At Sajan, we’ve been fortunate to assist many companies with going global for the first time—which usually involves adapting their websites for multiple markets.
As you might expect, there’s quite a lot involved in website translation and localization, and much to be learned from studying successful examples of the process.
On that note, today we’d like to share with you the ongoing story of a client of ours, whose experiences so far in taking their brand global amount to some very valuable takeaways.
Quick company profile
These guys are growing fast—and they’re well regarded as a leading authority in the world of sports nutrition and fitness e-commerce. Here’s a fast rundown:
• One of the world’s largest online sports nutrition e-retailers with one of the most often visited websites of its type
• Two-time Inc. 500 company, located in the Northwestern United States
• Offers more than 10,000 health and fitness supplements and products
Defining the need for website translation
Their website is THE place to go for just about anything related to bodybuilding technique, health and nutrition. In addition to offering thousands of health-related products, the site also offers an online community for people to get advice and share their fitness goals and experiences.
Just a year or two ago, despite everything being in U.S. English—from their web content to their currency/payment system to their marketing campaigns—the company saw that 25 percent of their revenue was coming from international sources.
Clearly, great potential for new markets existed, but they knew the website wasn’t sufficiently localized to fully capture these additional pockets of revenue.
Gearing up for localization
Their internal teams adapted some of the online content to appeal to one region to start with. But the unforeseen downside was that they had inconsistent messaging across their marketing content and their website. With close to 35,000 web pages, that meant a great deal of inconsistency that needed to be addressed.
The company hired experienced global team members to get a stronger hold on things. Right away, they knew they needed an experienced partner to guide them through website translation and beyond.
They nailed down a few priorities that they thought could be achieved quickly:
• Focus on store portion of website, the main driver of revenue
• Localize online catalog for each target country
• Get started with overall website translation for select markets
Heavy lifting is easier with a strong partner
All stakeholders agreed that it was time to put more muscle into their global marketing efforts, which began with selecting a translation provider.
Out of the five vendors that they considered, they chose Sajan. Their primary requirement—an elite team with an extensive technology background and a long, proven track record of website translation and localization—was something we were unique in offering.
We got to work right away in identifying their website’s localization readiness.
It wasn’t a small endeavor. Their website’s 35,000 pages contain plentiful content in the form of videos, articles and graphics.
The Sajan solution begins
Our experts combed the source code, looking for localizability issues. After many consulting sessions and collaborative meetings with the client, our team determined the best file formats for the website translation process.
We performed pseudo localization on their website to see how well translated strings would render in the localized version of the e-commerce site. We educated the client on other aspects of the website that needed to be addressed as well for each target market:
• Transcreate copy for many web page campaigns
• Localize videos featured on the website
The engineering team—made up of individuals from Sajan and the company—created pseudo strings and tested for functional requirements to make sure the localized versions of the website were compliant and performed as needed in each region. As part of this, we set up access to the client’s beta site to see how the rendered web pages would look before going live.
Benefits of partnership and teamwork
Together, the engineering team members worked to streamline the file exchange, pseudo localization and testing processes.
Today we are in the process of localizing the client’s website for key markets—which includes all of their store videos, product pages and descriptions, right down to the listed product ingredients.
We will also be performing multilingual SEO for the client to make sure they’re found by as many potential customers as possible in each target market.
Since beginning our strategic partnership, we’ve accomplished a great deal together. And we look forward to accomplishing even more in the coming weeks and months.
Hear the full story at Brand2Global!
Join us at Brand2Global in London, where we’ll be sharing ideas on global marketing, website translation and branding campaigns.
In addition to sponsoring and hosting the welcome cocktail reception, we’re putting on thought leadership sessions daily. Our own CEO, Shannon Zimmerman, will take the stage with a Sajan client representative to showcase how the company we’ve highlighted today is entering new markets through website localization.
Can’t be there in person? Join in the conversations by following @SajanTranslate, @GrainneMaycock, @Zimmermansm and @Brand2Global.
