Marketers losing trillions in lost sales due to website translation

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Marketers losing trillions in lost sales due to website translation.

A $30 trillion internet sales black hole is being lost in translation because marketers in the United Kingdom are not localising their websites for different countries, according to online translation technology company Dakwak.

In the past two years the economic potential of making money online has grown from $36.5 to $44.6 trillion. However, just one third of that figure is available if websites are only available in English. And, according to Dakwak, that figure is even less with websites solely in languages not as widely used as English – for example Portuguese, Russian or Japanese. This leaves $30 trillion in potential untapped sales which businesses across the UK could be cashing in on.*

According to Waheed Barghouthi, CEO at Dakwak, language is a key factor in online purchasing behaviour - however some businesses are missing out on potentially large sums of money by failing to adapt their sites for the global marketplace. Just eleven languages gain access to 85 per cent of the world's online wallet, according to Dakwak.

Waheed said: "Research has shown that 85 per cent of consumers are more inclined to buy a product when confronted with information in their own language, and 54 per cent say this is more important than the actual price.

"This tells us that comfort and confidence in reading a website that has been translated into your language is a huge factor in the purchasing decision, but many businesses are failing to do this, as they see website translation and localisation as a costly exercise involving big budgets and teams of people."

Dakwak, a cloud-based software, helps companies of varying sizes and budgets that are looking to take their business further into international markets. It completely removes the entire process of putting up a translated version of a website such as any technical involvement and employing localised teams in several countries and is the only software which gives marketers total control over their translated websites, as they are able to put up, take down and edit any translated content themselves. And Dakwak's unique multi-layered system, allows marketers the flexibility to choose between crowd, machine and professional translation options.

Waheed added: "The potential for businesses to maximise sales by creating localised content, without having to hire teams of translators and developers, or even visit the country you want to sell to, is enormous. The internet has broken down borders for global trade, and removing language barriers by using online translation software can help change a business's fortunes."

^{Note:
Figures quoted from CSA Research report 2012 'In the past two years, the addressable economic potential using online communication has risen from US$36.5 trillion to $44.6 trillion. Only a third of that total is addressable in English as a native tongue.'}