Ways Your Business Can Benefit from a Multilingual Website

According to the Common Sense Advisory, an overwhelming majority (75%) of customers prefer to buy from websites that speak their language. Even for those who speak some English, or even have a mastery of English as a second language, trust is higher when they can deal in their native language.

Dr. Dominguez, a bilingual chiropractor, knows all about bringing in business with a bilingual website. “Having a bilingual, or even multilingual website is imperative in today’s economy. It can bring more benefits than just more customers.”

Expand Your Business Without Blowing Your Budget

Translating your website into other languages is a cheap and reliable way to expand your business. A multicultural marketing campaign might be enticing, but it is also expensive, and without translating your website, you might not get the customers to make the jump to purchasing.
However, just using a plug-in might not be enough. These can often mistranslate, leaving a customer confused. Plus, translation covers more than just words. You’ll also want to have culturally and language-appropriate images, currency, measurements, and most importantly, text that reads like it was written by a native speaker, not grabbed from Google Translate.

Improve SEO

If your website is optimized into different languages and utilizes key search terms used in local markets, your SEO is going to improve. Not just in English markets, but other markets as well. Not only will SEO improve, websites that have been translated also won’t get dinged by Google or other search engines for duplicate content.

Expand Your Audience

It goes without saying that when you offer multiple versions of your website spanning several different languages, you’ll have access to a much wider audience. When you consider that only 25.3% of internet users speak English natively and some 2.7 billion internet users are from non-English speaking countries, the benefits of having a multilingual website become increasingly apparent.

Make the Majority Happy

While it is true that you can’t make everyone happy, striving to make the majority content can increase sales and conversions. One way to go about making the majority happy is to provide services in their native language. When it comes to people in the European Union, 90% of internet users want websites to be in their own language. This means that 9 out of 10 customers in Europe will appreciate your efforts to localize and meet their language and cultural needs.

Your website is often a customer’s first impression of how you do business. Imagine the kind of impression that can be made when a customer travels to your website and sees their own language, along with culturally appropriate images and content. It will inspire trust, and that trust will lead to business expansion.