Localization: the best but most overlooked personalization (and revenue growth) strategy

Without question, website translation plays a critical role in your overall international growth strategy. So, if you’re creating a business case to invest in machine-based or hybrid machine/human translation, here you’ll find the key arguments for why localization to personalize the customer experience makes perfect business sense.  

No one wants the “quit and bounce”

Local language translation is the foundation of the customer experience. No matter how hard you personalize your website to fit different personas, browsing, and purchasing behaviours, or do A/B testing, it's useless if your visitors can't feel the nuances of your offering because they can’t read it in their native language. Even worse, if they don't understand your messaging, they may simply quit and bounce — which means you’ve just lost potential revenue due to a poor experience.

Localization extends your brand reach by opening the door to more sales territories. It removes barriers to sales conversion by creating a frictionless first experience for the site visitor, which then encourages buying behaviours and engagement.   

Removing language friction opens opportunity

Here are some critical stats to consider: 

• 75% of consumers will look elsewhere when they can’t find content in their own language 
• 72% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language
• 56% of consumers feel that obtaining information in their own language is more important than price

Moreover, given that there’s always pressure to create new marketing content as a means of keeping customers engaged, insights from the market analysts at CSA suggest that localization has a bigger impact on driving sales than does writing new content. By their calculations, each dollar invested in localization returns nearly 6x as much revenue compared to new investment in English language content! 

With industry experts predicting that the global cross-border e-commerce market will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.5% year on year, from 2024 to 2031, the need for localized content has never been greater. 

Localization is more than a “nice to have”

Localization is more than just a means to create personalized customer experiences; in some countries, local language provision is actually an obligation. Bill 96, for example, is an amendment to the Charter of the French Language, passed in 2022, that aims to make French the predominant language in Quebec. From mid-2025, companies need to ensure that content is always available in French. 

In addition, companies operating in territories that are multilingual by nature, such as Switzerland and Belgium, should automatically make multilingual content available. 

And then there are those countries where a large proportion of the population speaks another language. The US, for instance, has large communities of Spanish speakers, which presents a commercial imperative to deliver localization so that huge numbers of people aren’t alienated from a brand. 

Non localization: a risky business, indeed

If you receive a “no” when presenting the business case for localization, it’s worthwhile also to highlight the business risks of not doing so. 

• Without localization, your organization risks falling behind progressive competitors. 
• There is a diversification risk of operating with too heavy a focus on a single market’s revenue. 
• There is a profitability risk because you are likely investing in less profitable marketing strategies (net new content) vs. localization of your primary messaging. 

In short, today’s global economy makes it nearly impossible to turn your back on translation and localization needs. Tune in next week for my second post, where I will present best practices for rolling out your localization strategy, and how to scale quickly.  

Driving partner-led innovation for global enterprises

As established technology providers for website translation and localization, and serving over 40,000 customers, we at Weglot have had a longstanding relationship with DeepL to power translations for our users. We are excited that this relationship has now Aetna evolved from being a customer to being an early strategic partner.

The collaboration between Weglot and DeepL is part of a wider partnership program that supports businesses using Language AI to build smart, industry-focused solutions.

As one of the early members of this program, we’re excited to partner with a company that shares our priorities and those of our customers. Weglot and DeepL customers value responsible AI use and maintain a deep commitment to data privacy and security. By working together, we’re making powerful, enterprise-ready innovation more accessible to all, helping to broaden the scope and impact of our joint solutions. 

“By collaborating with partners like Weglot who show how impactful localization can be, DeepL is powering transformation for thousands of businesses. Together with our partners, we are help every organization realize what’s possible with Language AI,” explains Tom Delhez, Director of Global Partnerships for DeepL.

If you’re interested in partnering with DeepL to build Language AI into your solutions and strategy, we’d love to talk to you! Connect with our partnership team here.