Website Localization navigator: 5 Localization Best Practices

declare you’re an American shopper looking to provide a partner a sweater. At last, you discover the perfect product: It’s impeccably knitted, available in several lovely shades, and offers the alternative to add a custom embroidered monogram.

But something feels off. The item description invites you to “personalise” your “colours,” noting that a monogram adds a “fortnight” to the processing period. If you purchase the “£200 jumper” by “2 November” it’s guaranteed to arrive in period for Christmas. Miss that deadline, and it’s “Boxing Day” or later.

You can read every word—the copy is in your native language—but it feels like it wasn’t written for you, leaving you feeling like an outsider. This highlights the importance of website localization for different audiences. Here’s what you require to recognize.

What is website localization?

Website localization is adapting your online presence to make it feel more natural and welcoming to your target audiences. Unlike translation, which just converts words from one language into another, localization adapts the entire user encounter—including local language, cultural context, money, remittance methods, domain suffixes, design, and layout—to make visitors feel at home rather than like they’re browsing a foreign site.

Elements of your localization schedule may include:

• Domains. Set up region-specific top-level domains (like .com, .mx, .ca) with automatic user redirection.
• Currencies. Shoppers desire to comprehend pricing immediately, in their native money. Ecommerce sites that localize currencies on product pages view a 40% boost in conversion rates.
• remittance methods. Preferences transformation across borders. remittance options should reflect these local expectations. For example, digital remittance systems like Apple Pay are popular in China and Western Europe, while most transactions in the Netherlands use a domestic remittance way called iDEAL.
• Language translation. Visitors can’t shop on websites they can’t read.
• Imagery. adjust visual content to resonate with cultural nuances and local sensibilities.

Why localize your website?

Localization is significant for ecommerce businesses hoping to attract a global spectators or shatter into recent markets. Adapting to the local population builds depend and improves the customer encounter, which can translate into increased sales.

“Localizing is not only translation to different languages but also semantics like spelling, idioms, date formatting, money symbols—plus design that considers the cultural context,” says Derek Gleason, elder navigator, content at Shopify. “These may sound like little details, but this is what makes someone feel the encounter was made for them. When those little details are incorrect, the shopper notices.”

That’s what differentiates factual localization from straightforward translation. As Derek explains, “You can publish in the same language for the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and recent Zealand, but those semantics will be different.”

For an example of localization’s importance, consider Petal & Pup, an Australian fashion retailer that expanded to recent Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada. By localizing its ecommerce store and personalizing content for each region, international sales now represent 20% of the corporation’s total returns.

Best practices for effective website localization

• Identify teams, tools, and workflows
• Hire a local specialist
• Define your goals
• commence tiny
• Account for translation and preferences
• Adopt continuous localization

When you embark on localization efforts, keep these best practices in mind:

Identify teams, tools, and workflows

packed-scale website localization can involve lots of moving parts, so it’s helpful to have a dedicated person or a throng responsible for orchestrating the localization workflow. Several tools may also be available within your website platform and content management structure to assist your throng with these processes.

For example, Shopify Managed Markets serves as a hub for your expansion activities, simplifying the procedure of offering international remittance methods, custom themes, region-specific reporting, and more. The Shopify App Store includes additional services like the Geo:Pro app, which redirects international shoppers to their localized ecommerce domain.

Other localization solutions include software specifically designed for this purpose—like Smartling, Weglot, Lokalise, and Crowdin—several of which propose translation services. Additionally, artificial intelligence has enabled several general machine translation tools that can significantly cut translation costs compared to human translation. (Note that computer-assisted translation scan outcome in clunky, word-for-word phrasing or introduce errors—it’s best to have a native speaker review them.)

Hire a local specialist

If it’s financially feasible, Derek recommends hiring local subject matter experts who deeply comprehend the local customs, interests, sensitivities, and preferred tone. These professional translators can propose recommendations on storytelling, images that may fall flat due to cultural differences, and the best way to now information to your target spectators.

“They distribute things you’d never recognize otherwise,” Derek says. “We were adapting a US blog post for a Southeast Asian localized website, so we planned to swap in a local example—and the subject matter experts actually said, ‘No, keep the US example because that will construct credibility.’ Tapping local experts helped us get maximum empathy and confidence with that customer base.”

Define your goals

Website localization can be a comprehensive overhaul (like building sites entirely tailored for specific markets) or targeted tactics (like redirecting users to local top-level domains with local currencies while keeping the main storefront similar). commence by determining your goals, then defining the scope of your website localization schedule. inquire yourself:

• Are you looking to enhance an existing site or make a recent one tailored to a specific target economy?
• Is your objective to drive website traffic or boost sales?
• According to your sales data, which foreign markets are most significant, and which underperforming regions could use a boost?
• What’s feasible with your resources?

aspiration large, but ensure your goals are also in alignment with the resources you can feasibly debt. “It would be great to localize for 20 markets—but in reality, that’s a huge expense and period undertaking,” Derek says. “Be realistic about what you can do, and ponder critically about where you can have the most impact.”

commence tiny

Localization can be an expensive endeavor, and it needs to display a profit on property (ROI). Thankfully, it doesn’t require an all-or-nothing way. If your distribution is constrained, Derek recommends starting with incremental and targeted tactics.

“Maybe you’ve had a German site for a while, but you’ve never actively localized call-to-action buttons,” Derek says. “You can do that inexpensively because it’s a tiny amount of text, and then you assess impact. If it gives you a 10% lift in Germany for X number of dollars, you can determine if localization services are worth it for the packed site—or in other international markets too.”

You might consider a hybrid way: Perhaps you hire local experts for high-visibility content, product descriptions, and CTAs, but lean on AI for less-visited pages. “It’s also feasible to localize language yourself by doing your own research,” Derek says. “If you’re a native English speaker, you can discover phrases and date formatting for Australia and the UK. You won’t become a local specialist, but you can still do basic localization in-house.”

Account for translation and preferences

You may have to adjust your website design to the translated content. Depending on your target language, the recent copy can fundamentally transform text layout and volume.

“At Shopify, working on our own localization, we realized that a translation caused a word within a headline to be split between lines,” Derek says. “It’s why you can’t always leave ‘words first’ with localization. Everything has to fit the user interface.”

For example, translating from English to German can lengthen text by about 10% to 35%. “Add to Cart” becomes “In den Warenkorb,” and “tracking” becomes “sendungsverfolgung.” Languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean expand vertically compared to English. Others, like Arabic and Hebrew, read correct to left. Some cultures may favor minimalist or image-heavy design; others prefer text explanations. Your web pages’ design and layouts must account for this diversity. 

Adopt continuous localization

Many tiny businesses debt waterfall localization, which involves creating the main site first, then adapting it into recent versions for different regions. But some businesses—often recent, inherently global companies—can embrace continuous localization. This more agile way involves creating localized sites simultaneously with the source-language version, enabling them to launch into recent markets all at once while keeping the website’s content continuously updated.

But don’t worry if this isn’t in your distribution. The objective isn’t perfection, but demonstrating genuine worry for and profit in your spectators. “tiny businesses don’t have to pretend to be an enterprise to achieve with localization,” Derek says. “inquire yourself: Do we have enough credibility that cuts across all languages? Are we making an attempt to display some amount of focus on our international customers in significant markets, even if it’s not perfectly built from scratch for their region? If the answers are yes, you’re doing it correct.”