The current era of digitalization in which we live offers great opportunities to grow a business on an international scale.
These opportunities include exploring new markets or selling in different countries around the world without the need to have a physical store. In truth, it may be that your store has already crossed borders and that a contact thousands of miles away ends up turning into a potential customer who shops at your online store. Yet, how do users in different countries perceive you?
Websites are the shop windows for any online business today. From the moment your website comes up in a search, the user already starts receiving information about your store: the initial title, its description, content, main page, images, products or services, as well as the most important factor for internationalization, its language.
Web translations to reach international markets
When internationalizing your store, you must keep in mind that you’ll start interacting with users from several cultures and nationalities, whose mother tongue will be different from yours. In other words, a language as widespread as English may be useful to expand globally, but it won’t allow you to reach the position you need in the different countries where you want to sell.
This is why, in order to reach new markets, the first step is to adapt your online store in terms of language and localization. This goes beyond translating automatically, as it involves conducting a study on the customs, values, expressions and tastes in each country, as well as carrying out a professional translation and adaptation of the content with the support of native experts at a translation agency.
Your business’ international content
An international store will help you reach potential customers in countries that, as we mentioned before, may not share the same shopping habits, search habits, or even interests as your current customer base. It’s not just about translating and posting the content. To specify, it’s about adapting your key words to the country where you hope to start selling. For example, you can translate “pantalón corto” from Spanish to English literally as “short trousers”, however, this translation isn’t really what people in the English speaking world would say. Rather, the correct translation would be “shorts”. The lack of these cultural details can cause your content to not appear in searches and, even more importantly, that your future customers see your content as low quality due to a basic translation. For this reason, adapting your international store’s content would be the smartest way to start growing.
Applications for success when internationalizing your store
There are many ways to create a professional online store, such as the e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, etc. This technology allows you to create an online store from scratch. Adding modules, uploading images and videos, or customizing your catalogues are a few of the functionalities they offer in order to build a professional website without needing to know how to code.
If you’ve already created your online store, this is the time to take the leap and grow internationally.
Applications and integrations on these e-commerce platforms will allow you to ensure that your store crosses borders and expands with a totally professional image. They are exclusively created to add value, thanks to their technology and functionalities, both for you as an entrepreneur as well as for the user. Knowing that you’re dealing in the right market, personalizing the modal and offering the experience your customers are looking for are just some of the functionalities that ORBE has to offer. A geolocalization app designed by Shopify’s technical development company, Mushdesk, which adds value to your business and ensures that your target audience gets the best shopping experience.
We also recommend integrations such as all those that allow you to translate your website into the language of your target market, making it look local. In fact, it is so important that 70% of users prefer to shop on a website in their own language over one that is not. A quick and advanced translation application that allows you to change the language of all your international store’s content in just one click, such as Pluglin. This advanced translation plugin translates the content of your international store and adapts the key words depending on your preferences and the culture of the country where you wish to sell.
Creating an international store is getting increasingly easier with e-commerce platforms as well as the apps and integrations that exist, but choosing wisely will help you reach success in different countries. This is the time to take your products and services to any corner of the world. During the whole process, remember to convey confidence, a clear message and professionalism. If you would like experts to help you grow, get in touch with a translation agency that specializes in websites, in order to translate, adapt and improve the content.
This post is also available in: Español (Spanish) Français (French) Deutsch (German)
