If you read last week’s statistic-crunching, fact-frenzy of a blog post, then it’s likely you already understand why translating your website is going to increase your site traffic.
For unfamiliar, first-time readers, here’s the scenario.
The malls and streets that your customers used to frequent are not the same places they were six months ago.
And, if you’re a business owner who owns a physical shop that has traditionally relied on footfall to secure sales, then you may have been shocked and unprepared for the overnight acceleration of the digital economy that happened when the pandemic hit earlier this year.
If this is you, then it’s likely that your commercial survival has suddenly had to rest its considerable weight on your online presence, and (unless you were already a huge multinational corporation), it’s also unlikely that you ever foresaw the need to translate your website into multiple languages.
And you know what? You’re not alone.
Over half of all Fortune 500 retail company websites haven’t translated their websites, and this is despite the overwhelming data that most online activity isn’t even attributed to English speakers.
The not-so-shocking truth?
Fortune 500 companies that translate their content are 2.67 times more likely to experience a revenue increase, and three-quarters of firms who do translate, report adding new markets (both domestic and international) to their annual growth.
Have we got your attention yet?
We know translation can be scary, and we know that given the current world crisis, you probably don’t have ‘translate 10,000 products into Modern Standard Arabic’ at the top of your to-do list, but now that we’ve established that website translation has gone from ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘sales and customer service necessity’, here are our top three tips for increasing your traffic (and hopefully, your sales) through website translation.
Three Genius Tips To Get Your Traffic-Boosting Website Translation Started
Research Your Traffic Sources
Never make a business decision without first checking the data.
In this case, the data you need is easily found in your Google Analytics Dashboard, by viewing your traffic.
To decide what language (or languages) to begin with, you’ll need to take a deep-dive into your acquisition report, and find out where all the different types of traffic you get (paid, referral, organic, direct) come from.
For example, if you’re a luxury retail outlet operating in Dubai, but your report shows that the majority of your organic search traffic comes from the United Kingdom, then translating your Arabic website into English, or vice versa may be a good place to start!
Don’t Translate Everything...Yet
If you own a large website or digital presence, then translating your entire content ecosystem can be a daunting prospect. Use Google Analytics to find out what your most popular content is, and use this as the starting point for your localization effort.
For example, at e-Arabization, our most visited content is our services page, and almost 100% of the traffic on this page comes from countries within the GCC. With this in mind, it is vitally important that our services page is available to view in Arabic and English.
Imagine how much traffic (and more importantly, business) we’d lose if we weren’t ready and instantly available in our target customer’s language.
Google Translate Is Not Your Friend
There’s a time and place for Google Translate, and this isn’t it.
Website translation is too costly a business decision to trust a 100% machine translation approach, and we’ve seen some truly horrific (and costly) translation errors in our 15 years in the industry.
The problem with using Google Translate to recreate your website content in a foreign language, is the often literal, word-for-word translations that it tends to recreate. Websites, blog posts and social media tend to speak the playful language of a copywriter, and without a human linguist guiding meaning, or using their ability to creatively localize certain phrases and words that work in English but perhaps don’t work in Arabic, or French, it’s almost impossible for Google Translate to recreate context and clarity the way that an experienced human translator can.
Translation Builds Trust, and Establishes a Global Presence
Still unconvinced? Even if you’re a digital-first business with no physical space, try to visit your website or blog with the same curiosity and lack of familiarity that your users will experience the first time they visit your site.
Now imagine how magnified that unfamiliar feeling is when your visitor is reading your content in a language alien to their own.
Not a comfortable experience, is it?
Establishing a presence in another language is great for traffic, but it’s even better for trust, brand power, and on-site conversion. 72.4% of consumers are more likely to buy in their native language, and in a year where the digital global marketplace has been blown wide open, it’s your job as a business owner to seize the opportunity to present a voice that’s heard and understood by all of your customers, in all of your target markets.
Interested to know how we can help you localize your content, or want to drop a quick marhaba our way? Visit e-arabization.com and check out how we translate websites into Arabic, and connect global businesses with the ever-growing MENA market.