By Rory Dennis, GM and Founder, Amplience
There’s no doubt that the e-Commerce market is expanding, not just here in the U.S. but around the world. Online shopping is a global phenomenon that will continue to grow as technology develops and becomes more ubiquitous. Even luxury brands – traditional online holdouts – have jumped on the e-Commerce bandwagon. There are big bucks to be had from online shopping to be sure, but as the world becomes more connected, many retailers are missing out on an opportunity to expand and localize their content in other markets. Amplience recently partnered with business intelligence firm L2 to examine the opportunity of website and content localization, as well as some of the principal hurdles standing in the way. Read on for a look at some of the key findings.
The L2 Intelligence Report looks at 67 global brands across Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the U.S. The report found that most of the retail brands considered find it difficult to strike the right balance between relevant, local efforts and broader, more efficient initiatives. According to the report, “only half of global brands localize their marketing assets worldwide, with just one-third tailoring sites, blogs and other types of editorial content.”
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International pricing is a big challenge when it comes to localization. Exchange rates, sales tax, import duties, market volatility, and more all complicate the issue. The numerous other challenges include organizational structure, international coordination, resource allocation, digital infrastructures and fulfillment barriers. According to the report, “while 67% of global index brands have brick-and-mortar footprints in top e-Commerce countries outside of the U.S. and Western Europe, only 47% have an e-Commerce presence. This disparity underscores the difficulty that localized e-Commerce expansion poses to brands restricted by finite resources.”
Language translation is also a huge hurdle that brands must overcome. Unsurprisingly, shoppers are four times as likely to buy (and likely to spend twice as much) from sites in their own language. That said, the report found that translation quality is the most common localization challenge.
There’s no question, content localization is challenging. The report found that 40% of organizations across the globe “do not have a strategic approach to their website localization,” which speaks to the challenge.
There is no set formula for localization, nor is there consistency in the experience. With the amount of content on many e-Commerce sites today, the reality is that it’s not feasible for brands to localize all of their assets globally. Many brands are able to syndicate product-related content efficiently, but assets are not always maximized across countries – especially when they are created locally. According to the report, “video is one of the most likely site content types to be localized by global index brands.” That said, outside of the UK and U.S. markets, more sites have videos that aren’t localized than those that are. The report also found that, “global brands frequently syndicate editorial content investments such as lookbooks and brand blogs across international sites by translating accompanying text into local language.” Since these types of assets are expensive to create, producing multiple versions for each market is usually avoided and content is adjusted and localized instead.
With the e-Commerce map growing, many brands stand to prosper significantly by expanding into new regions, and it’s clear that they are making efforts to localize content and utilize existing assets to effectively reach broader and more diverse markets. One great way for brands to localize websites is to focus on user generated content (UGC), which is cost effective and engaging and can be sourced relatively easily in local markets.
The retail industry is constantly evolving and continues to transform the way consumers interact with content. There are many challenges that retailers face with content localization, but if retailers are willing to invest the time and effort, the opportunities for e-Commerce growth will be endless.
Check out the full findings of the L2 and Amplience report for more on the localization challenges and what today’s companies can do to make the best use of their content.
