Translating your website is no longer an afterthought. Some 55% of consumers only buy from websites in their native language and today’s businesses are paying a lot more attention to the translation and localization of their websites. But why would you want to be like everyone else? As Quebecois poet and writer Monique Bosco so elegantly said, “True wealth is discreet.” So, you should be discreet! Being liked by everyone amounts to being liked by absolutely anyone, so stop trying to please others and just be yourself. Your company is operating in a constantly changing market within a highly competitive environment. Most companies are trying to boost their market share and their sales volume with specific growth strategies that include, in particular, translating their websites. But do you really need to grow your business? Read on to discover four extremely reasons why you shouldn’t translate your website.
You may become too well-known to your international target customers
Developing your international business takes quite a lot of effort. In fact, there are a lot of factors you cannot overlook. They include the fact that in order to export and sell abroad, you have to adapt and localize your site so that it is a good fit for the country’s culture: taste, laws, consumer habits… and, of course, language! But you would not want to acquire new international customers by translating your website, would you? That means handling more requests and, most importantly, translating all your content and adapting everything so that consumers can understand, even though they have access to tools like Google Translate or DeepL to do it without your help. It would be best to continue selling just in your original language to avoid this additional work and all the ensuing hassle. You would be better off, and you could focus on more important things like… simply being!
In spite of it all, some companies attempt localization at their own risk…
Learn more about the home page localisation tips used by some companies
You might become as powerful as your competitors
Your competitors have a website that’s available in seven languages and earn 60% of their sales in international markets. Fine. But imitating the competition will not work very well for you even if their method works. You would rather rack your brain and do something different, even if you already have all the best practices to implement right under your nose and enormous profits are within reach. If other companies are doing it, surely your customers do not want you to become a pale imitation of the competition, you’re thinking. No, no, no! Translating your website is out of the question as a way to better promote your offers or to have a closer connection with your customers by trying to understand them and meet their needs. Why craft a brand with a carefully cultivated image if you are just going to change it depending on the customer? For you, it’s crystal clear: it is better to change nothing and to force the customer to adapt to you. Only the customers who are truly interested will stick around and that will help you further segment your target. Fewer customers, yes, but also customers who know exactly what they want!
Your website would undoubtedly generate too much traffic
Imagine if your website traffic really took off because you invested in translation and localization. Assuming that it was done right, you could find yourself with a website that worked too well and converted 5% of visitors to paying customers with each customer spending €100 on average. With 100 visitors per day, you would have five new customers and €500 in additional sales every day! But who is going to manage all that money? Yet another increase in workload that you could avoid by following these tips to ensure your website does not attract too many visitors:
- Write a blog with an extremely complicated design
- Avoid images and videos that will make your content too interactive
- Opt for really dense chunks of copy, rather than short paragraphs with spacing that would make your content a bit too easy to read
- Forget about landing pages and forms which could lead to customer engagement
- Definitely avoid emailing campaigns which could generate sales
- Embrace the notion that simple, superficial content is sufficient
- Never promote your products
If you follow these recommendations, you can be sure that no one will come bother you on your website. No traffic means no trouble when it comes to data analysis because there will not be any data! That means you no longer need to learn to use Google Analytics. Great, huh?
You would be overwhelmed by an awesome SEO ranking
Your site’s positioning in search engine results is closely tied to its visibility on the internet. According to many sources, the goal is to get to number one; however, just between us, wouldn’t it be awful to be at the top of Google search results in all your markets? Just imagine the stress! How hard it would be to manage the feeling of being number one in search results on Yahoo or Bing or Google! Everyone would visit your website; customers would try to contact you to get information and some would even buy things. And you would be at your computer trying to deal with all these inquiries and expectations you have to meet in terms of relationship building, logistics, customer service, etc. It would be rather stupid to inflict all that on yourself when it is possible to just peacefully manage your business alone in a corner. Nah. Leave all those difficulties to the other companies. Most importantly, do not pay any mind to website translation or multilingual SEO or keyword localization. Looking after those aspects would take you straight to the top.
So be careful not to fall in the trap. Follow our advice and, above all, be discreet: to live in secret is to live a happy life. Everyone knows that!
