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Are you planning to sell abroad, or would you like to increase your existing overseas sales? If you are, but are hesitating about translating your website, then here are:

5 Reasons to translate your website

  1. The UK’s population is less than 1% of the global population (64.1m vs 7bn people) – translating your website helps you reach out to the rest!
  2. Only one in five of the UK’s small and medium-sized businesses currently export. However, businesses are 11% more likely to survive if they export (CBI)
  3. The amount of business being done online in the UK, US, China and Germany will reach £645 billion in 2018 – that’s double what it is now (OC&C Strategy Consultants, PayPal and Google
  4. 42% say they never purchase products and services in other languages
  5. 56.2% of consumers say that the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important than price (Harvard Business Review)

But everyone speaks English as well, right? No – and English isn’t even the number 1 language online anymore – in 2015 Chinese overtook English as the most-used language on the Internet.

It might be tempting to see translation as an expense, but if you consider the last 2 bullet points in particular it’s clear that translation should be seen as an investment, if you are serious about selling abroad. In addition if overseas buyers are prepared to pay more to get information in their own language, then give them what they are asking for!

If you have a small website, getting started is fairly easily done – decide which language/s are the most important to you, in terms of market size, accessibility, etc. and begin translating. Accutranslate can help by telling you which countries are already accessing your English website and how they are behaving – for example, the drop-off rates of overseas visitors.

For larger sites with hundreds of pages you may prefer to start by translating your key pages – Contact page (localise it so for example your phone number is clear to overseas diallers), main “About us” page, and any pages relating to purchase, or basket or checkout.

Accutranslate can help you set up tracking and measuring systems if you don’t already have them, so that you can see the effect of the translations in each market – start gently, and only move on to do more if you see it working – contact Accutranslate on 0800 466 1335 to get started and you’ll soon be seeing the benefits!