March 22, 2021
In
In this weekly blog, our Senior Business Development Manager Ashley Norris reflects on a year in eCommerce (including his own spending habits!) and how an eCommerce translation agency can help drive sales. Drop him an email if you want to chat.
eCommerce has had quite a year, to say the least. With what felt like the entire world stuck indoors, consumers turned to online shopping during their 'reward time' on their personal devices – and so, eCommerce has shown its unparalleled value.
For example, I probably didn’t need to purchase a decade-worth of niche magazines, but I did – and it was all down to the magic of eCommerce!
In my hopeful search for justification of this giant stack of reading material piled next to me, I found that I’m not alone. In fact, I’m a part of something bigger: a trend.
That’s why I went digging for more statistics to make me feel better about my own impulsive buying habits.
The state of eCommerce in the UK
Did you know that eCommerce in the UK increased in 2020 to account for more than a third of all retail? Of course, with 'non-essential' shops closed for most of the year and subsequently reduced foot-traffic, it was to be expected that we'd see the burden of our needs fall onto digital (and socially-distanced) platforms.
But eCommerce has long been on an upwards trend, one that is growing into the new normal. The convenience of the platform allows for unfettered 24/7 access to purchasing – whatever the need.
For example, The Office for National Statistics UK (ONS) shows a continued upwards trajectory skyrocketed by our necessity to adapt to the times. eCommerce was always going to become bigger; it’s just been stimulated by a global crisis.
But let’s zoom out a little from the UK’s love affair with eCommerce.
eCommerce and the global trend
New data from eMarketer suggests that worldwide retail e-commerce sales grew 27.6% in 2020, with sales reaching well over $4 trillion. That tally is projected to reach $5 trillion in 2022.
Indeed, according to the brilliant people at Statista:
- 93.5% of global internet users have purchased products online.
- A whopping 91% of European households have internet access (2020).
- An average of 76% of those households are on the internet everyday (2019).
- Iceland tops the charts with 99% accessing the internet every day (2020), followed by Denmark (97%).
It’s time to cater content for these audiences.
Which country do you think has the highest percentage of eCommerce sales? You think it would be one of the top 10 largest GDPs, right? Who do you know that doesn’t buy from their device these days? Surely, it might even be here in the UK?
Nope. It’s Turkey.
The UK in fact isn’t even in the top 10 showing the almost boundless potential waiting to be tapped up.
So, what’s holding you back from growing? Isn't now the time to get an eCommerce translation agency on board?
Get an eCommerce quote from Wolfestone here.
eCommerce translation and the top global websites
After going down the rabbit hole of eCommerce statistics, website traffic has to be one of the most important factors to visibility and, therefore, ease of purchase.
What struck me about these top websites – and the unparalleled force that is Amazon – was to get to the numbers that they want, they offer something more to their visitors that a competitor currently doesn’t. What I found when looking through their websites was one similarity that allowed them unfettered reach across the world: translation.
These giants have unrivalled international marketing plans with continued and growing investment.
Apple.com is localised for 143 countries, coming close to catering to over 200 languages. eBay is localised for 30 countries in more than 50 languages – they also localise their website UI/UX to each nation and their individual habits.
Samsung have localised their eCommerce websites as well as all of their support material in over 60 languages for Africa alone and a combined total of 161.
To look at the top dog, Amazon’s US domain is only localised to nine languages. We know Amazon has a global presence with offices alone in 16 countries, but it offers more with localised domains per nation.
For example, if you head to Amazon.de, they offer six languages with English the only crossover of the other nine. With the way Amazon has localised its experiences to direct its user to the correct website by their current IP address, it’s difficult to find the exact number for them. What you can find is that they are close to selling successfully in almost 200 countries – a mindboggling reality, achieved through an extensive and thorough translated eCommerce platform.
How an eCommerce translation agency can help you win customers
Recent surveys have shown that around 40% of consumers won’t buy from a company that has no information available in their own language.
That’s true for myself personally, as being able to make an informed decision about the company from the way it present itself is vital to decision-making process. Personally, my impulse buys stop dead when I can’t understand any of the content.
This is something that these large, frequently-visited websites do offer, allowing for more users on the site engaging with content, building up brand trust, luring users into purchasing.
What's more, all of this adds to their SEO benefits, ticking all the boxes of search engine providers and with the additional consistent traffic in new markets, boosting them in the rankings.
If 40% of these users are turned off by content not in their own language and 97% of Danes are online daily, aren't you risking losing a large chunk of the market.
The internet is ubiquitous. Isn’t time your business takes advantage of that?
Get an quote from an eCommerce translation agency here.
What services does an eCommerce translation agency offer?
Wolfestone's experiences with the eCommerce industry is as varied as the industries that utilise its features. We continue to adapt along with the latest developments on the various platforms so that their cutting-edge advancements are without boundaries.
This can be helping clients integrate automated AI translation features into their chatbots or customer service emails, to more extensive work like copywriting in over 200 languages with a focus on their multilingual SEO impact.
Multilingual SEO isn’t just about making Google or other search engines happy – although that is a big part of lot our SEO strategies, let’s be real. But it’s also about catering to other platforms and their dedicated preferred indicators of quality content.
Wolfestone even helps our clients who sell on the Amazon marketplace to optimise their localisations for each region on Amazon’s own search function, which seems to penalise its sellers for utilising Amazon’s own AI machine translation service system because it wants its sellers to realise the power of transcreation.
Can an eCommerce translation agency really offer return on investment?
Wish came to Wolfestone with a need for a comprehensive translation services agency that understood their eCommerce needs. They needed a reliable provider that could deliver large batches of copy in over 22 languages – typically with a tight turnaround time, Wish, in their own words, did not have the people power nor the assets of experienced project managers to translate all of these languages.
By working with Wolfestone as their sole translation provider, it opened the door to new opportunities as well as freeing up their time to focus on other aspects of the work for even further success.
So, I suppose, the greater good from my impulse decision is that it is an on-the-nose physical representation of a daunting insurmountable task.
We both know the only way to really get through something like that is to get started.
So, as I pick up one of my magazines to finally read, why don’t you get a quote and start capitalising on your international marketing?
That’s where we can help.
Wolfestone is an all-encompassing language services provider ready to partner and collaborate to bring your business to the forefront of the global digital stage. We are a knowledgeable and experienced eCommerce translation agency ready to work with you to make sure you get the most out of all of your content.
Drop me an email to see how we can help you. Or even just to let me know what impulse purchases you've made during lockdown, so I can feel a little better about myself!
