According to Shopify’s 2023 e-commerce trends report, the e-commerce market grew by 13% in 2024, with a $4.84 billion revenue!
It’s expected to reach $5.42 billion by 2025. The most profitable e-commerce businesses being Fashion, food, and electronics.
It wouldn’t take two guesses to know that e-commerce is the big thing and will continue to be that way for years to come. Therefore, it is just about time that we address the mistakes with your website that could have been getting in the way of hundreds of sales!
If you want to compete in this very busy landscape, watch out for the common mistakes we; ‘re listing below
1- Not considering a market’s cultural context
An e-commerce website wants to sell. Not catering to the cultural context is one big miss.
Translation is the bare minimum you can give your users. But, do you see the experience for them changing if you go the extra mile and actually localize many of their journey touchpoints?
This includes menus, product descriptions, product names, slogans, copy, and product videos. Images, units of measurement, date and time formats, currency localization, brand name localization?
You also want to ask:
- Is this product suitable for a wide range of people of different ages?
- Are the images localized for non-native speakers?
Read more: Localizing your website: a step towards expanding your small business globally
2- Forgetting about SEO
Imagine you have a real-life store, where you’re selling the best quality products imported from different parts of the world.
But there are no directions for it on the map, it’s located in an obscure alley with a fading store poster. The chances are, that customers will have a really hard time finding you.
The same happens with e-commerce websites on search engines.
Meaning, that you need to make it super easy for customers to find you when they look for let’s say “Local Hoodies in Arizona”.
That means, optimizing it for the right keywords with lots of search volume. Optimizing the speed of the website, its URLs, meta description, meta tags, content, and everything in between.
Check out Neil Patel’s ultimate guide for more SEO traffic on your e-commerce site.
3- Cultural Insensitivity and Inappropriate Content
What’s appropriate or legal on one version of your website, can be inappropriate or even offensive in another, all depending on the customer.
What can be offensive or inappropriate?
- Certain expressions
- Irrelevant content
- Misgendering people
- Lack of inclusivity
- Inappropriate Visuals
- Unfamiliar gestures
- Religious insensitivity (images of animals that could be sacred/repulsive in some cultures)
The only way to fix that is to clearly identify who your customer is. Meaning, what is their background, and what is allowed or not allowed to say to them
How do you go about finding that out…research
4- Leaving regional differences as they are
Imagine an Arab user from Dubai lands on your website. The location detects they’re from Saudi Arabia, but you give them measurements and sizing units in inches and pounds!
The prices are in USD. At this point, the user either bounces back or if they really need to make a purchase, they grab a calculator in hand!
Instead of providing a poor customer experience, the e-commerce website in question can be localized for the correct currency, which in this case is UAE Dirham, measurements units like (centimeter, meter, gram, kilogram).
5- Relying on automation because it’s easier or cheaper
Free translation tools, or even paid machine translation tools can be cost-effective and save up tons of time by being incredibly fast. Yet, this is not the approach you want with localizing something as context-specific as an e-commerce website.
Although it could work with minor, noncontextual text, it’s always best to use them mindfully because such tools need to be trained on context understanding, even the most sophisticated of them!
Read more: Best Free Translation Websites
6- Multilingual customer service and support
Not all non-native English speakers can navigate the Help Centre articles, FAQs, Customer Chatbot, or talk to customer service agents.
Customer support is the first human interaction customers have with your business. If they look for helpful content on the website to help them but they can’t find any, then that’s a mistake to address.
How to fix that?
- Provide local phone numbers the customer can reach
- Customer service team that’s available in their local timezone
- Multilingual team that can email, chat, call the customers, and respond in their language
- Translate and localize the Help Centre article (or else they miss the point)
- Localize the Chatbot experience
7- Not considering regional language differences
This might sound subtle, but it can be significant for your customer. What do I mean by regional language differences?
It’s the fact that US English is not nearly the same as UK English. Or Canadian French the same as France French
Take a simple example:
If you’re running a clothing store both in the USA and in the UK at the same time. The word ‘sweater’ will be ‘jumper’. Product Color will be Colour, and ‘cozy’ could be ‘cosy’.
They’re subtle differences but will certainly go a long way.
8- Overlooking Payment Preferences
Your e-commerce website is all set, the customer added their items to the cart and continued to checkout.
But… they couldn’t find the payment option they were looking for. This problem is quite common.
Today, online payment is busier than ever. You have credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, even crypto!
Although this is a great technological advancement, it leaves the options wide open. It’s also very likely that customers in the USA will use significantly different payment methods than European, Asian, or Arab ones.
The solution to this lies in research.
- What payment methods do your target customers prefer?
- What is the percentage of check out drop out of certain customers?
Fast Trans is your go-to company when it comes to E-commerce translation
Looking for someone to handle the entire translation of your e-commerce website without having to worry about any of the above?
You’ve landed in the right place.
At Fast Trans, we take pride in going all in with our clients. We understand the competitive landscape of e-commerce and have worked with plenty of customers, who just like you, want to join the crowd and soar above.
Get in touch with our team here, or get a quick quote here.
Feel free to check our plenty of other services. We basically have:
- High client retention rate, compromising lots of industries
- In-house, outsourced, and freelance team members who are always ready to deliver top-quality
- 120+ Language support
- Comprehensive utilization of Translation Software
- Proud array of translation, localization, and content services that you can check here
- ISO Certifications
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