Some hard facts
Now all of us who work within the Translation Services industry know the benefits of website translation and localisation; or think that we do. In actual fact, everyone that I have ever spoken to has certainly been able to tell me the benefits of such, however, when questioned further, are somewhat short of corroborative figures. I was quite pleased, therefore, when some hard facts came to light from the USA to throw some light upon the true benefits of website translations.
Firstly though, here’s some background. Spanish speakers are the fastest growing segment of the US population and in some parts of the Southern States; Spanish is the virtually de facto language. Most retailers, however, do not provide dual Spanish/English websites for their online customers even though every indication has shown that Hispanics much prefer to interact in their own language. One of the main reasons for this reticence in providing Spanish content though is financial: in most cases a very large financial investment is needed to completely translate large e-commerce websites.
Two of the largest 50 e-retailers though, have taken the plunge and although total sales figures from their Spanish sites have not yet been collated, here are some statistics that have been:
• Almost every Spanish browser commented favourably on the sight and was delighted to see Spanish content.
• Online satisfaction questions on the Spanish sites returned a much higher proportion of ‘Yes’ answers to questions such as “Would you shop with us again?” or “Would you tell a friend about us?”
• Hispanic shoppers spent twice as much time browsing the pages on the Spanish version of the site as they did on the English version.
So with these preliminary statistics, would you make an investment on a Spanish website translation? Would it help if I revealed that Hispanics spent nearly $13 billion dollars online last year and that this is projected to rise to over $22 billion by 2011?
Well…I’m already out translating to nail a piece of that action; “Compre aquí amigos!”