If you’re considering expanding overseas or beginning to export your products or services to foreign markets, you may be weighing up the expense vs. return of investing in professional language translation services.
We’re here to help you decide and show you how to measure the return on your translation investment.
Is it possible to measure ROI for translation services?
Many people think that measuring the quality and return on investment of professional translation services is impossible. After all, if you pay a third party to translate your material to another language that you don’t speak, how do you know they’ve done a good job?
Moreover, how to you know whether that material is then being received in the target market any better than it would have been in English, or if you had used a machine translation?
We understand the concerns and confusion and we are here to help. When businesses embark on overseas marketing campaigns or need to send written material to foreign customers, it can be difficult for a case to be made to the budgeting team that professional human translation services are needed.
However, there are ways to and stakeholders will do well to promote investment in translation as part of a wider strategy that will deliver the smooth running of an international expansion plan.
Practical ways to measure the ROI on translation
Ecommerce competitiveness
Quite simply, without effective translations, an ecommerce business will have little chance of competing in global markets.
A report by CSA Research, entitled Can’t Read, Won’t Buy found that over 56 per cent of the thousands of global consumers they polled, said that the ability to obtain information in their own language was more important to them than price.
Forrester Research found that a staggering 95 per cent of Chinese consumers said they were more comfortable with websites in their own language. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to evidence that consumers prefer spending their money through websites that are carefully translated and localised.
With respect to return on investment, professional language translation and localisation services are an essential part of international ecommerce, so the returns are clear.
Cost savings
There are clear cost savings involved with investing in professional, human language translation services from the very beginning of a project. Using online translation tools, for example, can result in staff having to fix errors, spend time checking content with a fine-tooth comb and editing documents blind, with no real understanding of whether the translation makes sense to native readers.
Working with a company like Bubbles from the outset can actually save your business money, as it cuts out the risks involved with translation software and ensures the job is done quickly and accurately.
We offer a tailored, flexible service, ensuring that the translation projects we undertake for clients are suitable and cost-effective in terms of what they need to achieve. This is key to generating return on investment.
Measurable statistics
In addition to the above, there are more directly measurable statistics that are worth monitoring for any business embarking on a translation project. Presenting these statistics to decision makers will help to demonstrate where translation return on investment is made.
If there are comparisons to be drawn with projects that were poorly translated then that’s even better!
These are some of the measurable stats worth looking at when attempting to assess ROI on translation:
- Rate of errors in translations
- Conversion rates on translated websites
- Revenue vs cost of translation per word
- Profit per translated project
- Market share gained
- Localised marketing campaign conversion rates
- Traffic to website from foreign countries
Then, perhaps the last, but certainly not the least-important factor to measure, in order to gain a clear picture of the return on your investment, is customer satisfaction. We believe that providing written material and online content that is perfectly translated and localised is the key to winning over new markets.
Whether you want to engage new customers with relevant marketing content in their own language or give customers the option to pay in local currencies and have items shipped right to their door, these are all translation and localisation issues.
To get these vital things right first time, businesses require the input of experienced language translation service providers. Perhaps the most compelling return on a translation investment is the knowledge that you aren’t risking getting it wrong.
Contact Bubbles Translation today to discuss your project and find out how we can help.
