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Common Mistakes Companies Make in Website Localization

While there’s no one-size-fits-all website localization strategy for reaching a global audience, it’s hard to overestimate the importance of speaking your target audience’s language.

Although English is — for better or worse — the internet’s lingua franca, it’s also true that most people throughout the world prefer to buy products and services that are marketed in their native language.

If you’re trying to reach people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in your community and improve your organization’s language access, it’s absolutely critical to have a thorough website localization strategy. Website localization plays a pivotal role in making your services accessible to all and ensuring that folks with limited English proficiency are able to meaningfully find and use your services.

But all too often, website localization is done all wrong — whether it’s using Google Translate as a shortcut or ignoring important design features, we’ve seen a lot of localization mistakes.

In this blog post, we’ll go over some of the most frequent mistakes seen in website localization strategy according to our resident localization expert, Fernanda Aguilera — and why you should avoid them.

What is Website Localization?


Outside of the language services industry, localization is often conflated with the mere translation of text. While that’s certainly one important aspect of localization, it’s far from the only consideration to make when localizing a website. Localization services aim to ensure that your content adheres to the linguistic and cultural conventions of your target audience.

Ultimately, website localization is a holistic approach that aims to bridge language access, cultural competency, and user journey to ensure that users who speak different languages are able to access your content as if it were created specifically for their locale and offers equal access to your organization’s offerings. By adapting your web content to the local language and culture, you create a more meaningful and engaging experience for diverse audiences.

Website localization increases user satisfaction and improves access to services, therefore improving equity overall in areas of social determinants of health. But that’s only when it’s done well — poor localization practices like culturally inaccurate references and bad translation have been shown to damage a brand’s reputation. In a survey conducted last year, researchers found that 24% of prospective customers would trust a brand less if their website featured poor localization practices.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in your Website Localization Strategy


If you’re just beginning to localize your website into your threshold languages — or if you want to improve upon past efforts to do so — here are 14 common mistakes seen by our resident localization expert, Fernanda Aguilera you’ll want to avoid in the process.

Website Localization Summary

Website localization incorporates elements of translation, design, and user experience that are critical to keep in mind when reaching diverse audiences. Whether you translate your text into the wrong dialect of a language or simply forgot to update your hyperlinks, the localization mistakes above can have a profound impact on your multilingual audiences’ ability to navigate your website.

If you’re starting from scratch or need help correcting some of the above mistakes on a past project Avantpage is happy to jump in and help. Contact us today at [email protected] or (530) 750-2040 for more information about our localization services.