Get Your Money Back Optimizing Localization RoI
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<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>!<br />
<strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Table of Content<br />
What Choice Do You Have? 4<br />
Making <strong>Your</strong> Sales Estimates 4<br />
How A Simple SWOT Analysis Can Help 5<br />
Timing Trade-Offs For <strong>Localization</strong> Investments 6<br />
Cost Management For <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong> 6<br />
Translation Cost Reductions 7<br />
The Final Step To <strong>RoI</strong> – Merchandizing To Make Sales 7<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Return on investment or <strong>RoI</strong> drives most business activities, projects, and localization should<br />
not be an exception: This is our guide for a first look into your localization <strong>RoI</strong>.<br />
If you’re going to spend time and effort in readying your app or website for new markets and<br />
languages, you want to be sure that it’s all for a good reason. Likewise, if you pay external<br />
translation agencies to turn your text strings into Spanish, you want to see your dollars (or<br />
euros, yen, rubles, etc.) coming back with friends attached.<br />
If the concept of a localization <strong>RoI</strong> is new to you, here’s a simple definition. Return on<br />
investment is the comparison between the net amount of money you get out of a project (your<br />
return) and the money you put into it (investment.) The <strong>RoI</strong> is often expressed as a percentage.<br />
So, for example, if after deducting all your translation expenses you end up with a net profit of<br />
$5,000 after having invested $50,000, then your <strong>RoI</strong> is 100% x $5000/$50000, i.e. 10%. A bigger,<br />
positive <strong>RoI</strong> is usually better. If your <strong>RoI</strong> is negative, then you spent more money than you<br />
made, which is no way to run a business over the long term!<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
What Choice Do You Have?<br />
Most of your potential market or audience across the world does not speak your language<br />
(even if that language is English.) Consider the following statistics too:<br />
● Over 72% of consumers said there was a bigger chance they would buy from a website if it<br />
was in their native language, according to a recent eight country survey.<br />
● 42% of European Union consumers do not buy products or services presented in a foreign<br />
language, even if they are fluent in that language.<br />
● 95% of Chinese consumers do not buy products or services presented in a foreign<br />
language, even if they are fluent in that language. And remember, there are also different<br />
versions of Chinese within China too. Meanwhile, there are now considerably more<br />
Chinese web users than US web users.<br />
● The dominance of English as an Internet language has dropped to 3% or less in recent<br />
years, compared to a 26% margin in 2000.<br />
So, localization in general may not be a choice, but a necessity. However, <strong>RoI</strong> considerations<br />
may push you towards a certain priority for your localizations. Naturally, it makes sense to<br />
serve bigger, more profitable markets for your app or website first.<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Making <strong>Your</strong> Sales Estimates<br />
Whether Japanese, Georgian, or Javanese should be your first choice for a localization depends<br />
on your app or website, and your marketing objective. <strong>Your</strong> first step in calculating return on<br />
investment for localization is to decide where you want to sell, which may be a totally different<br />
country or region, compared to somebody else’s choice.<br />
Next, you must estimate sales revenue from the markets for which you are planning<br />
localization. This is a tricky proposition at the best of times, but information to help you do this<br />
may include:<br />
● Population size/number of web or mobile device users in the market for localization<br />
● Comparison of a market you’re aiming at with a market you already know. For example, if<br />
the new market has twice the number of smartphone users as your home market, a<br />
correctly localized version of your app might attract twice as many customers compared<br />
to your home market.<br />
● Data from online tools like Google Global Market Finder and Google Trends to see how<br />
popular relevant keywords are in different languages. You may want to check out<br />
different versions of such tools for different regions, where Google is not the main player<br />
(as in China, for instance.)<br />
● Specific market or country regulations concerning apps or websites. In sectors like<br />
healthcare and finance, you may find that regulations effectively prevent you from<br />
launching a localized version of your app. In that case, cross that country off your list and<br />
look for others instead.<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
How A Simple SWOT Analysis Can Help<br />
SWOT is a marketing and business term that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,<br />
and threats. Checking out these four aspects can help you decide if a particular localization is<br />
likely to be good business or not. For example, let’s say you are considering a localization into<br />
Spanish of your app that helps users learn how to play drums. Then your SWOT analysis might<br />
look like this:<br />
● Strengths. <strong>Your</strong> app localization will cover all the content that Spanish people want to<br />
know about, including Latin rhythms and techniques of specific interest to them.<br />
● Weaknesses. You don’t have a native Spanish speaker in your team to ensure that your<br />
localization will be up to the standards expected by native speakers – although good<br />
translation management with a competent, professional translation agency may let you<br />
overcome such a weakness.<br />
● Opportunities. The Spanish-speaking market has been vocal about needing better tools<br />
for learning how to drum (and your marketing department has statistics, press clippings,<br />
etc. to prove it, right?).<br />
● Threats. You have a couple of competitors with decent apps of their own, who have also<br />
announced plans to move into the Spanish speaking market. You’ll need to check your<br />
pricing remains attractive to your target customers compared to that of your rivals.<br />
On a relative basis (compared with other projects you know about) or in absolute terms (when<br />
you can quantify impacts and dollars), your SWOT analysis can help you decide if you’ll make<br />
money, and how much.<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Timing Trade-Offs For <strong>Localization</strong> Investments<br />
Accepted wisdom says that any necessary investment should be made as close as possible to<br />
the launch of a product, and that all possible revenues should be collected as soon as possible<br />
after launch. That way, you avoid tying up investment too early and having to wait for returns,<br />
whose value will be eroded by inflation over the time you have to wait for them. However, there<br />
are other factors that you should consider too:<br />
● Internationalization, which is the preparatory work to make your app or website ready for<br />
any specific localization afterwards, is often best designed in from the start. Just like<br />
security and quality, it is often more difficult to add in or layer on internationalization at a<br />
later stage, and the results may not be as good, either.<br />
● The basics of internationalization, such as the separation of content and the use of<br />
functions to automatically format units and quantities for foreign languages, may also<br />
need relatively little effort, when they are done at the same time as the development of<br />
the code.<br />
● <strong>Localization</strong> itself, meaning the translation or “transcreation” of text and other content,<br />
can be then be done shortly before the planned launch date of a version of your app or<br />
website in a given language. So, if you are planning a launch of a Spanish-localized<br />
version of your app in April, you might wait until February before spending time and<br />
money on getting translations done and running quality checks, thus keeping this part of<br />
the investment closer to the launch date.<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Cost Management For <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
Return on investment basically depends on two things. The first is making more sales revenue<br />
and profit. The second is properly managing your localization costs. So, your next goal is to run<br />
a tight project ship for each localization. This means monitoring time, expense, and progression<br />
towards deadlines to ensure that localization projects are kept on track towards goals and that<br />
costs are contained.<br />
You can also plan cost reduction actions to help boost your <strong>RoI</strong> even further. This does not<br />
mean omitting essential tasks or deliverables, or trying to grind partners into the ground for the<br />
lowest possible prices. Doing this will make quality suffer and could cause your localization to<br />
flop in the market.<br />
Translation Cost Reductions<br />
Some cost reductions make sense all around, especially in terms of cost-efficiency in<br />
translation.<br />
● Localize only those parts of content that cannot be matched by existing locales. For<br />
example, the two locales of US English and UK English (en-us and en-gb) overlap to a<br />
great extent. If you already have a full en-us version, it makes more sense to only localize<br />
the en-gb parts that are different, and to have the en-gb local default back to the en-us<br />
locale for all the parts that are the same.<br />
● Use translation memory. Translation management platforms now offer facilities to hold<br />
previously translated strings and to prompt translators to use them again. This avoids<br />
extra effort and cost, and also helps produce a more consistent translation each time<br />
(also important for maintenance and upgrade releases.)<br />
● Use translation glossaries. Some terms may be not need to be translated or else their<br />
translation will always be the same. By preparing a translation glossary of such terms,<br />
you can reduce effort and cost. In the right format, these glossaries can also be included<br />
in translation management platforms, making it easy for translators to click “OK” and<br />
move directly to the next phrase to be translated.<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
The Final Step To <strong>RoI</strong> – Merchandizing To Make Sales<br />
After you have made sure marketing and development are firing on all six cylinders to help<br />
generate a positive <strong>RoI</strong>, you will need to make sure that your merchandizing is up to the job as<br />
well. Put it this way: if customers do not know that a localized version of your app exists for<br />
them, they will not think of buying it.<br />
So, as a marketing expert once said, do not release your product on an unsuspecting market.<br />
<strong>Your</strong> advertising, PR, and other suitable forms of content should be the wakeup call your<br />
market needs to sit up, pay attention, and start thinking about all the things they will able to do<br />
as the proud owners of your localized app.<br />
Meanwhile, with the <strong>RoI</strong> and profit you’ll now make thanks to all the tactics above, you’ll have<br />
extra funds to develop an additional new blockbuster app or website, complete with suitable<br />
localizations!<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp
<strong>Get</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Money</strong> <strong>Back</strong>! <strong>Optimizing</strong> <strong>Localization</strong> <strong>RoI</strong><br />
phraseapp.com<br />
sales@phraseapp.com<br />
+49-40-357-187-76<br />
ABC-Straße 4<br />
Hamburg, Germany<br />
phraseapp.com | sales@phraseapp.com | +49-40-357-187-76 | twitter.com/phraseapp | facebook.com/phraseapp | linkedin.com/company/phraseapp