As an app development company, one of your goals is to increase your users and revenue. To reach this goal, it is important to consider extending your reach to other target markets. This requires customization of your application depending on your target location through a mobile app localization
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There are a lot of people who think that simply translating their descriptions in app stores is enough. However, mobile app localization requires a complicated process and a lot of researching to make it effective. Moreover, the marketing and translation team needs a deeper understanding of their target regions and countries’ cultures and preferences.
In this article, we will talk about mobile app localization and how to make it successful.
How do translation services affect your mobile app?
First, let’s talk about the effects and importance of quality translation services to mobile apps. After finishing your app design and features, the challenges will not stop there. You need to find effective ways to reach more audiences in the global market and invite them to use your applications. However, you need to overcome the occurrence of the language barrier.
This is why most app developers are now localizing their marketing and app features. By translating content in various languages, they can communicate with global audiences better. It can even result in a drastic increase in traffic and revenue within a short timeframe. Without localization, it will be the same as ignoring billions of global users spending 88% of their mobile time with apps.
But, why should you rely on translation services? This is because translation services like Tomedes offer expertise in mobile app localization. They know how the global market works and where to start in localization. They can increase your chances of winning against millions of applications available in app stores. By adapting to the culture and preferences of your target market, they help in making your application more relatable and user-friendly.
Here are the top three things that you can achieve through localization and translation services:
- You can successfully expand your reach to any region and gain more users.
- You can improve your mobile app’s user experience and increase great feedback.
- You can increase your overall revenue due to an increase in users.
Localization vs. Internationalization
A lot of people often get confused between localization and international while some even think that they’re the same. However, developers need to know the differences between them especially when they are planning to globalize the app.
Basically, internationalization is related to codes and localization is about the content. After developing an app, it is important to make it adaptable to different regions without any engineering changes. After that, you can now localize the application by translating and adapting the contents to the languages, culture, and preferences of your target market.
It is important to plan ahead of time the internationalization before you localize. If you will not customize the code first, it will be impossible to apply the translations of your content and insert more language options to your app.
Best steps to localize your app
If you want to make your app more successful, it is best to make it available to more audiences around the world. However, localizing an app requires investments in time, money, and effort to make it successful. Here are some of the steps that you could follow for localization:
1. Do your market research.
Market research is important when preparing and setting your strategy to enter a new target market. When localizing your mobile app, you can start by selecting your target audiences. Read timely news, stats, and resources about the recent economy and trends in different regions. You can also search for essential studies and predictions about mobile app trends. This way, you’ll have an idea of which countries will accept your app features.
You can also analyze your analytics and see which regions do most of your users come from to make their experiences better. Look for their reviews and feedback to know the things you need to change and improve when localizing.
To make your research more productive, you should also look out for your competitors and note down the regions and countries they are targeting. You can do this by checking them in app stores and their social media accounts.
2. Build your localization team with translation services.
After identifying your target audience, you should start building your localization team and partner with reliable translation services. Choose those with local knowledge about your target region and make sure that they know all about the application. You can also hire natives for more reliable localized ideas.
Aside from that, you should also invest in partnering with reliable translation services. There are different types of translators that you could hire. There are freelancers, on-call, and full-time translators. However, if you only need these translators for a short amount of time, it will be better to hire on-call translators with enough experience working with mobile apps.
3. Optimize your app store.
Your audiences can search and download your mobile apps through various app stores like ios apps store. Thus, it is essential to optimize your app store content and details to make it visible to more users. Start by researching for the right keyword and applying them to your descriptions and titles. However, note that you cannot use the same keyword in the different locations that you set it for.
In these cases, make a separate keyword research base on your target location and language instead of directly translating them. Apply them to your meta description, meta title, and contents.
Aside from that, it is also important to use appropriate images and personalize the captions in different languages. This will make it easier for your audiences to understand how your app works and why it is ideal to use.
4. Make the layout language-friendly.
One of the common problems of developers when localizing a mobile app is their need to adjust the layouts due to differences in translations’ length and character size. Thus, if you already have plans of expanding your reach from the start, make the layout more language-friendly. It will help in avoiding wasted time for layout adjustments and awkward font sizing on your app.
Moreover, you should note the way different regions tend to read. For example, Arabian writings are from right to left instead of the conventional left-right. In these cases, the way you present should also be different if you are targeting them.
5. Test before launching the app.
To make sure that your launching will work smoothly, make sure to test the app first. Have some people who will try using your app on different devices and locations. Get their honest opinions on whether the app is working well and if there should be any changes to do. You can also make some locals of your target location try it for their feedback on localization.
With this, you can avoid and minimize the errors of your application and make it more user-friendly in different regions across the world.
6. Ask for the user’s feedback.
Feedback is important especially to make necessary changes and improvements to your app. Meanwhile, great reviews can invite more users to download your app and use them. The only problem with this is that getting constructive criticisms or positive reviews is difficult. This is because most people will not be interested in dedicating time to something that will not be beneficial for them.
Thus, you should utilize a plan that will urge people in writing a review. There are different ways to gather feedback aside from the app store. You can set up proactive live chat support that will cater to their needs, create a poll on social media, or use Facebook reactions for feedback To aim for app store reviews, you can make a reward system for your users to urge them.
After collecting the feedback, use them for your next app updates to improve your software.
Conclusion
In this digital age, targeting the global market is not as difficult as before. However, you need to invest in your mobile app localization to target international audiences. There are several preparation and translation steps that you need to do before actually launching your app in other regions. Still, localization is extremely beneficial and offers great return-of-investment for your future endeavor.
