Content Localization: How to Do It to Grow International Sales

Failed attempts to adapt campaigns for foreign markets are a hoot—provided they’re not yours. Chevy’s Nova car translated in every Spanish-speaking country as “Chevy It Won’t Go.” Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated in China to “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”

Examples like these illustrate the complexity of communicating with global audiences. Cultural contexts vary, and even good translations can only get you so far.

Businesses meet this challenge with something known as content localization. Here’s what content localization is, how it helps ecommerce businesses, and how to develop a content localization strategy for your business, featuring expert insights from Derek Gleason, senior content lead at Shopify, and Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge.

What is content localization?

Content localization is the process of modifying a business’s content for a specific market. It’s part of the ecommerce website localization process. It can apply to text, images, videos, and podcasts, and any other medium in which a business distributes content.

Content localization tasks depend on a market’s cultural context. They might involve translating content into other languages, converting units, and adapting messaging to accommodate target audience preferences. Businesses frequently localize the following content types:

• Marketing materials. Product descriptions, email marketing campaigns, social media posts 

• Legal content. Agreements, disclaimers, policies, terms of use

• Technical content. Product specs and documentation, user manuals, help center materials

• User interface. Call-to-action (CTA) buttons, images, menus, checkout pages

Content localization can help businesses increase brand loyalty among global audiences by speaking in their cultural vernacular. It can also improve SEO rankings and boost organic traffic by better catering to local keywords and customer demand. Not to mention, it supports regulatory compliance by allowing businesses to customize content according to local laws.

How to decide if you should localize content

Content localization can be resource-intensive, so weigh it against other strategic investment options before you commit. Ask yourself if success in a particular market or set of markets represents the strongest growth opportunity for your brand.

Derek recommends answering this core question: “What’s the value of doing localization to open up five new markets versus growing three times as much in one market?” 

To do this, conduct market and competitor research to determine if localization will be essential to achieving your business growth objectives. Investigate the following questions: 

• Do customers in this market expect to interact with a business in their native language? 

• What percentage of the customers in the local market speak English? How proficient are they?

• How do your competitors approach localization in this market? 

• Do the top-performing businesses in the market localize content?

• How well is your business currently performing in this market? 

• How do customers in this market interact with your content? What do metrics like bounce rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and average session length suggest about customer engagement in that market?

There’s no single metric or formula that reflects the value of localization in a market, but you can use your findings to explore market conditions and identify the content factors that drive success. In general, poor market performance and limited engagement with your site demonstrate room for improvement, and high rates of localization among market leaders or a customer base that expects localization suggests that localizing content can lead to growth. 

Once you’ve assessed potential value, you’ll need to evaluate the cost of localization. “It’s expensive,” Derek advises. “And the costs scale.” If your goal is profitability (over raw growth), crunch the numbers to make sure the cost of localization won’t exceed the estimated revenue from that market.

Derek uses Sweden as an example of a small market where customer expectations for localization might not be strong enough to warrant the cost of localizing. “There aren’t a whole lot of things that are hyper-localized for Sweden, simply because it’s a smaller market,” he says. “And they have a higher tolerance than, say, a market like Japan where there’s an expectation that the content is going to be very, very localized.” Considering this complete picture can help you make smart choices about which markets to localize for. 

How to create a content localization strategy

1. Prioritize specific markets
2. Set market-specific goals
3. Choose content to localize
4. Translate and localize
5. Define deployment infrastructure
6. Develop internal localization guidance
7. Launch in the new market

Once you’ve determined which markets are worth the cost of localizing for, here are the critical steps to develop your strategy and start localizing:

1. Prioritize specific markets

There are different ways to prioritize your markets for localization. Some companies take a “snowball” approach, prioritizing a market where they see the highest potential for near-term revenue increase for the smallest amount of time and resources. Others may invest more resources on the front end to enter into a larger market first.

Derek also recommends considering a test market approach. Test markets are those in which you make regular sales and have enough performance history to identify trends—bonus points if they also share characteristics with other high-value markets. The idea is to test a change in the test market, like localizing CTAs on your website. If that leads to a measurable improvement, you could then deploy the changes in similar markets where you have less frequent sales. Deploying the change in the test market first helps you gather insights more quickly about the value of localization, which you can apply to similar markets. 

When it comes to localizing content in your own language, Derek shares two different ways of thinking about it. On the one hand, localizing for other markets in your own language is relatively straightforward, so it could be inexpensive to localize. “If you’re going to sell in another English language market, you could probably localize that for yourself just by doing your own research,” he says.

However, you also have to weigh whether the cultural and dialect differences are strong enough to warrant localization, or if non-localized content will suffice for your goal. “Think about the same blog post that you’re publishing in the US market, the Canadian market, the UK market, the Australian market, and New Zealand,” he says. “All those are going to be the exact same language, but they’re not gonna necessarily be localized for different markets,” says Derek. With this in mind, you might ask yourself if the nature of your content really requires a local point of view to have credibility.

Similarly, you can also consider localizing by language instead of by country. “We serve multiple Spanish-speaking countries with a single Spanish-language site,” says Derek. “Especially for small business owners, your customers don’t necessarily expect you to be fully localized like an enterprise company,” Derek says. “What matters is that you’ve put in a good-faith effort that shows empathy and consideration for your international audiences.”

2. Set market-specific goals

Create goals for your top priority markets and establish relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). Your market-specific goals will ladder up to your larger content localization goals, but they can differ from each other. For instance, your German-market goal might be to reduce cart abandonment rates and your Guatemalan-market goal might be to increase brand awareness.

3. Choose content to localize

Consult market-specific goals, market research, and available budget to choose exactly which content to localize in each market.

Derek stresses the importance of considering content format, too: “Plain text is the easiest to localize. Images are harder, and media assets like videos or podcasts are the most expensive and difficult.” All media formats require knowledge of cultural vernacular and norms, but localizing imagery involves obtaining new visual assets, and adapting videos and podcasts requires voiceovers or even new recordings.

He also recommends looking into how customers in each market find new brands and products. “Discovery networks differ by country,” Derek says. “The social platforms that matter will be different in different places.” Douyin is the most popular short-form video platform in China, for example. It’s also a leading ecommerce discovery network. Localizing content for Chinese markets might include adjusting messaging and formats for success on that platform.

If your marketing strategy includes SEO content marketing, Derek suggests looking at the content that performs well in search for that market. “Look at the SERPs,” says Derek. “Look for certain types of content that rank and match what they are doing," he adds.

Derek cites Japan as one market in which you might reformat content for discovery via organic search. “Japanese consumers tend to prefer longer-form content,” he says. “You might have a few short-form pieces or very short blogs and combine them into one longer article for Japanese markets because that kind of content performs better there.”

4. Translate and localize

The localization process involves more than just translation, and you may need to use multiple tactics to do it effectively. Here are a few different ways of doing it:

Do it yourself

If your budget is tight, there are a few ways to adapt content yourself. 

Derek suggests reviewing competitor sites for insights into CTA language. “If you’re going to go into the German market, go look at a bunch of German websites that are selling similar things and look at their CTAs,” he says. “Take a CTA, put it into Google Translate, and see what it says.”

For localizations involving translation, Derek recommends using software to translate text back into your own language before publication to look for changes in meaning.

Derek also recommends using artificial intelligence (AI) to do a first pass at translating content. “It used to be that the effort was 70% translation, 30% localization, but that’s almost backwards now,” Derek shares. “Now, you can generate the translation using an AI tool and then bring in a writer, editor, or marketer for the localization parts.”

Hire a local expert 

Hire somebody with experience in a target market to localize content. A native speaker who understands a market’s cultural norms can translate content into the local language and manage cultural adaptation, rewriting examples for local contexts and adjusting message and tone to align with cultural preferences.

Derek suggests looking for writers, editors, or marketers who are familiar with local audiences and can adopt your brand voice and tone. “You want somebody who can localize not just for that language and region, but also for your target demographic,” he says. “Obviously, that can affect language choices.”

Age is one consideration: “If you’re targeting a demographic of retirees, you don’t want the person doing the localization to be some Gen Z person, or at least not some Gen Z person channeling their Gen Z self,” he adds. 

Hire a localization service

Localization vendors specialize in helping businesses localize content. They can be expensive, but a good partner can offer accurate translation services, knowledge of local preferences and cultural values, and experience creating content for businesses in your market.

You can also work with a localization software provider. Localization software combines translation tools with additional localization features, such as systems designed to organize localized versions of businesses’ content, performance tracking dashboards, and audio and video tools like multilanguage subtitle or voiceover applications.

Sean Frank, CEO of ecommerce wallet retailer Ridge, uses the app Weglot for translation and localization, for example. "They pair you up with people who are localized in that market, and they just do the entire site," says Sean on the Shopify Masters podcast. “We use them for our ads too to make sure they’re being translated correctly,” he adds.

Derek recommends using AI to review adapted content when working with a new partner. “You can run it back into English and confirm that what it’s saying basically makes sense, and then at a certain point you’ve built trust with them and you don’t need to anymore,” he says.

5. Define deployment infrastructure

Effective localization requires a system that matches customers with the appropriate content. Ridge uses Shopify Markets, which allows business owners to customize sites for individual markets and ensures that shoppers in each region see localized content.

“When you get to countries like France, you’re missing 60% of overall shoppers [if you don’t localize content],” Sean says. “We’ll give them localized inventory experiences and help them check on their own currency. It’s the fastest-growing part of our business.

6. Develop internal localization guidance

As you start localizing content, note key translations and messaging choices as you go. You’ll use these to develop a glossary and a style guide for each new market, which will become an important foundation in your global brand management strategy:

• Glossaries. Glossaries ensure consistency within a market by listing key terms and accepted localized versions. The German words Leuchter and Kerzenständer can both apply to candleholders, for example, but they connote different styles and uses. Using them interchangeably could confuse and frustrate German readers.

• Style guides. Localization style guides address any modifications to brand voice, tone, and messaging strategy, increasing consistency and relevance and streamlining future localization processes.

7. Launch in the new market

Once you’re ready, launch your localized content, track your market-specific KPIs and overall localization goals, and adjust strategy based on your findings. You might localize additional markets, further localize your top-priority markets, or focus on different content types based on your findings.