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7 Steps to Improve Online Sales with Multilingual Product Information
August 18, 2022
It's no secret that online sales are increasing worldwide. Internet sales have increased by 270% in the last 10 years.
If you want to increase your online sales in your international markets, multilingual product information is a must. In order to have a strong online presence, you need to reach your customers in their native languages.
If your company wants to break into new markets or expand your reach in existing ones, translating and localizing product information can make all the difference.
Your product information management (PIM) system is the foundation for managing your multilingual product information.
Here's how you can integrate your PIM with a solid localization process to help grow your online sales worldwide…
The importance of multilingual product information
Imagine a world where you could buy a product without knowing what it does. Imagine not being able to read the ingredients to food products or understand the warnings in product descriptions.
This is not just a hypothetical exercise. It's a reality for millions of people around the globe. Even in the age of automated translations, many people do not have access to suitable information about products in their own languages. This makes it hard for them to make confident, informed decisions about what they buy.
Multilingual product information is part of this solution. When you provide information in people's native language, you can help to ensure all your customers understand the products they are buying.
This gives your customers more reason to trust you and creates a stronger brand image in your international markets.
What does it mean to integrate a PIM system with localization?
A product information management (PIM) system is a software application that helps your business manage large volumes of product database. Typically, this includes a central database where product information is stored, as well as tools for importing, exporting, and managing the data.
Integrating your PIM system with your localization involves setting up a clear process for creating, updating, and localizing the data stored in the system. This is an active process that you undertake with your translation provider.
For example, let's say you have an eCommerce website where you sell products to customers in the United States and Canada. You want to offer your website in both American English and Canadian French.
The PIM system allows you to manage all your product information — including descriptions, photos, videos, and so on — in one central location. With a well-designed localization process that's integrated with your PIM system, it's easy to turn your source content (for the US market in English) into translated content for the Canadian market (in French).
Your translation provider would pull the content directly from your PIM. They would then serve the localized content directly back into the PIM.
3 benefits of integrating a PIM with localization
There are many benefits that come when you integrate your PIM system with a reliable localization process.
Some key benefits of PIM integration are:
1. Improved accuracy and consistency
By keeping all your content centralized in one system, it is much easier for you to ensure accuracy and consistency. This is especially important when your company operates in multiple markets and languages.
2. Efficient content management
Inefficiency in localization often results from poor content management. A properly managed, centralized PIM system helps to make your localization process more efficient and cost-effective as content is translated once instead of multiple times (perhaps with slight variations).
3. Increased global sales
As well as the technical benefits of PIM localization, there are also benefits for your online sales. When your potential customers can easily find accurate, localized product information in their own language, they are more likely to make a purchase and have a positive image of your brand.
7 steps to improve online sales with multilingual product information
Here are 7 steps you can take to help improve your online sales with multilingual product information:
- Research your target markets — The first step is to identify which markets you will target and research their needs and preferences. Do people in the market prefer video or text? Do they use mobile or desktop? This may affect their preferences for product information.
- Choose the right PIM system — Find a system that allows you to easily create and update your multilingual product information.
- Find the right translation provider — Only some translation providers have the skills and experience to streamline a localization process directly from your PIM system. Find a provider that offers PIM localization as a specialist service
- Define your content types — It helps to know what type of content you will be translating and localizing. This will help your translation provider to optimize their activities to best suit your needs.
- Set up your localization process — Once you are clear on your needs, the process of PIM integration begins. Your translation provider should help you optimize your content creation process and set things up for success.
- Monitor and update your content — The content you store in your PIM will probably change and update constantly. If you have designed your process properly with your translation provider, the localization part of this process should be almost effortless for your teams.
- Streamline the process over time — There are always ways you can improve your localization and content creation processes. The best providers will have the expertise to streamline your process over time.
How to streamline your localization process with PIM integration
Creating product information content in multiple languages has the potential to be a difficult and time-consuming task… but it doesn't need to be.
When you integrate your PIM system with a reliable localization process, you make the process much easier and more efficient.
The best way to start creating a process for multilingual product information is to talk to a reliable translation provider about their PIM integration services.
Whether or not you have already set up a PIM system in your business, the provider should be able to help you make decisions that will make it easy to create and manage your multlingual content.