Why Translating Your Shopify Website is Necessary – Part 1

Do you have second thoughts about translating your Shopify website? Do you think it is going to be an unnecessary, complicated activity that will serve no real purpose? Do you believe that it will be a costly affair overall that you cannot afford?

If the above questions are similar to what goes inside your mind, this blog series is for you.

In the first part of this 3-blog series, we answer why translating one’s Shopify website is an absolute necessity, given today’s scenario. Read below!

The internet-browsing pattern has undergone a sea change over the past few years and this phenomenon has completely changed the rules of the game.

Today, if you own a monolingual website, you are, in fact, running the risk of missing out on a lot of your potential customers.

Following are 4 major reasons why it makes perfect sense to translate your Shopify website:

1. Translation Helps You Expand Your Customer Base

Gone are the days when English was the only language on the internet. Now, more and more users are browsing in their native language. Surveys reveal that more than 70% of users today are browsing the internet in languages other than English.

In addition to this, more than 46% say they never buy an item unless it is offered to them in their mother tongue.

Hence, if you are targeting users in Europe with your English-only website, you could only be winning over a good chunk of people from the UK and Ireland only. In order to appeal to others, it is imperative you add other languages to your website based on the preferences of your targeted users.

2. Translation Improves Your Site’s SEO Ranking

Making it to the first page of the Google search results is crucial. Adding a new language to a website gives you an entirely new set of keywords in that language, which you can use strategically to improve the ranking of your website.

Normally, many native languages do not face the same keyword crunch that we observe in English, which has reached a phenomenon called keyword saturation. In such scenarios, native language keywords can be of immense help.

Moreover, adding languages to your website means that Google will consider your site as local when users search from other countries, and therefore will assign more relevance, a better ranking, and it will present your site among the first search results.

3. Translation Aids in Building Trust

Trust is the backbone of any business. The single most important factor that determines whether you will stay in the game for the long haul is the level of trust you are able to generate among your targeted users.

Offering products in the language spoken by the people you are targeting uncannily builds trust among them, and ultimately gives them the confidence to buy your products.

4. Translation Takes Your Business Global

Since technology has literally converted the whole world into a small, connected family, it is not a big deal to spread one’s wings across the globe. Earlier the task of going global was complicated and costly. But today, by simply translating your website into the language of your overseas audience, you could easily woo them.

Besides, translation serves as a great testing ground to assess the response of local customers before setting up an offshore office.

To sum it up, website translation may have seemed an ambitious project a decade back; however, today, it has become a necessity.

In the second part of this 3-blog series, we will explain why translating is no longer a complicated activity and how (with a website translation software) you can easily translate your Shopify store, literally, in minutes.

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