STUDIO FIVE

Why You Must Globalize Your Brand

In today’s globalized world, reaching a wider audience is crucial for businesses looking to expand their brand and boost their growth. One powerful tool that can help achieve this is a multilingual website. By breaking down language barriers and catering to diverse markets, a multilingual website has the potential to propel your business to new heights.

In the era of technology and the digital world, creating a multilingual website is a must for entrepreneurs who want to expand the reach of potential customers and boost their profits.

With the maximum assistance of virtual design apps, companies can generate a multilingual website meeting the demands of international users. However, mistakes are inevitable when building a multilingual website.

This blog post will delve into the significance of multilingual websites and provide valuable insights on creating and optimizing one that resonates with your target audience. Whether you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, this post will equip you with the knowledge you need to take your brand global. Get ready to unlock the true potential of a multilingual website and gain a competitive edge in the international market.

Key Benefits of A Multilingual Website

Multilingual websites allow content to be displayed in many different languages. Users can choose the appropriate language they understand based on the country or region in which they live. In general, multilingual website design is essential to helping companies attract more website visits from international customers.

Many companies are investing in multilingual websites because they understand the significant benefits for business profits. Here are five benefits of a multilingual website we would like to mention.

Reaching Multinational Clients

If you want to purchase a product on a website but your mother tongue is unavailable there, and you do not even see the language switch button, will you stay and continue to buy goods on this website?

Maybe the answer is no because buying a product with an understanding of its features can lead to a better shopping experience. Thus, a website designed in many languages will help the company reach more customers, not only locals but also international shoppers.

Global Marketing Tool

A multilingual website design is an effective marketing tool for promoting a company’s marketing campaign. These days, the website is your company’s image in the online marketplace. It is where you can present your products and services to customers professionally and attractively. Online marketing is always cheaper than traditional marketing, but its effectiveness is much higher.

Therefore, a professional multilingual website will bring you closer to your customers and increase the number of users who can understand your marketing messages.

Showing Customers You Care

If you provide users with qualified content in their native language, they will respect your company more and prefer its service over others. Accordingly, clients will visit your website often and spend more money purchasing your products or services. Customers will feel satisfied when they experience a website that is available in their language.

Building Trust

If your company owns a multilingual website, this makes local customers feel that your business is trustworthy and operates across multiple countries. They will appreciate the company’s credibility. The higher your business credibility is, the greater the purchasing potential and customer loyalty your company gains.

According to a Google survey, up to 82% of consumers purchase a product if its information is displayed in their native language.

Improving SEO Rankings

One of the main factors contributing to a business’s success is its ability to rank high on search engines. If the multilingual website is appropriately set up, Google will rank it higher in the search results.

It will be much better if your website is ranked high on the most popular search engines in the world, not only Google. Therefore, the multilingual website will optimize SEO in many different search engines, helping to improve the website’s ranking.

Common Mistakes When Designing A Multilingual Website

Not Understanding Your Audience

One of the most common mistakes is failing to consider cultural nuances. When considering a multilingual website design, it’s critical to research the local audience. Understand the customers’ culture to create content that’s more appealing to them.

Language goes beyond mere words; it encompasses cultural context, idioms, and sensitivities. Even if they speak the same language, people from different regions express measurements, time, dates, and currencies differently.

For instance, writing the date as 7/11/2024 may have different interpretations. In some countries, 7 represents the day; in others, it means the month. It’s best to research which style the locals use and stick to it to ensure everything is clear.

While customizing your website for your audience is important, never use automatic Geo-IP redirection to push users to different location versions of your website. It will confuse search engines, provide a bad user experience, and be illegal under EU law as of December 2, 2022. Instead, audiences should be allowed to choose their location on their own.

Relying on Automatic Translation

Relying on automatic translators is one of the biggest mistakes in building a multilingual website. Companies use automatic translation applications, such as Google Translate, DeepL, or Linguee, to minimize translation costs when designing a website.

This method will not ensure the accuracy of information the company wants to deliver to clients because Google Translate only correctly translates common words, not technical terms. A multilingual website heavily relying on machine translation leads to confusion and discomfort when accessing the website.

For a website to provide a great user experience, you should hire experienced freelance linguists or the translation and localization services of a trusted agency whose team includes highly qualified translators with many years of professional experience. They play a significant role in connecting multinational cultures.

Therefore, focus on saving the initial cost and remember the long-term benefits to get potential customers for your company.

Not Using Localization Techniques

Localization is the process of tailoring content to particular locales. If you’re serious about targeting a specific place, your translation must account for any dialects, slang terms, or variations in language.

An excellent example of this is US vs. UK English. While English is the dominant language in both the US and the UK, there are a lot of differences between the two languages.

Whether it’s different ways of saying the same thing (sidewalk vs. pavement or shopping cart vs. basket), spellings (color vs. colour or favorite vs. favourite), or even dates (day/month/year vs. month/day/year), these little things can make a big difference to customers.

Sound localization also includes providing currency switchers, free shipping options globally, marketing or ad restrictions in certain countries, and more for e-commerce websites.

Localization ensures that your customers get the best possible experience from your website.

Hiding the Language Switcher

This switcher plays a vital role in determining whether the company’s website is user-friendly since every time international customers visit your website, the first thing they do is find the language switcher. If your company’s site lacks that feature or the button is out of sight, the user will leave immediately.

Therefore, when designing a multilingual website, you should find the right position to put the language selection box. The ideal position is in the upper right corner of the website because it is easy for users to recognize when accessing the website.

Besides, if the website uses English and Japanese, just put the name or the flag. The drop-down menu will be the best option for websites with more than two languages. In particular, companies should use a browser that automatically locates visitors and provides the correct language to maximize efficiency.

Using Incorrect Date Formats and Units of Measurement

Most countries worldwide have agreed to use the international system of units (SI), the metric system. Meanwhile, three countries—the US, Myanmar, and Liberia—still apply the imperial system in daily life.

People in these countries are more familiar with ounces, inches, and feet than kg, cm, and m of the rest of the world. As a result, this difference between the two measurement systems must be scrutinized before your company launches a multilingual website.

Apart from the system of units, web designers should take advantage of the stage of converting the format of date and time based on the language of target countries. This is because each country will have a different way of displaying chronological order.

For example, the order date/month/year is the most popular form used worldwide, from South America and most parts of Europe to most countries of Asia. However, in North America, dates are written in order of month/date/year.

To avoid making mistakes in converting the system of units and date and time format during the multilingual website design, you must consult a team of experts specializing in web localization. They will help you generate a multilingual website with the standard format of each country.

Using the Same Layout for All Countries

When designing a product, we always prioritize customer satisfaction. The same goes for multilingual website design. That is why designers are recommended to learn some basic human tendencies so they can understand the client’s behavior and motivation.

Applying only one web layout to all countries will bore users because people from different countries may not have the same web design preferences.

Therefore, we list three factors in the user’s aesthetic tastes that designers should consider while building the website.

Colors:

One of the first things that is easiest for designers to learn is about color and how it affects a person’s mood and behavior. The web with the right colors can get the user to perform exactly what you want. Each color has a special meaning and effect on each individual. Importantly, the meaning of color can change depending on the target audience’s culture.

Thus, companies should thoroughly understand the culture of each country before designing the website in that country’s language. For example, while McDonald’s in Norway mainly uses yellow and green for the website because Norwegians care about the environment, the mainstream colors of McDonald’s website in other countries in the world are red and yellow.

Design preference:

In many parts of Asia, web design is more dense, with content heavier on the first page and smaller images. People are used to consuming more information within a single screen.

Take Japanese websites as a typical example. Japanese websites are full of words, with an interface filled with different content and titles and small, low-quality images. The Japanese always save space for displaying information.

The reason is that Japanese people need more information about products and services to make informed decisions before purchasing products rather than purchasing goods due to their vibrant images.

Therefore, designers don’t have to decorate a website with the highest quality images and giant banners. Instead, they should focus on putting more text on the website for Japanese customers. On the other hand, Vietnam’s web design often features large, vibrant images and banners. Most of the site’s space is for images instead of text.

Text orientation:

Most countries arrange their website content in a left-to-right flow, while countries where Arabic is the official language design their web with a right-to-left font of text.

Not Translating Technical Elements

Content is one of many things you’re translating. You also need to translate categories and tags and provide a new URL for every new language. Most importantly, you must tell Google you’re translating and not duplicating content.

A common mistake in multilingual website design is writing the same content in different languages and putting it on separate pages. Search engines like Google consider this content duplicate and penalize the business for doing that.

For this, you’ll need a hreflang tag. Use it to specify which language the page in question is in and list the other available languages. Google doesn’t penalize businesses that use hreflang to show the link between two sets of information.

Forgetting About SEO

The ultimate goal of a multilingual website is to bring in more traffic and gain more satisfied customers. However, attracting more traffic requires effective SEO – search engine optimization.

To make your project a success, you need a multilingual SEO strategy. This includes translating URLs, researching long-tail keywords in different languages, translating meta tags, alt tags, and descriptions, and even using plugins with multilingual SEO options. These tactics ensure that everything from written content to images is fully optimized for each language.

Each language has keywords that customers use when searching for products. Failure to use these words in the translated content denies the website a higher ranking during organic searches. The key here is to use native translators who understand the keywords of the local language. Such a move will go a long way in boosting your marketing effort.

Connecting With Your Global Audience

Creating a multilingual website is crucial for companies and product brands seeking to expand their reach to a global audience. By utilizing virtual design apps, businesses can effortlessly develop a multilingual website that caters to the needs and preferences of diverse consumers worldwide.

However, it is imperative to avoid common mistakes to provide an optimal user experience on the company’s website. These common mistakes and tips will help your company build a multilingual website that can bring the best user experience for clients worldwide.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to go global—contact us for more information and start globalizing your brand today.