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How to Develop In-language Digital Experiences
You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. has no official language. While English is the predominantly spoken language, nearly 68 million people (about twice the population of California) spoke a different language at home in 2019. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity, especially when it comes to accessibility, to create more in-language digital experiences.
Brands can no longer rely on English-only digital channels because too much is at stake. In-language experiences open the door to increasing trust, brand credibility and loyalty, especially if you get the whole process right from the start. They help you stand out from your competition. Senior Digital Strategist Montanna Kehr said, “You can create a level of engagement that’s much richer and deeper.” That increased engagement can lead to increased revenue opportunities. As Montanna said, “You can expand your services, products, or audiences.”
Crafting authentic and relevant in-language experiences takes time and effort. Here’s how brands can do it right.
Aim for the Gold Standard from the Start
Create an integrated, end-to-end experience
You can’t take a one-and-done approach with in-language marketing. “You need to create in-language deliverables on a high-frequency basis so that you develop a cohesive experience that isn’t disjointed or siloed,” said Montanna. “You want it to feel thoughtful from end to end and part of your overall strategy.”
Don’t Just Translate, Transcreate
“Heinrich does transcreation very well—taking a deliverable and customizing it for the audience,” Montanna said. That means adjusting for cultural nuance as Lizzy Cassaro, Associate Director of Digital Strategy, explained, “We really dive into the culture and what the implications are in each language. That creates trust between the consumer and the brand.” You need help from native speakers who can help identify these cultural nuances and sensitivities in both the copy and design. For example, there are differences between U.S. Spanish, Caribbean Spanish and Castilian Spanish. Geography, ethnicity and more play a role. A seemingly innocuous image in one culture can have different meanings in another. Using an image of white flowers has a totally different context for Asian audiences.
Personalization Means In-language
Personalization isn’t just about tailoring topics and formats to a particular person. It also means delivering information in the audience’s language of choice. For some, that could be a single language. For others, it means toggling back and forth between two or more languages. When you give audiences a choice of languages, it’s the ultimate personalization. This is especially true with educational content. When people can learn in their preferred language, it’s going to resonate and stick with them better. Montanna said, “In the B2B world, you’ll see performance improve when your audience has in-language education.”
Where to Start When Creating In-language Digital Experiences
Audience Understanding
“You need to understand your audience’s journey and their natural user flow,” Lizzy says. Answer key questions about your audience, as Lizzy detailed, “What’s the size of it? What are their demographics? What are their main interests?” Collate any data you do have, create surveys, do roundtable interviews, leverage outside research. “Gather insights from multiple sources,” Lizzy said. “Think about what you can test and optimize based on your data and previous efforts.”
Identify Top Priorities and Opportunities
Identify the core information and what’s most relevant to the audience. If you have multiple in-language audiences, your priorities and opportunities could change for each. You want to figure out where you can have the biggest impact on your audience in your time and budget constraints.
Test and Learn
Determine what you want to test and what you want to learn from the test in advance. That could be testing a learning from a roundtable or doing an A/B test on email subject lines. Your tests could be different for different audiences. As Montanna said, “Don’t be afraid to experiment in different ways for different audiences. The strategy doesn’t need to be a one-size-fits-all approach for each audience or language.”
Connect the Dots Between Languages
Earmark what only needs to be in English, what needs to only be in-language and what should be available in both English and another language. Ask yourself how everything works together. “There needs to be synergy between general-market materials and in-languages ones,” Montanna said. “You don’t want duplication or inconsistencies.”
Use plain language as much as possible in English to make the translation process simpler. Remember that translations could be 20% longer or more. Brevity benefits you in another language.
Where We’ve Seen In-language Success
Centralized resource hubs
Many brands have in-language tools and resources already, but their audience might be unaware of them. If you can deliver the entire ecosystem to them in a way that’s easy to digest, you tee them up for success while driving engagement. “We’ve seen in-language audiences have much higher time on page metrics with centralized hubs compared to general market pages,” Montanna said.
Process is Paramount
You’ll need to have a clear process with defined roles defined for everyone working on in-language deliverables. Be sure to revisit this process regularly to discuss what can be optimized and what needs to be rethought. You need to be much more dialed in. Pivots that are usually easy in English are harder when you don’t know the language you’re working in. You need all your process ducks in a row.
Consider QA
Quality assurance in a language other than your own is difficult. “Recognize you can’t do absolutely everything in another language. Lean into your translation partners and their native speakers,” said Montanna. This is especially true with character-symbol written languages like traditional Chinese or Korean. Responsive window sizes for mobile devices can pose issues with line breaks. Ask your translation partners to review mobile mockups and help identify where the correct line break should be. Don’t forget to proof multiple times. Proof and proof again internally and with your clients.
Planning Considerations for In-language Digital Experiences
Scale
Recognize your in-language audience may be smaller than the general one. You may need to scale slowly over time. “Think about the bigger picture and setting a foundation that can help you in the long run,” said Montanna. “Take a crawl, walk, run approach as you learn what the audience needs.” You’ll also need to temper your expectations with a smaller audience. Montanna said, “Establish clear objectives and understand how your KPIs differ from the general market audience.”
Complexity
More languages mean more complexity and more time needed to handle that complexity. That complication can easily spill into the user experience if you aren’t paying attention. “You want to create a better experience for in-language audiences, not a more complicated one,” Montanna said.
From a technological perspective, you may experience more complexity. You might run into functionality or automation limitations. Don’t just think about the static elements of your web property. Consider the interactive elements too. Have a taxonomy and an organized approach. You’ll want to examine everything from logins to footers, navigation bars to CTA buttons. Existing plugins may not support all languages. “There’s a lot on the backend that may be automated, so work with your developer closely to ensure everything is covered,” said Montanna.
Ongoing Investment
Understand that your investment is going to be continuous, and you’ll have to keep updating the information to stay relevant. You don’t want glaring discrepancies between the English experience and the in-language one. As Lizzy said, “Continue to nurture the in-language experience with new content over time.”
Budget Realities
Creating in-language experiences requires time and effort. The more languages you add, the more time and money you’ll need. A common pitfall is not accounting for added time in the process as in-language materials take more time to create. You may not be able to provide a one-to-one experience comparable to the English one for some time. Prioritize the essential information and channels and expand over time. “You’ll need to balance budgets with experimentation and continuously learn from the data,” Montanna said. You’ll also need to invest in the right partners. At Heinrich, we lean on our Hispanidad team and our translation partner, Cesco.
Use AI Wisely
New generative AI tools promise real-time translation, but the end results often leave much to be desired. Take the Hard Fork podcast. The hosts used Hey Gen, an AI-powered video tool that promises to dub videos using the speaker’s own in any language in minutes. While the results sounded plausible to non-native speakers, native speakers informed the hosts that what they thought was Hindi and German was in fact gobbledygook. “AI is a both/and opportunity. Test out the technology with an expert translator,” Lizzy said. When you use technology, you need to double-check the results with a native speaker.
Born for Business—In Every Language
Ready to expand your digital offerings in other languages? Heinrich can help. No matter what language you do business in, we can partner with you to solve today’s challenges so you can be a business hero tomorrow. Get in touch.