Translating your Holiday eCommerce Listing

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Whether it’s on your own site or through a major eCommerce seller, your holiday listings are a vital asset to sales. However, this type of content translation requires special attention to ensure you are best connecting with your multilingual audience and presenting your products as elegantly as you do in your source catalogue. Here are our tops tips for creating the best possible end-product for your international customers while saving money where you can.

Trust Machine Translation for the basics.

The easiest way to cut costs on Christmas eCommerce listings is to harness Machine Translation Post-Editing on simple factors such as Product Information and Reviews. The process of MTPE involves language experts reviewing and editing a raw Machine Translation output. This is cheaper than human translation and for straight forward content, requires minimal editing, cutting project costs and turnaround. With MTPE, you get the best of both worlds: cheaper translation costs and diligent editing, making sure all date/time, currency, and units of measurement are in the right format for your target audience.

Localize product descriptions

When you cut costs with MTPE in Product Information and Reviews, you can invest more heavily into localizing Product Descriptions. This section of your product page or catalogue is much more culturally variable: there are taglines, product-specific language, idioms, and jokes that won’t translate well with MT. By entrusting this important section to professional localization experts, you’re guaranteeing that your description won’t come off as word-for-word translation. Rather, the message will stay consistent, but the language will be culturally adapted to best cater your potential international customers. Putting the effort in here pays off.

Don’t forget image and video

One common mistake when translating eCommerce listings is to leave images the same across all languages and locals, which can drive away certain customers. Take the time to review and discuss what images may be culturally insensitive or unproductive with your target market. Additionally, your images may include text that may need to be translated and reformatted. Retaining your customer’s attention means ensuring all content is directed towards them, so localizing images can be the difference between clicking “back” or “add to cart”.

Consider translating your eCommerce platform

Lastly, there is no reason to translate your eCommerce listing if your potential customer can’t use your checkout platform. It would be a waste of money to draw them in only to lose them before they click “submit order”. Talk to your LSP about their experience translating Shopify, WordPress, and Amazon listings to convert views into purchases.