if they think you're not relevant to them.
This problem only gets worse as your website grows. You’ll need an approach to website translation that prioritizes speed to market.
Learn how MotionPoint keeps up with the speed of website translation today, and ensures you’re prepared for first-mover advantage tomorrow.
Bonus! Get the survival guide on the pitfalls and best practices of website translation, and sidestep the challenges of traditional website translation approaches.
Traditional translation agencies simply don’t understand the demands and complexities of a digital-first business world.
You'll want to make sure your website translation partners can adapt to important aspects of your digital presence including mobile, search engine optimisation and omnichannel marketing across digital and social media. A technology-savvy partner can ensure that you translate not just the content on your site today, but discover and prioritize all the translatable content on your site as you grow.
MotionPoint specializes in leveraging the most advanced technology for your website translation so your global business never misses a step.
Website translation doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” approach anymore. As you’re expanding to international markets, consider the most important pieces of your site for those local audiences, and prioritize translating them.
Ultimately, your goal should be to provide a truly localised experience for your customers while ensuring they have all the information they need to make a purchase. A great partner can help you decide what on-site content is important, what can wait, and how you’ll get the biggest bang for your translation buck as you enter new markets.
MotionPoint can help you strike the perfect balance between your website translation scope, budget and business goals.
Machine translation is powerful, but often falls short for most brands. Human translation offers far superior quality, but costs more.
Thankfully, for today's websites-with all of their complexity, personalisation, and optimisation needs-you can use a combination of machine translation and human translation so your site can reach its full potential.
This hybrid approach can help maximise your budget, ensure that your website translation can adapt to your design, and capture your authentic brand voice in a localised language where it's needed the most.
Read about MotionPoint’s powerful hybrid translation approach.
Bonus! Grab our comprehensive e-book and learn the best-kept secret ingredient for global marketing success.
Your website is the flagship for your business’ digital presence, so website translation is super important. But it’s not the only content to consider.
You have valuable content across all your digital channels that complement the messaging on your website. Whether it's mobile applications, content marketing assets or multimedia content, you should capitalise on the opportunity to carry great localised content across all channels.
Read why MotionPoint is an expert at leveraging translation technology to repurpose and remix your translated content for all your digital channels.
Most website translation approaches have a critical flaw: they can’t translate multimedia very well—if at all.
Translating on-site text isn't nearly enough to give your customers a truly authentic, personalised and localised experience with your content. Serving up images, videos, PDFs and even non-traditional text blocks without proper translation can erode brand credibility and send your audience the message that you’re not fully committed to their market.
Learn the best practices of multimedia website and content translation with MotionPoint’s unique approach.
Website translation companies are not created equal.
You need more than a vendor that can push words through a translation engine. You don't want to rely on the profoundly unreliable approach of "crowdsourcing" your translation, either. And for most businesses, building an in-house team for translation is prohibitively time-consuming and expensive.
Solutions built to solve the operational complexity and cost associated with website translation are rare, but they do exist. MotionPoint is proof.
Don’t skimp on website translation. Your global digital presence deserves the investment, expertise and care that shows your international audiences that you value their business. And you deserve a translation approach that can grow and adapt to the needs of your site over time.
Work with the only partner that can apply the nine best practices for website translation to make your global online business an unmitigated success.
Take a Deeper Dive
Want to learn more about the translation and localisation industry? Check out our resource section and become an expert on all things related to a great multilingual experience.
Learn More In Our Resources Section