Here’s How to Prepare your Website for Localisation

Before localising a website, identify the target markets, decide which pages and user journeys need adapting, and prepare the design, content and technology for multiple languages. This is a website localisation preparation checklist, rather than a guide to translating individual pages. For the later delivery stages, see 7 steps to kick-start your website localisation.

Let’s begin with what is website localisation and why do you need it? How you can utilize it to expand into a foreign market without having to create new content from scratch. Using site localisation, you can localise and translate already existing content to your target language? The point is to make content relevant to your audience, ensure a sort of conformity where it is relatable to your potential consumers.

Not every international visitor needs or wants an English-language experience. Prioritise languages and locales based on user research, customer demand and commercial feasibility, not an assumption that every business needs every language.

What is Website Localisation?

As a process, website localisation is more than just translation and includes adapting your website to your target market’s language and culture. Simply put, website localisation means adapting your website to a local linguistic and cultural context.

The aim of website localisation, therefore, is simply to adapt it to suit the specific linguistic and cultural needs of your target audience. The audience you’re targeting, undoubtedly, speak a different language, and their cultural values differ significantly. 

Website localisation, however, isn’t a straightforward process. There are two sides to it. One is the tech side and another is the language side. 

On the tech side, localisation service providers ensure your website’s code is compatible with different characters and symbols specific to your target language. This may also include ensuring your website can process transactions in the target market’s local currency. 

On the language front, site localisation a) translates your website into another language and b) adapts it to incorporate local cultural sensibilities into the translation. 

Additionally, website localization includes tweaking colours and images and localising product explainer videos and manuals so to make everything relatable and convincing to the local audience.

Why Global Website Localization?

Businesses operating in a globalized marketplace have to cater to the linguistic and cultural needs of various localities. Localisation is pertinent to secure for each market a localised experience. It’s in that respect that we’re seeing a staggering rise in multilingual websites trying to reach as many international consumers as possible through web localisation. 

Localisation is especially imperative for businesses operating in areas where English isn’t the primary language. Keeping that into account, it’s safe to say that localisation isn’t just a need, it’s a solution. There’s no better way than web localisation to overcome language barriers, which could impede your success overseas.

By removing the impeding factor, website localisation opens up doors to success for your business, which is every business’s supreme aim when expanding into a foreign market.

The original language of your website, which we will presently call primary language, why website localisation is imperative for businesses is because it helps translate and localise the primary language into secondary languages. 

Now that you know what localisation means and how it helps businesses expand into new markets, let’s move to our main topic, which is how to prepare your website for localisation.

Multilingual Websites

A multilingual website can reach audiences searching in different languages, but translation does not guarantee better rankings. Google recommends distinct, crawlable URLs for each language version and appropriate hreflang signals to identify alternate versions. Read Google Search Central’s multilingual-site guidance before selecting a URL structure.

Instead, you can have the same content translated into a number of languages specific to where you’re shifting without distorting the original message and, at the same time, localising your content for local consumption.

Its importance becomes evident when you’ve visitors to your site in throngs but see no conversions because you don’t support visitors’ language, which drives them away the moment they land on your page. It may well be the reason why your competition drives all sales while you’re left with visits only. 

Of course, you want to capitalize on visits to your site, and want to improve conversion rates. The best to exactly do that is by having it translated into their language so that they understand your message and can relate to it, which would cement their trust in your brand and eventually make them returning customers.

So how do you prepare? 

Website Localisation Readiness Checklist

Before asking translators for a quote or exporting content, prepare a short localisation brief with these six practical checks:

1. Map the markets: specify language and regional variants (for example, French for France versus French for Canada), priority pages, search terms and a local reviewer for each locale.
2. Inventory all text: include menus, banners, buttons, forms, validation and error messages, emails, CMS fields, product descriptions, accessibility labels, image text, subtitles and SEO metadata. Mark content that should not be published in a target market.
3. Prepare the technology: confirm Unicode/UTF-8, translation-resource exports, support for right-to-left scripts when needed, expandable layouts and locale-appropriate dates, currencies, addresses and plural forms.
4. Plan international SEO: assign separate crawlable URLs to live language versions. If multiple language variants exist, implement reciprocal hreflang links, review page-specific canonical targets, and offer visitors a visible language switcher. Avoid forcing visitors or crawlers into a different version by IP address. See Google’s guidance on localised page versions.
5. Prepare the translator handover: supply approved source copy, a glossary, screenshots, style guidance, character limits, terminology notes and instructions for protecting variables, links and HTML placeholders.
6. Test before launch: check native-speaker quality, mobile and right-to-left layouts where relevant, menus, forms, checkout and payment options, legal disclosures, alternate-language navigation, metadata, hreflang return links and indexing. Record issues and assign an owner for future updates.

A useful deliverable is a locale-by-page matrix recording each URL, target language, owner, translation status, reviewer, canonical and alternate-language relationships, and launch approval. That prevents essential pages such as payment confirmation or account recovery from being missed.

Prepare for Site Localisation During the Design Phase

Ideally, plan for localisation before launch: reserve space for translated text, avoid hard-coded wording in graphics or interface elements, and decide how content editors will maintain each locale. An existing website can still be localised, but retrofitting text extraction, navigation and layouts may involve more development and testing.

This will let developers create your website in a way to accommodate the localisation process without having to rewrite the code later on. Look, it’s not that you translate and the rest falls in line. Translating into any target language causes drastic changes in a page’s layout. 

Suppose, you hadn’t accounted for additional languages in the design process, how could you realign the design to accommodate content in your target language? 

That’s why accounting for localisation and translation processes while your website is in the design phase is such a key. Since every language comes with a different set of symbols and requires different space adjustments, it’s indispensable for businesses to account for all such differences to keep layout issues at bay.

Ask designers and developers to test longer and shorter text, right-to-left layouts where relevant, variable fonts, forms and mobile breakpoints. Pseudo-localisation can simulate text expansion and detect clipping before paid translation; it does not replace testing with real target-language content. The W3C internationalisation quick tips cover encoding, directionality, forms and navigation.

Shortest to say, pre-design localisation will ensure your pages are responsive when it comes to layout and size variations.

Use Automated Tools for Text Extraction

Extracting text for translation follows next. Here, developers have to identify text from the original content available and separate it for translation. Not only is it time-consuming, but laborious as well. 

Choose extraction based on the site technology. For example, Angular supports marking template text with i18n, marking translated attributes with i18n-*, and using $localize in code. Developers can then run ng extract-i18n to generate a translation file, such as XLIFF. This is an Angular workflow, not a generic scanner that automatically handles every CMS. See the official Angular instructions.

For WordPress or another CMS, agree on the content export and import method, whether a multilingual plugin or translation-management integration is needed, and how translated slugs, metadata, product fields, alt text and updates will be maintained. Review the export for omitted navigation labels, form errors and dynamically generated text.

In Angular, extraction depends on which strings and attributes have been marked for translation. Other platforms use different resource formats and localisation connectors. Give every translatable string a stable identifier and sufficient context; keep placeholders, links and formatting markup intact during translation.

However, bear in mind that if parsing errors crop up just because an extra character has been cut off, consult developers immediately. If you’ve turned automated tests on, it’ll apprise you of any such errors as and when they occur so that developers can take immediate measures to rectify mistakes and make pages functional within no time.

Provide Additional Context to Translators

Unless you provide translators with additional context, you can’t expect translation to be top-notch. Quite rightly, the process doesn’t stop at choosing the best localisation agency, you’ve to actively communicate any additional context to translators to efficiently localise your website.

Translation involves taking words and phrases from the original language and translating the same into the target language, hence they serve as “keys” in the localisation process. Translating these keys is central to the website localisation process. 

Therefore, efforts should be made to provide as much context around these keys as possible to efficiently translate and localise your website in the target language specific to a market, translators need it when translating.

Context is also important from other perspectives. Every industry has a specific vocabulary and terminology associated with it. Think of healthcare, you can’t do anything, as translators, if you don’t have a command over medical terminology. Apparently, medical translation depends on how well you’ve understood and mastered medical terminology. 

Consequently, adding additional content by way of examples and glossaries on translation “keys” makes sense. Translators can use it to bring accuracy and precision to the process. At the same time, providing clues to translators as to what exactly they’re translating. The more they understand these phrases, the better it is for translation. 

Key Takeaways

Simply put, website localisation serves three major purposes:  wider reach, audience engagement, and dissemination of information. Therefore, localising your website into target languages is imperative for businesses.

Anyone would aim for a smooth localisation process, but how exactly, very few manage to answer. One way to achieve the same is by translating only relevant parts of your website’s content.  In other words, word-for-word translation won’t avail much and isn’t the way to go about it. 

In simple terms, translating and localising a product page, which you’re not permitted to sell in a particular market, doesn’t make sense translating it. Similarly, the pieces of content that are irrelevant to your local market need not be translated into another language.

Therefore, before heading into the localisation process ensure content segmentation. By which we mean segmenting data that is important into one cluster and separating it from irrelevant content. This will ensure smooth execution of the website localisation process.  

Besides, it’ll translator’s job much easier and less confusing by knowing exactly what to translate and what to leave alone. After you’re done with this, you can send over your project to a localisation agency. 

Look, the localisation process never stops with the localisation agency handing over the project. Always ask yourself, after localisation, if your product is effectively localized. Does it fit well with the local linguistic and cultural needs of the foreign market? This will help keep your website’s content up to the mark after it has been published in the target language.

WordPress supports internationalisation, but publishing and maintaining multiple language versions is not automatic. Verify your chosen multilingual setup handles URL routes, translated page relationships, navigation, metadata, language switching, sitemaps, canonical signals, hreflang and any ecommerce fields. Test what happens when a translation has not yet been published.

Best Practices to Successful Website Localisation

• Analyse your target market – You should not localise your website in a hurry. Before you go ahead with your localisation process, analyse your target market effectively. It’ll save you time and money as well.

• Use automation with quality controls — Machine translation and translation-management tools may accelerate drafting and updates, but important customer-facing, legal, medical and purchase content needs appropriate human review. Evaluate quality and confidentiality before choosing a workflow.

• Adapt the complete customer journey — Translate product information, checkout, confirmation emails, support content and error messages where needed. Check local currencies, number formats, contact details and cultural context. See our website localisation services for the distinction between translation and adaptation.

Before commissioning localisation, confirm which markets and pages are in scope, how strings will be exported, who will review each locale and which technical tests are required. For help preparing a website localisation project, contact hello@locatetranslate.co.uk or call +44 208 609 4852.

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