How to Measure ROI on Your Website Localization Efforts
Optimizing a website for different countries and cultures can often prove to be lucrative. Business owners need to do more than just translate their content in other languages, though. Website visitors want custom, local content that resonates with them. This is where localization comes in. Localization enables business owners to adapt content for different locales of the world, generating more revenue, and increasing visibility. Measuring the ROI on website localization efforts can be a challenge. Here’s how to do it properly:
Why Is Website Localization So Important?
Business owners who localize website content can reach their ideal target market in more countries. Around 86 percent of internet users who visit the top 10 global websites live outside of the United States, according to one study. Targeting international customers, therefore, is a great way to grow a business.
How to Measure the ROI on Localization
1. Measure Page Views and Other Organic Metrics
Tracking page views is a great way to measure the ROI on localization. Business owners who optimize their websites for different languages and cultures can find out how many people in a particular region visit their site — and how often.
Businesses can also find out how long these customers stay on their page and fine-tune their localization strategies accordingly. Here’s an example: If someone from Brazil only engages with a website for a few minutes, business owners can think up new ways to optimize their pages for the Brazilian market so that their “time on site” increases, indicating a quality visit.
Businesses might also want to compare customers who visit localized pages with customers who visit nonlocalized pages.
“One frequently overlooked insight is provided by comparing the behavior of customers from a given locale in the localized web content with how they navigate and how they convert in nonlocalized web content,” says MultiLingual magazine.
2. Track Email Subscriptions
While website views are an important metric, they won’t tell a business owner whether a customer engages with localized content. Measuring email subscriptions, on the other hand, will reveal whether localization is a real driver of growth.
The most popular digital tools, such as Google Analytics and Zoho, streamline this entire process. These tools use powerful metrics that track email subscriptions over time and provide users with unparalleled customer intelligence. As a result, business owners can discover which types of localized content prompt visitors to sign-up for emails.
3. Analyze Social Media KPIs
Social media metrics tell business owners about whether consumers are engaging with their content. These key performance indicators track social media mentions of a brand or product on websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The result? Business owners can find out what people are really saying about their brand online.
Social media metrics provide businesses with actionable insights into their localization campaigns. If perceptions towards a particular product or service from people in one part of the world are overwhelmingly negative, for example, business owners might need to invest more money and resources into localization. It’s something more and more companies are doing. In fact, 94 percent of organizations plan to increase localization expenditure in the future.
Localization makes it possible for different people and cultures to access relevant content. Measuring the ROI on website localization, however, can be tricky. Businesses who use the three metrics above will find it easier to track their local campaigns and target more consumers.
