How Can You Measure the ROI of Localizing Your Website?

The reasons to invest in localization are endless. Whether you want to improve your UX, expand brand awareness, develop brand trust, or make your website more accessible, localization can help you achieve those goals — and the ROI of investing in localization makes it worthwhile.

We’re not discounting the gravity of investing in a holistic, cross-functional project, but, from experience we can tell you that the ROI of localization projects can be proven easily and reliably using short- and long-term measurements. Let’s dive into how.

Can the ROI of localization really be quantified?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Sales, website conversions, and user/customer feedback are all data points that can prove the impact of localization on business goals and bottom line.

While the benefits of localization go beyond immediate increases in traffic and sales, those numbers are a great place to start. The three most trusted methods of ROI measurement for localization are sales data, website success measurements, and brand trackers/market research.

What can sales metrics and conversion rates tell you?

76% of consumers prefer to make purchases from websites in their spoken language. That’s a statistic that, in theory, could justify at least an exploration of localization. Localization, however, goes far beyond translation, and so do its benefits.

Measuring changes to sales data is the most obvious metric for measuring a localization project’s success, and rightfully so: not only is this data easy to collect, but it can also seem to be the easiest to understand. If you want to go beyond surface-level understanding, however, you can start examining more sophisticated connections between localization projects and changes to sales.

In localization researcher Rebecca Ray’s guide to empowering localization teams to own business goals, she writes,

“Instead of sitting back and waiting for someone else, localization teams are taking the lead for cross-functional initiatives to address issues and requirements that no one ever dreamed of prior to the outbreak. Providing the data that other business functions require to make successful international investment decisions as they reallocate funding is a big piece of this.”

Beyond examining sales increases following a localization launch, CSA Research advocates for a more holistic approach to defining sales impact. Incorporating post-sales data into your ROI analysis, for example, expanding your view of localization in the sales cycle. Incorporating a larger-scale interpretation of sales data into your ROI analysis will make it easier and more natural to include data from other localization-involved teams, including marketing, engineering, and product design.

What can localization do for your website’s SEO and traffic?

SEO (search engine optimization) is a measurement of how well your website is performing based on how highly it ranks for search terms of your choosing. The more relevant your content is to your target audience, the higher your SEO score will be, and the higher your SEO score is, the more relevant traffic you’ll get.

SEO isn’t just about putting the right words in the right places: to have a high SEO ranking, your content has to be trustworthy, unique, and high-quality. So, when we tell you that localization isn’t just putting a translate button on your website, it’s because we know that search engines don’t fall for easy solutions. They want quality, and quality demands elbow grease: website architecture that supports multiple languages, research into cultural norms and practices, and design that speaks to the unique needs of each audience. This process can be incremental: one language or region at a time, one page at a time. It’s not about speed: it’s about planning and thoughtfulness. Building strong foundations now will help you build quickly later.

When Audible chose to centralize its 19 blog properties onto one CMS, for example, its primary drivers were speeding up the creation of new blog posts and pages, ensuring design and development consistency, and reducing time-to-market for localization projects. By embedding localization best practices and goals into the foundation of their project, HFC’s cross-functional team set Audible up for success when building pages internally.

Brand tracking, where qualitative meets quantitative

Increased traffic and better SEO rankings speak their own truth. Hearing from actual customers, however, is a tried-and-true method of understanding where you’re succeeding and failing and allows companies to understand the day-to-day impact of their work on their users.

Brand tracking is a holistic method of measuring your brand awareness and perception. While these are quantitative insights, they’re directly tied to SEO rankings and conversion rates. As your brand’s trustworthiness increases, so will your sales in your new markets. According to a 2023 report by Edelman, a market-leading communications firm, consumers are 59% more likely to buy products from brands they trust and 67% more likely to stay loyal to and advocate for that brand.

Looking at numbers through a qualitative lens will make these numbers more relatable and put them into a real-world context.

I know localization is important. Where do I start?

Localization teams are most effective and impactful when they’re built to be cross-functional. Teams with a diverse range of skillsets can combine their abilities to create a more resilient, expansive localization strategy. Engineers, marketers, customer success representatives, sales folks, designers, and more have a role in launching a localization project that will thrive. Building a holistic team will set your team up for success when it’s time to build and launch your new website.

If you’re ready to start exploring localization and how it can help you expand your business, reach out to us to explore how we can help you reach — and exceed — your goals.