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01.
Adapt to Local Audiences

Website localisation is about adapting your website to a local audience. It should have the same appeal in every location as in the one it was first designed for.

02.
Develop Global Business

A fully localised website will be attractive to a new audience and help your business to successfully enter that market. We can work with your team in order to identify what parts of your existing site would benefit from being localised.

03.
Multilingual Site Build

We have extensive experience building multilingual sites and have found that working on the multilingual aspect alongside the localisation angle achieves the best results, as these go hand-in-hand.

04.
Enhance Cultural Appeal

Through the use of appropriate messaging and imagery for the country you are targeting, while staying relevant to your business, you can enhance your cultural appeal.

05.
Values-Based Design

We will work with you and carry out our own research in order to establish design elements that may need to differ country-to-country. These could be related to current country preferences and trends of websites.

06.
Speed and Firewalls

We take a considered approach when designing, and think of the bigger picture. Your website needs to be functional across borders so we’ll consider how content, load times and security will vary in different countries.

You should localise your website to your target market in all countries and regions where you trade or have a presence.

A comprehensive localisation strategy is needed to ensure that the right brand message is being pushed out through all your websites, whether local, global or regional.

You will need to consider culture, expectations, behaviour, branding and language to make sure your website isn't turning users off.

In addition to commissioning translations into the languages you need, GWS will undertake research on behalf of your business to optimise cultural localisation. 

Reaching the right global audience

Localisation is about finding out what your global audience want to hear and giving them a website that does just that. A properly localised website will be more competitive in a local marketplace and won't feel out of place when compared with national competitors.

  • You will need to consider how users act online, taking into account the complexity of the global marketplace
  • You want people to feel like you understand the local community, and aren't just another faceless global brand

Culturally sensitive design & language 

A website designed for a global audience takes into account different cultural conventions and sensibilities.

  • Visual imagery and sales copy should be adjusted to make sure they resonate with locals
  • Around the world, some colours and numbers are associated with bad luck or are seen as ill omens
  • Without a properly localised website, you may be inadvertedly alienating your target market

Languages for Localisation

There are many different languages spoken around the world, any number of which may be appropriate for your business to target, depending on the particular needs of your market:

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Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Afrikaans, Low Saxon, Danish, Norwegian, Yiddish, Scots, Limburgish, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Icelandic, Faroese)

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Romance languages (Spanish, Portugese, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Galician, Romansh, Venetian, Corsican, Sicilian, Occitan, Mirandese, Asturian, Aragonese, Ladino, Gascon, Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol, Istriot, Sassarese, Neapolitan, Sardinian, Aromanian)

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Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish)

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Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian)

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Slavic languages (Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian, Kashubian and Rusyn)

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Uralic languages (Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian)

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Iranian languages (Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Balochi, Ossetian)

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Turkic languages (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Crimean Tatar, Tatar, Kazakh, Karaim, Krymchak, Kumyk and Chuvash)

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Other European languages (Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Romani, Basque, Georgian, Svan, Mingrelian, Laz)

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Semitic languages (Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Cypriot Maronite Arabic)

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Other Afroasiatic languages (Hausa, Oromo, Amharic, Somali)

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Indo-Aryan languages (Hindustani, Bengali, Sindhi, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, Odia, Braj Bhasha, Sariki, Chhattishgarhi, Nepali, Sinhala, Assamese, Haryanvi, Kannauji, Dogri, Bundeli, Garhwali, and Kumaoni)

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North Caucasian languages

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Mongolic languages

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Sino-Tibetan languages (Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Cantonese, Burmese, and Tibetic languages)

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Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam)

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Niger-Congo languages (Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Shona, Zulu)

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Austronesian languages (Malay, Javanese, Filipino and others)

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Austroasiatic languages (Vietnamese, Khmer, Khasi, Santali, Mundari, Wa)

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Other major Eastern languages (Japanese, Korean)

Consistency and adaptability in your brand messaging

  • Try to develop a brand message that is strong enough to resonate across cultures
  • Remove references to local knowledge if they aren't going to be understood internationally or can't be explained
  • Think about how your product or service intersects with universal concerns
  • Your brand messaging and voice need to be consistent across different languages

Need to localise your website? Need help targeting your web presence?

Want to succeed online?

GWS Media have over two decades of experience in all areas of online marketing work, from logo design and website design and development to copywriting, content marketing, SEO and email marketing. Contact us today for a chat about your project, and we'll be delighted to see if we can help.

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