Companies localize their brands’ persona for target markets to reach out to the maximum number of customers and increase their conversion rates. Localization helps you build a multilingual brand identity in the global marketplace. However, localizing your website could be challenging, especially if you are doing it all manually.
You may be using the best localization management system for your website, but if you don’t know how to pull it off using the right techniques, you won’t get the desirable results.
This article will give some easy and quick tips for WordPress website localization. Following the 5-step guide for WordPress website localization, you can easily get away with your website localization challenges.
Tips for a Seamless WordPress Website Localization
Choose A Translation Ready Theme
Based on the type of website you want to localize and your target audience, you first start with choosing the right translation-ready theme. If you have already selected a translation-ready theme, you don’t have to work hard on core files and easily get your website localized for different regions. On WordPress, you will find more than 35k themes that are translation ready. Some popular WordPress themes you can use for your multilingual website are Avada, Divi, WooCommerce, etc.
On ThemeForest, Avada is one of the best-selling WordPress themes; it has a backend page builder that you can use through the dashboard. Divi is a famous WordPress theme that has visual page builders and ready-made designs. WooCommerce is an ideal WooCommerce theme for e-commerce websites; it has its string localized for a few languages already, and what you really need to do is translate your product descriptions. The majority of themes that you use in WordPress come with WPML support.
Select Translation Plugins
WPML support is a popular WordPress plugin that almost all top-level themes in WordPress have support for. You can also add many other plugins to your WordPress website based on your preferences. Here is one of the best WordPress localization plugins that you can consider using.
Weglot is a popular WordPress plugin that supports translation to more than 100 languages. Using this plugin, you can generate automated translations and also manage manual translations. It also comes with a visual translation editor that helps you proofread and edit your translated file more easily.
The other plugin is Polylang Pro, which helps you translate categories, menus, posts, and widgets in your WordPress website. This plugin would allow you to add an unlimited number of languages to your WordPress website.
Then there is the MultilingualPress plugin that helps you create a different version of your website for every target region. Even for e-commerce websites, this is a helpful tool for creating multiple e-commerce stores globally.
Localization & Geotargeting
Once you are done with the translation built, it’s time to localize other elements of your websites to target markets. In this step, you have to localize all visual and functional features of your website to make it resonate more resonating with your target customers. For instance, how you display the time and date on your website for every region. Similarly, you may need to make some tweaks to your graphics, removing any offensive visuals based on the culture and social values of your audiences.
You must leverage geotargeting strategy that would make your ads campaigns drive maximum results and make your content engage more customers. Geotargeting goes beyond translations that use country flags to make your posts, ads and other types of content work more effectively for a given group of audiences.
Test Your Website
Don’t launch your website right away to a foreign market once you are done with localization. First, test to ensure that all your website localized versions are working well together in every region. The reason why most websites fail badly in a foreign country is that companies know very little about the target market’s culture and language. Even if there are mistakes in translations or other website elements, they would never be able to detect that. So, it is important to check the accuracy and relevance of your website before launch. If you’re using a localization management system, it may contain QA tools that would help evaluate the quality of translations.
Integrate With A TMS
In the end, to make your WordPress website localization seamless and hassle-free, you should integrate your website with a reliable translation project management platform. It would help you effectively manage your translation process, stakeholders, and other resources all from one single platform. A professional translation project management platform also allows you to collaborate with your internal and external project teams in real time. Moreover, through TMS integrations, you can easily manage your translation memory and glossaries more easily and quickly.