Overseas App tour: How to Get users through correct localization

Iris Shoor, co-founder of Takipi cloud software management service, was previously a visual taob2b startup and later acquired by Autodesk. Iris's blog focuses on marketing for startups.

Professional Drawing Software autocad ws currently has more than 10 million users, but about 8.5 million of them use the first language rather than English. Correct localization increases the download volume of this app from 1500 times/day to 5000 times/day in 6 months.

Localization is not just about translation.

The translation app is an important part of localization, But it is not all about it. It cannot rely on simple translation of local languages to boost downloads. Localization is not just text on buttons, but also how users discover apps, decide whether to download apps, and provide a deep user experience. Whether users in the United States, users in Italy, or users in South Korea, you must provide consistent user experience.

In addition to the most basic translation, what else do developers need to pay attention to during the localization process?

Starting from the localized App Store/Google Play product page

I have met a developer who hasn't found a significant increase in app downloads on the localized product page. On the real localized product page, you need to rethink pixels, terms, and all the details, such as currency, user profile pictures, and usernames you are used.

The App description should pay attention to the details, such as the country name, currency format, and measurement unit, which will help bring natural search traffic.

In our app, we made the following changes:

-- User Name:Most of them contain 'John Smith 'or similar names, which are not typical Spanish, Japanese, or Russian names. We changed 'john' to Mario, Carlos or Tao. We even use different languages to find the most frequently used first word in our user database.

-- Unit:We have prepared different apps, in inches and feet, and in meters and centimeters. Displaying different measurement units to different users makes them more familiar with the app.

-- Text:We change the tag and text in the app and create a specific name for the target user.

-- Maps and images:I have not tried this method myself, but it is a highly recommended method by my colleagues. If your app has a geographical function, make sure that the map or image you are displaying is local. Displaying images or maps of Tokyo to a Japanese user is more appealing than displaying a map of San Francisco.

How to discover and contact a local blog author

Most people familiar with me know that I like to ask a lot of questions. When I meet entrepreneurs who operate a successful app or other products, I like to ask which blog brings most of The traffic to them. I hope it is The Next Web or similar website. After asking a lot of entrepreneurs, I found that at least half of them answered differently-it is not an English blog that brings most of the traffic to them, it is often a technology blog in Spain, Italy, China, South Korea, or Japan, or in the mobile industry.

For us, our downloads have been greatly improved after we have added a blog for the Italian and Korean markets.

Is that good news? In general, blogs covering the Italian and Korean markets are much easier than those covering a broad audience of English technology blogs.

When I contact blog authors who use different languages, I will follow these two principles:

1. Use their language for communication.

2. I will share some information related to the country where the target user is located. For example, I want to share the same experience with all bloggers, regardless of their language. I want to share the same user experience with users in different countries and regions through my blog.

Email

Previously, I translated my email into eight languages and sent it to blog authors from different countries. The biggest headache for me is how to reply to their replies. Because they come from different countries and have a variety of replies and questions, it will take me a lot of time. However, some bloggers are very good at English, although some bloggers are not proficient in speaking. When I reply to them in English, the first sentence will contain "I am using Google Translate. Please forgive me for some of the mistakes ." In fact, there are still many ways to solve this problem, but for me, it is still enough.

Share related information

When I meet a blog author, I often ask him what types of articles can bring the most traffic. Many local blog authors will tell me that "the content related to their market, such as an app developed by a local company and a device that they are familiar with, etc, therefore, we try to provide relevant content.

High-quality images

No matter which language we support, we will select representative well-known buildings from different countries and draw them out for use in our apps, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the pearl of the East of Shanghai, and the Eiffel Tower, these have some significance for us to expand overseas markets.

We will also share with blog authors the downloads of apps from their country. Soon after the app was released, we began to do some localization work. At that time, we had no large downloads. However, I found that even if only a few thousand users download the data, the data also makes sense, at least it indicates that this app is still interesting.

There is no doubt that the best information we share is the stories of users or companies in their country. For example, what projects do a Milan user use our app, or what projects does a Brazilian user use our app.

Sometimes, a user's supported email or short conversations with the user may become a great story. You can go to our blog to see how we turn users' short emails into stories.

How do I know blogs related to well-known Korean mobile apps?

I have a little experience. I will search for some well-known apps in my field or other fields and filter the results obtained by Google by language. For example, you can use Google search to show all Italian websites that contain 'waze', find the blog you are looking for, and then use 'translate this site ', in this way, you can find the email address and related blog author.

Localized your video

You have made a very beautiful video, with a very good script and incredible visual effects. Now the rest is localization, so that new users can see it. One of the mistakes I made once was to ignore video localization. You should regard the video as an international document.

Later, I realized that a Chinese user watched English videos just like a Chinese video. When I listened to the first Chinese sentence, I wanted to turn off the video.

After the major video version is released, we can learn about the video in several languages, such as Spanish and Chinese. We have done these things through online services. In addition to the corresponding language, we can also choose the appropriate accent or accent.

For $-, you can use the online services of Translation Central or One Hour Translation.

Localized videos have tens of thousands of comments, and sometimes subtitles are added. This is also useful. In addition, in Google Play, localized videos are a powerful marketing tool, but Apple App store does not support videos.

How do I know which language a user uses?

The simplest method is to use the language key provided by your mobile device. It tells you the language of your mobile device operating system. However, I found that this is not enough because we cannot read the language keys of all devices, and some users use our Web version.

We have adopted different policies. We have referred to more than 50 network services in different countries and used the suffixes of user email addresses to differentiate and List users. For example, if the suffix is qq.com, you can basically identify the user as Chinese, and the end of the email address is Softbank.com, you can basically identify it as a Japanese user. We also use different country URLs. If the email address ends with co. fr, this may be a French user.

Based on these analyses, we sent "spam" to more than 1 million of users, which was very disturbing because I was not sure whether my analysis was correct, but then almost no user complained to us. Most of our users finally understand the content of the email and where the app is updated.

We translate most of the news and notifications into eight types of texts and send them to different users based on the above analysis. Some information such as 'Welcome mail' or 'forgot your password' is also translated into different texts and sent to users. However, this method is indeed effective and increases user engagement.

Which language does it start?

The most correct answer is "depending on your app", but I don't think this is very useful. From my own experience and the experience of many other companies, Spanish and Italian are the first choice.

After applying app localization for the Spanish market, you cannot ignore blogs in Central America and South America. These countries and regions can bring surprising traffic to you.

After the Spanish and Italian markets, I continued to localize the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean markets. These markets are equally important. If they are not localized, you will lose many opportunities.

Should translation be of the highest quality? What about the cost?

The level of online translation service varies according to the price. High-end translation institutions must add or even 20 times the average translation service. I have tried two methods: General Translation and high-end translation. Of course, the quality of online services is worse. However, if you are an independent developer or start-up with a very limited budget, online services are the best choice. Although the quality is poor, it can also make new users in different places in the world discover your app.

Another method we often use is to send translated documents to our users for their opinions. One thing, I must ensure that the SEO keyword translation is correct. I will also emphasize this with the translator.

Smart and correct localization strategies allow you to get more users and downloads with less effort and investment. However, there is also an idealized side. I think every entrepreneur and product developer hopes that the life of users around the world will become more beautiful and colorful because of their products.

What excites me most is to communicate and communicate with unexpected users. I did not expect me to let them know my products, nor did they expect them to use my products.

I heard that my app will be used in school construction projects in Honduras, South America, historical relics protection projects in Xi'an, or reconstruction projects in russian villages, I found that the world is in front of me, and I am also doing something meaningful.