In the highly competitive world of retail and ecommerce, brands must deliver personalized and relevant customer experiences to stay ahead. Tailoring product descriptions, marketing campaigns and customer service to align with varying consumer preferences across regions and languages not only increases conversion rates but also drives trust and credibility, thereby building long-term customer loyalty.
Retail and ecommerce leaders intuitively know this. In a perfect world of unlimited resources, every bit of content would be tailored to the individual audience member. However, every organization — no matter its size — must operate within a number of resource constraints, not just monetary but also in terms of human time and energy. That’s why a global content strategy is so important.
In the retail and ecommerce realm, not all content is created equal. The ability to strategically allocate limited content customization budgets can be the difference between gaining a competitive edge and falling behind. Here’s what a strong playbook for ensuring content localization resources are being spent wisely needs to reflect.
The Importance of Retail Customer Experience and Support
Customer experience plays a pivotal role at every stage of the retail and ecommerce buying process, from initial discovery to post-purchase support. Every touch point presents an opportunity to build brand loyalty or lose a potential customer to a competitor. A personalized, seamless experience fosters deeper engagement, ultimately driving repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations.
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However, delivering a personalized experience across regions and languages comes with its own challenges, especially when it comes to customer support. Hiring multilingual support teams for every market can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for brands operating in multiple countries. Despite this, customers expect consistent support, regardless of the language they speak, and failing to provide this can result in a frustrating experience that undermines brand trust.
Tools that leverage real-time translation, especially through advances in machine translation (MT) and large language models (LLMs), offer a cost-effective way to bridge this gap. These technologies allow brands to provide instant, comprehensible support in multiple languages, reducing the need for a fully multilingual team. AI-based solutions are constantly improving, helping brands manage customer inquiries without significantly increasing operational costs.
The Vital Step of Establishing a Content Hierarchy
Customer experience extends well beyond customer support to include every bit of brand content that people encounter on the path to purchase. That said, not all content is created equal, and it’s important for retail and ecommerce brands to give careful consideration to what content should be localized, translated or re-created from scratch as a part of serving global markets. Retail and ecommerce brands must prioritize content based on its utility and value to customers, ensuring that time, budget and resources are dedicated to the most impactful elements of the customer journey.
A data-driven approach can help pinpoint which types of content — whether it’s product descriptions, marketing messaging or support documentation — have the greatest influence on conversion rates and customer satisfaction. For example, brands can analyze metrics like time spent on a page, click-through rates and purchase completion rates to identify which content helps move prospects from consideration to purchase.
Consider the case of a retail brand that was pouring resources into translating every piece of content on its ecommerce platform, including lengthy product descriptions. After conducting a user behavior analysis, the brand discovered that only a small percentage of visitors were clicking to expand and read those long descriptions. They implemented on-demand machine translation tailored to each user’s language preferences, reserving human effort for high-impact content like headlines, product specs and reviews. This approach allowed the brand to reallocate its budget more effectively without seeing a drop in conversion rates.
New Ways to Expand Global Footprints While Staying Relevant
The challenge for today’s retail and ecommerce brands is to expand into new markets while ensuring their content remains relevant and personalized. Advances in translation technology, combined with AI-powered personalization solutions, now make it easier than ever to adapt content quickly and accurately for different languages, regions and demographics.
This automated personalization layer refines translations to match brand tone, maintain consistency and uphold quality — bridging the gap between standard machine output and nuanced human review. These solutions enable faster market entry and stronger local engagement, empowering brands to deliver culturally resonant content at scale while managing costs effectively.
Customer reviews represent another key area where automated translation can improve customer engagement. Reviews often play a key role in influencing purchase decisions, as potential customers seek validation from those who have already purchased a product. By offering on-demand translation of customer reviews, brands can tap into the experiences of global customers, giving prospects a broader view of how the product performs.
As brands continue to expand to new markets, it’s critical to keep the customer experience personalized, regardless of geography. A well-executed global content strategy leverages the power of both human and machine resources to strike a balance between cost-effectiveness and translation quality. When the right technologies are paired with an understanding of what content matters most to customers, brands can expand their global reach without sacrificing relevance or authenticity.
Andrea Tabacchi, a seasoned leader with over 20 years in the localization industry, is Chief Customer Officer at Phrase, where he drives customer engagement, retention, and advocacy. Starting as a Lead Solution Architect, Tabacchi advanced to VP of Customer Success, managing teams to maximize customer satisfaction. Previously at Arancho Doc, he held the pivotal role of Technology Director, overseeing R&D, quality certifications and IT strategy. Tabacchi holds a BA in Asian Studies and an Executive Master’s in Project Management, combining his multilingual skills and analytical expertise to deliver seamless customer success and operational excellence at Phrase.