Home News and articlesE-commerce Website Translation: What to Localize First and in What Order

E-commerce Website Translation: What to Localize First and in What Order

Customers rarely slam the door on a website. They simply close the tab if it's unclear how much the product weighs, what currency the payment will be charged in, or whether they can return a jacket that doesn't fit across the shoulders. Website translation has long stopped being just a matter of words. It's a matter of trust: a person on the other side of the world should be able to click "buy" without a second thought.

Product Pages: Descriptions, Specifications, Sizes

A product page works like a salesperson in a store, and it should be translated for meaning, not word for word. The phrase "light, breathable, doesn't get wet" should become concrete in English: lightweight, breathable, waterproof, backed by real figures. Customers search using the words of their own market, not yours. In the UK people say trainers, in the US they say sneakers. For headphones in Germany, Kopfhörer is more common, while in one market segment Headset will work better. A single wrong term means the product won't appear in the right filter.

Specifications are best translated using one consistent structure across all languages: material, weight, country of manufacture, warranty. Do not change article numbers, model numbers or codes. If the specifications include "Serial number: AB-2231," it should look the same in every language.

Units of Measurement, Currencies and Size Charts

This is where mistakes cost the most, because they're invisible to the store owner but obvious to the customer. For example, the US measures in inches, pounds and degrees Fahrenheit, while most of the world uses centimeters and kilograms. A label reading "120 cm" means nothing to an American shopper without conversion. Decimal separators matter too: Germany writes 2,5 kg, while the US writes 2.5 lb. If you translate mechanically, the numbers can turn into a puzzle.

Currency is a similar story. In the EU, prices are usually shown including VAT, while in the US sales tax is often added at checkout. If a customer sees one amount and pays another, they will perceive it as a scam, even if everything is legal. It's more honest to show the final price including taxes and duties right away, or to clearly explain what the price covers.

Size charts require a separate approach. Size M in one store may correspond to size L in another, and the EU, US and UK sizing systems don't match. Translating the table is pointless; it needs to be recalculated. Add measurements in centimeters: chest circumference, sleeve length, back length. That way the customer can compare the numbers with their own measurements instead of guessing.

Cart, Payment and Delivery: Texts Customers Need to Trust

Buttons and labels in the cart work like road signs: if they're unclear, people stop. Machine translation sometimes turns "Pay" into "Submit an application," and the customer wonders whether the purchase went through. Phrases such as "Total," "Delivery time," and "Free delivery over…" should be checked by a native speaker or a professional translator who works in e-commerce.

Texts about returns, warranty and delivery terms deserve special attention. They carry legal weight. The difference between "14 days" and "30 days" for returns can become grounds for a complaint or a report to a regulatory body. Translate these sections with the legislation of the specific country in mind, rather than simply picking words that are close in meaning.

Don't forget payment methods either. iDEAL is popular in the Netherlands and BLIK in Poland, and a customer who doesn't see a familiar option often leaves without buying. Localizing payment options sometimes has a bigger effect than translating the entire description.

Reviews and User-Generated Content: To Translate or Not

Reviews work as social proof, and customers trust them. But translating every review in full is expensive and not always necessary. A practical approach: translate the most useful reviews into the market's language, and display the rest in the original with a short note about the language and a brief summary translation.

The key rule: do not edit or "improve" reviews. If a customer wrote "runs small, order a size up," don't turn it into an enthusiastic blurb. The meaning matters more, and altering ratings undermines trust and may violate advertising rules in some countries. Store replies to reviews, by contrast, must be translated: this is your voice, and it should sound as polite and clear as it does in your main language.

Captions for photos and videos are part of the content too. If a video shows the product being unboxed, add subtitles or a text description. This way you not only translate the content but also make it accessible to people who are hard of hearing and to those who watch videos without sound.

SEO for Each Market: Queries in the Customer's Language

Translating keywords word for word from a dictionary almost always gives poor results. Customers in each country search in their own way, and search engines differ too: in Russia it's Yandex, in China Baidu, in Korea Naver. Before launch, check which queries local users actually use, and build your titles, descriptions and URLs around them.

Technically, the structure matters: separate folders or subdomains for each language, plus hreflang tags that tell search engines which version of a page is intended for which audience. Meta descriptions and titles should be written from scratch for each market, not copied from the original. Otherwise search engines may treat the pages as duplicates, and customers won't see anything relevant to them in the results.

Where to Start: Priorities on a Limited Budget

The budget is almost always limited, so the order of work matters. Base your decisions on where you are losing money, not on what is easiest to translate. The usual sequence is:

cart, payment, buttons and order confirmation;
product pages that bring in the main revenue;
delivery, returns and warranty with legally accurate wording;
size charts, units of measurement and currency labels;
reviews, blog and category SEO pages.

Don't try to translate the entire catalog at once. Choose one pilot market, translate the top products there, and measure conversion. Create a glossary: a list of terms that must stay consistent across the whole site. Without one, "cart" on one page becomes "bag" on another, and customers get confused. If you need precision in terminology and legal texts, it's worth working with a translator who knows e-commerce and can keep a consistent style across all pages.