To help expand their business throughout our modern, global world, countless companies turn to translation and localization to help them successfully enter new markets. While some stakeholders may doubt whether these efforts are worth the cost and time commitment, not localizing content, products, and services to a new target market can be detrimental to the success of a launch.
One way to assure stakeholders that localization is worth the investment is to present them with cold hard numbers that measure the return on investment (ROI) the company is getting after localization occurs. It can be quite challenging to fully prove ROI for localization, but there are some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be valuable to examine.
Let’s take a closer look at the KPIs that can help companies better understand their ROI, as well as which metrics aren’t as valuable as they seem at first glance.
Ignore Metrics Specific to Localization
First things first, when trying to establish the ROI on a localization project, it’s important to forget the popular localization metrics of the past. These metrics aren’t as helpful as they seem at first glance and while they may help you evaluate the quality of a localization project, they won’t be able to tell the full story your stakeholders are looking for.
- Number of localized words per language
- Number of localization errors per language
- Average turnaround time
- On-time delivery rate
While the localization team should be looking closely at these metrics to measure efficiency, other stakeholders won’t be able to take much away after reviewing them.
Common KPIs for Tracking Localization ROI
The key to finding KPIs that will provide the insight you need is to specifically choose ones that are unique to your industry, company, and product or service. The following KPIs are simply suggestions to get you started. You’ll need to choose the ones that make the most sense for your business, and that align with your goals.
Some of the most common KPIs for tracking localization ROI include,
- Sudden or consistent website traffic increases from a region with a recently localized language
- Increased website session length
- Decreased bounce rate
- Conversion rates on localized landing pages
- Steady SEO improvement in a region with a recently localized language
- An increase in market share in a region with a recently localized language
- Higher social media engagement
- Sudden spikes in lead generation
- Usage rates of your product in different markets
- Incremental sales in regions covered by supported languages
- Larger number of support tickets per language
It is a good idea to track the customer experience in the different markets you localized your content and products for. It can also be helpful to conduct a survey to learn more about customer satisfaction and to look for areas where you can improve your localization efforts.
Patience is Key
Another important element of localization success to keep in mind is time. Seeing an ROI doesn’t happen overnight. Which is why it can be a good idea to use analytic tools to compare and contrast your KPIs from the period before localizing and the period after. That way, you can see the impact of your efforts over time.
