Language Barriers & How to Bridge the Gap

Once upon a time and yet not that long ago, individual countries communication with one another throughout the world was restricted too package and letter delivery, telegrams, phone calls and fax machines.

Times have certainly changed in the past 20 years and now anyone with an appropriate electronic device such as a computer, laptop, tv, tablet or cell phone can now communicate with those alike.

Now while the gap has been bridged via the invention of the internet (thanks Al Gore lol) the hurdle to conquer is translation between languages. In the online world this is actually an easy task to tackle through simple translation of landing and check out pages.

It’s a fact that websites that provide sufficient translation on the vital pages of navigation can increase and generate their revenue in sales substantially.  Look at it this way, a huge corporate company like McDonalds or Coke is internationally known due to branding and marketing in different continents and in different languages and by doing so they have dominated their markets for many years. Well this same concept when approached in the correct manner can achieve similar results but on a smaller scale than what those big wigs have but that is purely due to the length of time that they have invested in their marketing as well as the billions that they have thrown at advertising over the years.

So how can you bridge the gap? Here are a few simple tips to guide you in the right direction:

• Evaluate how much text is located on your landing and check out page. Do this based upon per word.

• Look at your geographical statistics and assess the top 4 or 5 non English speaking countries that visit your site.

• Review the current bounce rate from those international locations and make note of this so that after translation has been implemented you can go back and do comparison report to see the difference that translation has made. For those that are not aware as to what “bounce rate” means, it’s a online marketing term that represents the percentage of visitors who enter your site and then leave rather than continuing to surf on your site. Such information can be acquired by having the likes of Google analytics implemented on your site.

• Once all of the above have been reviewed then seek out a handful of translation companies who can provide their service based upon a word count that excludes words such as “is, the, and” and ask for a quote to be provided. Once all quotes are in, read over their exclusion terms and assess which 2 companies to compare against one another and make them battle for your business.

• Have your administrator or tech implement the translations accordingly to the geographic location that is relevant and if you have the ability of having someone in those locations test the sites load times and ensure that it displays correctly then that is a massive advantage to you.

• While many companies will demand payment up front, don’t trust them! Insist on a 50% down concept and remaining amount to be paid upon completion. Those who argue this fact are NOT who you want to work with as you are taking the risk so they either comply or lose your business because there are many companies out there highly capable of providing what it is that you need.

• Don’t think you’re smart and translate things yourself using Google translation as grammar varies substantially and 1 wrong term can cost you thousands in lost sales because if a consumer witnesses such errors they tend to feel mislead and will not trust your website and in any relationship (yes even with online internet sales) trust is important.

• Translation can have an impact on your international search engine traffic through international extensions there for further increasing your international viewing reach.

Notes:

And with that all said, once you have mastered and completed the implementation of translation you need to ensure that your website has the capability of processing the sales in that specific countries trusted form of online payment which excludes credit cards.

This is where 2000Charge becomes a vital part with their several payment solutions that cater to literally hundreds of millions of users that you could not reach and convert prior.

Don’t believe us? 

The only way to sincerely dispute this fact is to implement translation and an alternative payment solution provider such as 2000Charge and see for one’s self.