Home 9 Localization

Multilingual Website

Languages most used on the web…

Several surveys indicate that sales increase significantly if you sell products to customers in their languages. Presenting or selling products via a website in English is good, but to penetrate a market that speaks another language, website translation is essential.

Let’s look at a few statistics:

Web users are four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer’s language (www.idc.com).
Over 100 million people access the Internet in a language other than English.
Over 50% of Web users speak a native language other than English.
Visitors stay for twice as long (Site stickiness is doubled), if a website is in their own language (Forrester Research).

Games & Mobile apps

You may experience a significant increase in your app’s download if you localize it!!!

Let’s look at a few statistics:

50%of the countries within the Top 10 for downloads and revenue in iOS App Store are non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia. (Source: App Annie) 80% of the countries within the Top 5 for downloads and revenue in Google Play are non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia. (Source: App Annie, Q2 2014)
92% of the Top 25 Grossing iPhone apps in China use Chinese names and the other East Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan and Korea lie between 52% and 76%. (Source: App Annie, Q2 2014)
80%of the Top 25 Grossing Android apps in Japan use Japanese names and the other East Asian countries like Taiwan and Korea lie between 64% and 72%.
41%of the total app revenue globally came from Asia, while North America generated 31% and Europe 23%. (Source: Distimo, Q1 2014)
App revenue in Asia increased by 162% year-over-year (2012 to 2013), while North America’s revenue grew by 46%. (Source: Distimo, Q1 2014)

Most popular languages among mobile app users: English (28%), Spanish (15%), Simplified Chinese (12%), Japanese (5%), Korean (4%), French (4%), German (3%), Italian (2%), Portuguese.

Localization of Software User Interface (UI)

Your customers need to be able to use your software easily. It should look and feel native. It needs to accommodate their local holidays, date formats, time formats, and so on. It should also reflect the customer. For example, an image of a Caucasian family might not be appropriate for a home page image for a website in China.