Episode Four: Listings and Translations

When you’re looking to expand your audience and start selling on a global scale, there are a number of logistical areas that you need to think about. One of the most obvious, and yet most often overlooked and left to the last minute, is the listing copy and the quality of translation – with wording so often the last thing that sellers come to assess in launching their products on the new market.

But far from being a final detail, the listing copy and quality of your translations really can make or break a sale, with buyers more attuned than ever to the reputable nature of a brand and the way it showcases and describes its products.

This blog is all about getting your listings right – from the basic translation through to your optimisation work and beyond.

And it all starts with the translation itself.

 

 

 

 

 

The importance of a local translation

Sure, Google Translate can help you to identify the main points in a sentence or statement and portray a general message so that people understand what you want or what you are saying.

But when it comes to product listings, this basic translation level is nowhere near enough. In fact, far from helping your listing it can actually do more harm than good – demonstrating to the local buyer that you haven’t researched the market, that you don’t understand the words you are using, and that you may not be a reputable seller at all.

Suspicion arises when sellers do not have 100% faith in the brand they are buying from – and this impedes and prevents sales.

So, in order to make sure that you don’t turn your buyers off as soon as they start reading your product descriptions, it’s important to get a local translation in the native tongue – one that identifies the words that buyers use and will recognise, that understands proper grammar and sentence structure, and can use keywords as part of a compelling description.

Adding optimisation to your listing

Once you’ve got an effective translation, it’s time to talk optimisation – and that doesn’t mean throwing money at adverts and marketing campaigns, though these are important too.

Optimising your listings means considering the SEO of your product within the target marketplace. This means:

•       Looking at what people are searching for
•       Considering how the marketplace supports your industry
•       Assessing competitor profiles to see how they attract buyers
•       Implementing keywords which relate to your industry, brand, and individual products
•       Thinking like the target buyer in your target market
•       Understanding how each local market or country advertises

As part of this optimisation process, it is important to understand the relevance of images as well as text and copy. Not only do customers want to search for products and find relevant results – they want to see pictures of people like them using the product. In some markets, this may mean a need to take and use local photos, which allow customers to relate to them.

The challenges of localised listing

Of course, there is a very clear challenge that faces all those who are expanding online and looking to optimise their listings in the European market – and that is the assortment of languages used and spoken across Europe, and the variety of markets that are open and ready to be accessed.

To operate in a series of new markets, you need a series of local translators who can unpick and translate your product listings into effective selling tools. Not only does this take time – it takes heavy investment as well – and that’s why we would always recommend working with an agency like GEE that offers a complete end-to-end translation and optimisation service in house.

Let us worry about the translations, and we’ll leave you to focus on the results.