Multi-national e-commerce websites face an incredibly tough challenge, that challenge being catering to visitors from all over the world and providing accurate product descriptions no matter the language.

You see, contrary to belief, many e-commerce businesses take the decision to have one website that can be manually loaded by the user into their own language rather than build hundreds of different websites for geographic regions.

As such, good translation is essential.

Translation tools

One of the biggest mistakes website owners make with regard to translation is using a tool or widget, which can translate web pages for the user based on an online directory from the likes of Google and Babelfish. The problem with these systems is that they’re not perfect, and this is a major problem because for visitors to turn into sales, you need to build trust, and that is simply not possible without effective communication.

For e-commerce stores, these tools are even more irrelevant. Product descriptions in particular need to be perfectly translated so that visitors know what they are looking at and what they are going to buy. If an e-commerce store does not accurately translate product descriptions, it will of course effect conversion, but it is also going to cause untold problems further down the line, such as returns and reviews.

Manual translation

The best way for e-commerce websites to provide accurate product descriptions in multiple languages is to have them manually translated. This might be a costly expense if you have many different products, but the potential ROI is huge. Consider this – for every 2 sales per month you might get from Russia with a poor translation, you might get 20 orders from Russia with a well translated description. Within a month or even a week you will have made your money back.

The beauty of manual translation is that in terms of website integration, it can be seamless – when an international visitor loads your page, they can be asked if they would like to translate it into their native tongue, or that web page can automatically load for them.

Get in touch with Network Languages

At Network Languages, we offer a comprehensive product description translation service. We can translate into all European languages, including Danish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and Far East languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Get in touch with us today to find out more about our service.