READY FOR GLOBAL MARKETING A BRIEF GUIDE TO WEB CONTENT LOCALIZATION

Transcription

1 READY FOR GLOBAL MARKETING A BRIEF GUIDE TO WEB CONTENT LOCALIZATION

2 OVERVIEW Over the last 20 years and despite the sometimes challenging economic conditions, living standards have been steadily improving as a direct consequence of economic growth, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This trend has been accompanied by irregularly distributed; however, meaningful increases in per-capita income, life expectancy and rates of secondary education attendance. In the next 10 to 15 years, this trend will add an extra billion people to the world's consuming classes.* The business potential of that "extra billion" is absolutely huge and the Web provides a direct route of communication with nearly each and every one of those brand new potential customers. However, the proliferation of social media outfits and the emergence of new types of consumers, along with the increasing complexity and disparity of local markets, will force companies to rethink and redefine their global marketing strategies with a view to reaching consumers with content that has the right balance between global consistency and local relevance. FACT: Between now and 2025, a billion more people will be born, almost all in emerging markets.* *Deloitte's Business Trends 2014 Report

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Overview Know Thy Content Starting at the Source SEO Rules the Web Focusing on the Target Making Content Flow Delivering Meaningful User Experiences The Power of UGC Welocalize Web Solutions

4 KNOW THY CONTENT In order to achieve maximum impact in terms of local market penetration and return on content, Web translation must be an integral part of your global content strategy, fully aligned with your corporate message architecture and overall communication and marketing goals. Your web content strategy should include the following: A well-defined message architecture that accurately describes your global brand s key communication objectives, perfectly aligned with your business and marketing goals and using a common, shared vocabulary in terminology, style and design. Your company s mission statement is a reflection of your values and can be abstract and aspirational; however, your message architecture needs to be concrete, structured and tangible, able to inform tactical decisions regarding content authoring and curation. A comprehensive audit of your content inventory to know exactly what your content by understanding the volume of each content type), your content distribution channels, impact on user experience and satisfaction and any other unique content definitions for your organization. A Content Development Plan is vital. Once you have a clear map of your content, how it s being posted and the effect it s having, you will be in a position to decide how much additional source-language content your need to create. A Content Curation Framework with set guidelines on how to create, update, aggregate and distribute content, including best practices on metadata and content governance. A Corporate Style Guide that explains the verbal and visual norms and vocabulary that should be used to weave your specific message architecture into every piece of content you produce. It should include metadata and content governance guidelines. FACT: Only 27% of Internet users worldwide speak English.

5 STARTING AT THE SOURCE Implementing a source streamlining process as part of your web localization strategy will help you produce high-quality, consistent source text that will replicate through to translated content and drive savings all the way down the content life-cycle: It will improve internal communications and intellectual asset reuse. It will ensure a consistent message in all your products, services and communications. It will reduce the chance of translation mistakes due to ambiguity and inconsistent use of terminology or style. It will increase translation memory leverage, as well as suitability for machine translation. And, last but not least, it will improve quality whilst reducing localization costs and time to market. The key is to set up a web authoring environment that motivates your team of web writers, designers and developers to: Draft original, relevant web content, as well as condensed, summarized versions ready for internationalization. Combine your corporate verbal and visual vocabulary with efficient, non-western centric navigation schemes to achieve maximum impact. Plan and distribute online real state with internationalization in mind. A solid content authoring system underpinned by a consistent message and communication architecture will help writers reconcile the need for source standardization with the creation of original, unique content that maximizes SEO ratings. FACT: For 75% of Internet buyers having access to translated product information is a deciding factor when choosing between two similar products.

6 SEO RULES THE WEB Until quite recently, search engines analyzed keyword density, relevance and distribution to rank page searches. Consequently, the traditional SEO practice was to jam as many keywords as possible into already written content in order to increase its searchability ranking. This approach has radically changed. Nowadays, top search engines have refined their algorithms and no longer employ keywords to calculate page ranking. They judge content based on what truly matters online: its uniqueness, relevance, social media reach and level and quality of links with other relevant sites. Today, keyword research determines what content gets created from the outset and it is the primary factor driving message architectures and content expansion strategies. For international SEO, this means devising, implementing and adapting keyword strategies across multiple languages and countries. Best practices for international SEO include: Write online and social media content that connects most popular search terms and phrases with key brand messages. Analyze your web content types to find out their suitability for different production methods: o Human translation o MT + light or full post-editing o Crowdsourcing Choosing the method that best fits each content type will ensure that, once localized, your web content keeps a high level of relevance and connectedness with local social media. Distribute social content across other networks; for example, link accounts so posts on Facebook automatically populate onto Twitter or equivalent local media. FACT: Engines like Bing and Google focus on social cues to benchmark a website s relevance.

7 FOCUSING ON THE TARGET Your source message architecture needs to be adapted for the local markets you are trying to reach. 1. You can start with a detailed marketing content analysis of: Source content inventory and development plan. International marketing and SEO strategy and derived local online marketing strategies. 2. This will allow you to create a content localization strategy and action plan answering the following questions: What parts of your content should be localized for what markets. What local channels and social media should be used. How to measure your return on content and levels of user experience satisfaction in each geographical location. You may choose to carry out a phased, carefully prioritized localization and rollout process of all your source content or start with a condensed, streamlined version of your inventory, then measure return on content and user experience satisfaction to decide on next expansion steps based on results. 3. As part of your global content plan, it is advisable to: Provide a market-specific keyword strategy and lists to the translation teams. Include the creation of country-specific accounts in social networks. Ensure active management of those accounts to foster active participation from end-users, power users, corporate partners, employees and general public. Set up a feedback loop to gather and analyze user satisfaction data from global and local social media. Aligning your matrix of localizable web content types with the most suitable production method (human translation, MT + Light/ Full Post-editing, crowdsourcing) will allow you to pick out the most suitable talent profiles and quality evaluation model. FACT: Twitter & Facebook support over 70 languages.

8 MAKING CONTENT FLOW WITH WELOCALIZE Phase 1 - INITIAL LAUNCH Welocalize will work closely with your development team to connect our Globalization Management System GlobalSight with your CMS and create a streamlined workflow that will leverage any pre-translated content from existing translation assets. The workflow below describes our recommended process for the initial launch of a standard web localization project, provided that XML files can be exported from your CMS. NOTIFICATION FROM CMS (XML EXPORT) DOWNLOAD FILES UPLOAD FILES INTO GLOBALSIGHT QUOTATION ISSUED (IF REQUIRED) CLIENT REVIEW IN GLOBALSIGHT (AUTO-NOTIFICATION SENT POST TRANSLATION) TRANSLATION + REVIEW (BY WELOCALIZE) PROJECT PLANNING + RESOURCE ALLOCATION ORDER RECEIVED (IF REQUIRED) CLIENT REVIEW CHANGES IMPLEMENTED INTO BILINGUAL FILES (THROUGH GLOBALSIGHT) FILE EXPORTED FROM GLOBALSIGHT + IMPORTED BACK TO CMS LANGUAGE SIGN-OFF IN CMS/SANDBOX BEFORE PUBLISHING TO LIVE SITE (BY WELOCALIZE) WEBSITE CONTENT PUBLISHED GLOBALSIGHT JOB CLOSED + TM, GLOSSARY UPDATED PROJECT PLANNING + RESOURCE ALLOCATION Phase 2 UPDATES Once your main website has been localized, you will need to extract, localize and publish content updates with regular frequency in a fast and seamless manner. Using CMS connectors or GlobalSight Smartbox technology, we can help you automatically route new and updated content to GlobalSight for translation and back into your CMS for publishing. A full integration through a CMS connector would be the ideal option, as it allows full control to the content author/owner over the submission process. Alternatively, Welocalize can deploy a client-side Smartbox application which is an intelligent watched folder application that detects new content in the output folder from the CMS and triggers the translation process.

9 DELIVERING MEANINGFUL USER EXPERIENCES The faster users can find content in their own language that s relevant to their country or geographical region, the higher the chance that they will stay online and buy your product or service. However, in order to retain that potential customer you will also need to adapt your web navigation and interaction processes to local standards and customs. Here are a few tips: Auto-navigation: Use geolocation and content negotiation techniques that allow users to access the right country and language content from the outset, without a single click. Meta-navigation: Provide users the option to change country and/or language settings without being redirected from the current page. Filtering and automated translation options: Websites with usergenerated content (UGC) generate multimedia feeds in a variety of languages including image, video, blogs, and forum threads, to give users the chance to set their preferences for consuming those global content streams. Instant Translate functionality: To allow users to invoke machine translation but giving them the option to choose the specific content streams they want translated. Ensure locale-specific social media coverage and participation. Remember that user experience goes beyond language and navigation. It also includes privacy and safe payment functionality adapted to local financial systems and practices, as well as the recognition and acknowledgement of local customs, festivities, taboos and traditions. FACT: Japanese consumers are the least likely to buy from an English-only website.

10 THE POWER OF UGC User-generated content (UGC) is rapidly becoming an integral part of many brand identities and, therefore, web content must achieve the right mix of UGC and "branded" web UI content to produce an emotional impact that is equivalent to "transcreated copy". Below you can see a few possible translation scenarios involving UGC: BACKPACER WEBSITE REVIEWS TRANSLATION PURPOSE: YOUTHFUL, FIVE LOCALES, COST-EFFICIENT LUXURY HOTEL REVIEWS TRANSLATION PURPOSE: ATTRACT HIGH-END CLIENTELE IN ONE PARTICULAR TARGET MARKET MT + NORMALIZATION, PAID CROWD WITH BASIC INSTRUCTIONS ON DO S & DON TS AND CROWD CAN BE MIX OF TRANSLATORS AND CUSTOMERS MT WITH FULL POST-EDITING (PE) AND/OR PROFESSIONAL HT AND TRANSCREATION TECHNICAL FORUM TRANSLATION PURPOSE: SAVE COST ON USER SUPPORT, AS MANY LOCALES AS POSSIBLE MT + ACCURACY CHECK PE AND CROWD OF TECHNICAL USERS, SAVVY ON PRODUCT, ACCEPTING THAT LINGUISTIC ERRORS ARE OK. FACT: User generated content is a major influence in peoples buying decisions and the second most trusted form of advertising after word-of-mouth.

11 WELOCALIZE WEB LOCALIZATION SOLUTIONS Global brands trust Welocalize with complex web localization projects. Welocalize has built a multi-tiered global team of web localization experts including translators, reviewers, SEO specialists, web engineers, testers and project managers. The team has extensive knowledge and experience in localizing web content, as well as using CMS/TMS, content publishing tools and web technologies, and can produce multilingual versions for all web and multimedia file types. "Customers who interact with Dell in their native language will be much more engaged and satisfied with their experience from Dell.com. Welocalize is playing a key role in the success of our global business. The Welocalize team is committed to helping Dell continue to reach multilingual audiences. Wayne Bourland, Director, Global Localization Team Dell TripAdvisor is still a young company but over the past 3 years, we ve made incredible progress at implementing a solid localization strategy. By using the CSA s maturity model and Welocalize s approach of Operational Excellence, we re meeting and exceeding TripAdvisor s international objectives. Lorna Whelan, Senior Localization Manager TripAdvisor

12 Welocalize Inc. Founded in 1997, Welocalize offers innovative translation and localization solutions helping global brands grow and reach audiences around the world in more than 125 languages. Our solutions include global localization management, translation, supply chain management, people sourcing, language services and automation tools including machine translation, staffing, testing and staffing solutions and enterprise translation management technologies. With over 600 employees worldwide, Welocalize maintains offices in the United States, UK, Germany, Ireland, Japan and China. Author: Miguel González, Quality Strategy Director at Welocalize. Miguel is a localization veteran who has worked in the industry for more than 20 years, both on the client and on the vendor side, where he has fulfilled senior roles in language quality as well as program and production management. You can reach him at miguel.gonzalez@welocalize.com. Welocalize.com Headquarters: 241 East 4th St. Suite 207, Frederick, Maryland T: T: F: Offices: USA UK IRELAND GERMANY CHINA JAPAN