November 11, 2024
As we are counting down to Black Friday, and Cyber Monday 2024, your customers’ shopping spirit is higher than ever. If you use Transcy to localize your Shopify store, high chances are that international shoppers will flock to your site at any minute.
And if you want to convert this potential traffic into sales, ensure that your localized website is free from errors. This is because a poorly localized website will appear unprofessional to your audience, which lowers their trust and confidence to shop on your site.
That’s why Transcy’s localization experts have compiled a list of the most common localization mistakes that an average store usually makes and how to fix them once and for all.
One of the most common mistakes we noticed merchants usually make when translating their website into another language is that they do it word-by-word. For most of the cases, this might be okay.
❌ However, this approach can lead to awkward phrasing, loss of cultural nuances, and even unintentional humor or offense in your target language. This is particularly crucial when it comes to product descriptions, where the nuances of language can make or break a sale.
For example, a food store might describe a delicious cake as “mouth-watering” in English. However, a word-for-word translation to French might result in “qui fait saliver” (literally, “that makes you salivate”).
While technically correct, this translation sounds clinical and unappealing in French. A more appropriate and appetizing translation would be “délicieux” (delicious) or “appétissant” (appetizing).
✨ Solution with Transcy: Glossary
Use Transcy’s Glossary feature to create custom translation rules for specific terms, idioms, or product descriptions. This ensures that your “mouth-watering cake” is correctly translated as “gâteau délicieux” in French, maintaining the intended meaning and appeal to your international customers.
Though images and media content play a significant role in conveying your brand message and product appeal, many merchants make common mistakes when localizing these visual assets:
❌ Untranslated text in images: One frequent oversight is failing to translate text embedded within images. This can lead to confusion for non-native speakers and diminish the effectiveness of your visual content.
❌ Culturally irrelevant imagery: Different cultures have varying preferences and norms when it comes to visual aesthetics. For instance, Asian markets often prefer images showcasing glowy skin, while American audiences might lean towards a matte finish in beauty product imagery.
These localization missteps can significantly impact your store’s appeal to international customers, potentially affecting your BFCM sales across different markets.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Replace image
Transcy’s Replace image feature allows merchants to display culturally appropriate images for each target country. For example, you can localize your hero banner image for different audience groups, ensuring that your visual content resonates with local preferences and cultural norms.
When translating your Shopify store, it’s easy to overlook the fact that words and phrases can vary significantly in length across different languages. What might be a concise term in one language could become a lengthy phrase in another. This discrepancy can lead to various layout issues on your website, such as:
❌Text overflow
❌ Broken layouts
❌ Misaligned elements
❌ Truncated content
For example, if you let Google Translate translate your waterproof wristwatch into Italian, the waterproof might be translated ‘impermeabile all’acqua’. This phrase is more than twice the length of the original English word, potentially causing significant layout issues if not properly accounted for in product descriptions or feature lists on your Shopify store.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Find and replace
Unlike other translation apps, Transcy offers a unique advantage: the ability to edit your translations. This means you can:
Another common mistake we noticed merchants make when localizing their web stores is that they only care about language translation when currencies are just as equally important. This oversight can significantly impact your user experience and, ultimately, lead to several effects on your operations:
❌ Lower conversion rates: The extra step of mental currency conversion can be a barrier to purchase, particularly during the fast-paced BFCM shopping period.
❌ Lack of transparency: Unexpected currency conversions at checkout can surprise customers and erode trust.
❌ Reduced competitiveness: Stores that display prices in local currencies often have an edge over those that don’t.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Currency Converter
Transcy offers a robust currency conversion feature that automatically displays prices in your customers’ local currencies. This seamless integration ensures that your international customers have a smooth and familiar shopping experience, potentially boosting your BFCM sales across different markets.
The cherry on top: Transcy works seamlessly with Shopify Markets. Hence, if you’re valid for Shopify Payments, by adding currency with Transcy, your global shoppers can check out your products in their local currency.
You might think that converting your store’s currency is already enough. However, inconsistent currency rounding can still create issues for your international customers.
❌ When converting prices from one currency to another, the resulting figures often include decimal places that may not align with local pricing conventions.
For instance, a product priced at $19.99 USD might convert to 17.32 EUR. However, displaying prices with such precision isn’t common in many European markets, where rounded figures are preferred.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Currency rounding
Transcy allows you to round up and down your converted currency format. Specifically, you can:
As your Shopify store grows and you add new products to your inventory, it’s easy to overlook the translation of these new items. This oversight can lead to a disjointed shopping experience for your international customers, especially during busy periods like BFCM when you might be launching new products or special offers.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Auto-translation
Transcy’s auto-translation feature addresses this challenge by automatically detecting and translating new content added to your store. By enabling auto-translation, you can ensure that your entire product catalog, including new additions, is accessible to your international customers.
This feature is particularly valuable during BFCM when you might be introducing special offers or limited-time products.
And last but not least, another mistake you should avoid in localization is assuming a visitor’s preferred language and currency based solely on their location. Just because a visitor is accessing your store from the United States doesn’t necessarily mean they prefer English or USD.
Making this assumption and automatically switching the language and currency can lead to a frustrating experience for international shoppers who may have different preferences.
✨ Solution with Transcy: Language and currency recommendation
Transcy offers a more user-friendly approach with its “recommend language” feature. Here’s how it works:
User choice: Visitors have the option to accept the recommended language and currency or choose their preferred options.
If you want to take global expansion seriously, keep in mind that cocalizing your Shopify store halfway won’t help much. Therefore, if you want to provide your international visitors with a seamless localized experience that keeps them coming back for more, the first thing to do is get rid of all the unnecessary mistakes that are damaging your brand image.
And well, that shouldn’t be difficult with Transcy’s powerful language translation and currency conversion features, is it?
Not a Transcy user yet? Explore how Transcy can help move your business offshore at transcy.io and install Transcy to your Shopify store to see the differences.
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