Whether you’re entering a new overseas market or launching a new product abroad, the translation and localization of every single piece of your company’s content is daunting. Our advice? Take a less-is-more approach by prioritizing the most important content first.
3 Tips for Effective Content Translation Prioritization
Here’s how to choose what to translate first.
1. Follow the Money
Start by identifying content that’s tied to revenue—in other words, the materials that make you money. For example, if you’re an ecommerce company, you need your website up and running with translated product information as soon as possible.
If you’re selling online training courses, then both the courses themselves and the means to sell those courses must be localized first.
2. Subscribe to the 80/20 rule
Typically, only 20% of your content is consumed by 80% of your audience. So ask which of your web pages see the most traffic, the highest number of conversions, and the strongest engagement.
Use web data tools like Google Analytics to identify your top 20% and put a laser focus on that.
3. Concentrate on 4 content types
1. Marketing. This one ties directly to following the money in tip #1, but it’s worth reiterating. Marketing content builds awareness and moves consumers down the sales funnel – transforming prospects into loyal customers.
2. Customer Support. You have to help your customers troubleshoot and understand your products if they’re to remain loyal. That’s why how-to videos, technical specifications, user manuals, and other customer support content must take a top spot on your prioritization list. Fortunately, these types of documents are perfect candidates for machine translation, which can be performed at a fraction of the time and cost involved in using exclusively human translation.
3. Legal. When expanding your global business, you must comply with all local regulations to avoid legal issues and literally stay out of jail. That means all legal documents must be localized as soon as possible, and you need that done by experts who specialize in the legal field.
4. Internal. Don’t forget about your most important audience: your employees. If you’re expanding in a new, global market, be sure your people have the tools they need – in their own language – for effective onboarding and continued success.
Looking for a partner to help you manage your content localization needs?
At Summa Linguae Technologies, our localization teams do the heavy lifting for you. We’ll help you streamline your language activities and free up you and your teams to focus on your core business.
To learn more, check out our localization services or contact us today.
