The staggering global shift to e-commerce in recent years has forced businesses of all types to re-evaluate their e-commerce strategies. With the number of online shoppers in India expected to reach 427 million by the year 2027 it’s clear that online shopping has become the new normal.
In the fiscal year 2022, Reliance’s e-commerce wing Jiomart delivered a whopping 6 lakh orders per day across 260 cities across the country. What’s the secret? Customers can shop in 7 different Indian languages thanks to eCommerce localisation using which Jiomart has been able to engage with customers in their native languages and why not? 68% of online shoppers trust information about products and services in their own native language.
For businesses that need to be successful in more than one region simultaneously, staying in the game and breaking through the clutter of online sellers clamoring for attention in every online marketplace, requires a careful strategy for eCommerce localisation. The key to unlocking eCommerce success is ensuring an exceptional online shopping experience and eCommerce localisation.
eCommerce Localisation: Driving Growth Across Markets
eCommerce localisation is the process that allows businesses to tailor their online storefront to each region in which they are targeting. This means a separate set of keywords, product names, descriptions, and UI/UX designs to display payment methods, shipping options, and user journeys from enquiry to checkout.
eCommerce localisation ensures that your online business can run in multiple markets without running into any language barriers. You must follow the proper steps to localize your eCommerce website. For instance, if you localize your website to a popular Indian language such as Marathi without doing any market research, your efforts won’t bear any results. In order to target customers in Maharashtra who predominantly speak Marathi, it wouldn’t make sense to have an eCommerce website in English. It would make sense if you localize your eCommerce website based on the Marathi language and culture to increase your conversion rate.
In a nutshell, the goal of eCommerce localisation is to provide an exceptional online shopping experience for customers by communicating in their native language. Let’s look into some best practices to follow for eCommerce localisation.
Best Practices To Localise Your eCommerce Website
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- Market research
Understand the language and cultural preferences of the new markets and adapt the eCommerce localisation strategy accordingly. This includes looking beyond the target language and also considering factors such as the purchasing power of the consumers in the region.
Ask yourself: What payment methods are popular here? Does this region have access to the internet? Are people comfortable transacting online or would a cash-on-delivery facility work better here? What are the popular products people here use? Localising based on market search would make your job easier.
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- Localise your shopping cart
Shopping cart abandonment is a serious issue with online merchants even without localisation. The cart abandonment rate in India is 51%. To tackle this, make your cart and checkout page easy to use for your native language users by localising them to display the appropriate phrases and locally preferred payment methods.
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- Region-specific products
Adjust your product offering based on local demand and preferences, ensuring your inventory aligns with the needs of each market. For example, dastar is a headwear of the Sikh religion and is an important part of their culture. Prioritizing this item’s localisation in places like Punjab would help boost your sales.
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- Responsive customer support
Provide multilingual customer support with Indian language bots ensuring effective communication and issue resolution. Your local customers should be able to ask questions and understand the responses in their native language. Deploying an Indian language chatbot or voice bot will increase their trust in your brand, leading to better engagement and repeat business.
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- Localised marketing campaigns
Customizing marketing strategies to align with local trends, holidays, and cultural events, maximizing the relevance of your promotional efforts. The whole idea of localised marketing is to make sure your advertisements don’t seem out of place. This includes altering the product shot backgrounds with a cultural landmark, using actors who are representative of your target demographic, and rolling out offers on specific dates based on the festivals in the region.
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- Customizable user preferences
Allow users to customize their preferences, such as language, and location settings, to provide a more personalized and user-friendly experience. Amazon India’s secret of reaching 295 million visitors per month as of May this year can be attributed to the customized language preferences for their audience in 8 different Indian languages. This helps shoppers to select their preferred language and shop for items.
Now let’s look at how eCommerce localisation helps boost your sales.
eCommerce Localisation: Boosting Sales The Modern Way
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- Streamlined nationwide merchandising planning
With a robust eCommerce localisation workflow, businesses can ensure that the right product is available to the right customer at the right time. For example, let’s say merchandising teams in different regions require specific product assets and landing pages for their target audience. Having a centralized localisation through website localisation and translation platforms like Anuvadak will help streamline the efforts of your national eCommerce merchandising team.
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- Consistent brand messaging
Nailing down an effective eCommerce localisation ensures that your brand message is consistent across different markets. Moreover, it builds a strong brand identity because if you decide to localize your e-commerce website, you are showing your local customers that their shopping experience matters to you.
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- Rank higher in local SEO
Google holds the key to all eCommerce websites. Keywords and search intent of each region will be specific based on their language and culture. Localising your keywords based on the search intent of the native population helps you to get higher ranks in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for local SEOs.
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- Payment localisation
Not all regions will prefer online payments. eCommerce localisation also means supporting local payment methods such as Unified Payment Interface (UPI), credit or debit cards, or Cash On Delivery (COD) whichever is preferred by customers in specific regions to increase the likelihood of successful transactions.
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- Increased customer satisfaction
What does every eCommerce business want? A satisfied customer who keeps on returning for a purchase. For instance, an eCommerce website adapting product descriptions, customer support, and payment methods to local preferences increases user’s trust and satisfaction. And that’s not all – satisfied customers share their experiences with friends and family, boosting sales even more.
Reverie: Your eCommerce Localisation Partner
From brand exposure to the checkout process, we have you covered via our eCommerce localisation solutions. Seamlessly communicate with your online shoppers in their native language.
With our eCommerce localisation solutions, localise your approach and serve Indian customers in their preferred language. Implement Reverie’s Anuvadak, which creates a localised eCommerce website that supports multilingual SEO to reach your target audience, and Indocord which will be your native language customer support bot for your eCommerce website that speaks 11 languages.
Looking for eCommerce localisation for your website? Click here and let’s talk
