Patrick Eve

About Patrick Eve

Website localisation: three examples of best practice

Increased globalisation has presented brands with huge opportunities to expand into new markets and the internet has drastically lowered the barriers to entry.

This has resulted in increased global competition. So brands need to ensure that their multi-language websites are properly localised in order to succeed internationally.

I regularly advise clients on the best approaches to website localisation in various different regions around the world, and perhaps because of this, I can’t help but analyse the websites that I come across to see how well they are localised for their target markets.

In this article, I’ve identified some critical success factors to site localisation and highlighted some sites that, at least in my opinion, do it particularly well.

Extend your global social media reach by communicating locally

Giovanna Chirri, the reporter who broke the news of the Pope’s resignation, got the scoop ahead of other journalists because she understood the Latin in which the Pope made his announcement. She tweeted the news as others waited for the official translations to come from the Vatican.

Of course, this was an exceptional set of circumstances. I doubt there will be a sudden rush on Latin text books. But it does illustrate a point: to be understood by an audience, you must speak the same language.

English is the world’s most spoken language, and the language that has become the default for global businesses. It’s usually the starting point for campaigns both online and offline.

But while English is the most spoken language online, it only accounts for a quarter of all social content.