The world is no longer a group of scattered and isolated spots, and a mild success in one single country is now very likely to turn into a booming international buzz. This is mainly attributed to the recent internet virality and technology advancement. The number of mobile internet users worldwide is believed to exceed the mark of 5 billion by the beginning of 2020, while global mobile application downloads reached over 194 billion in 2018. These interesting figures give us a new clear perspective of the world we live in.
With all of this fusion, if only they manage to make online products versatile, adaptive, and appealing to different audiences in distant locations. The only way to achieve this is adequate mobile app localization services. Localizing your mobile platform will instantly expand your global outreach, amplify your market share unstoppably, and unlock unlimited growth prospects.
Mobile app localization is a holistic process of recreation that begins with language translation and cultural adaptation and ends up with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) localization as well as marketing and app store optimization.
Countless successful models have partnered with professional mobile app localization service providers and had their apps rocking the international market. If you have a successful app in your home country and you want to take it by storm, but still not sure about the markets you want to localize it at, a winning technique might be using your monitoring and analyzing tools to find out the hottest spots of users outside your location and launch a localized version of your app for them.
But before you start on your mobile app localization journey, these are 5 keys to success.
Five tips for a well-to-do mobile app localization
There are a couple of best practices you should follow when choosing for localizing your app and making it available in various markets with different cultural identities.
- Cultural context
Mobile app localization aims to create a cultural-relevant version of the user experience to a new target audience. Whether it is a game, social platform, or service application, make sure you align with the cultural norms of the new market.
This ranges from the textual content to the icons, on-screen commands, and visual designs. Things like religion, cultural legacy, and social convention might turn the elements that appeal to the app users in the US into some offensive symbols in the Middle East, and vice versa.
- Not only language!
Conducting a flawless language translation is one important part of the localization process, yet many other technical and linguistic changes need to be done before your app is out in a new market.
Modifying the default currency, assigning the correct language keyboard, and re-encoding the time and date calendars as per the new location, for instance, are simple, yet major parts of mobile app localization services. Localization, in fact, might extend to the adaptation of your app content to different dialects.
- Testing makes perfect!
Never launch your mobile software in a new locale before you conduct sufficient technical and linguistic testing. Technical bugs that might show up anytime as spaces differ from one language to another or due to hard coding should be figured out and fixed as early as possible. Testing also requires consultation with local users as well as native language experts and app development engineers to ensure no glitches in the app. App localization testing is more like a complete validation of the new version of your app.
- Legal matters matter!
Before you tap into a new market with your mobile platform, you might need to check the laws and regulations of this market. Pay attention to the smallest content and design details in your app with respect to the legislative system of your target countries.
- Marketing & app store optimization
Providing a complete localized experience starts before the users download your application and does not stop when they exit it. Optimizing the description and multimedia content of your software on the app store requires some search engine optimization (SEO) efforts while transcreating your advertising materials, notification system, and feedback requesting is a great added value. Following suit of giant multinational brands, localizing your marketing content doubles your success opportunities.
Since 1994, Contentech has been providing world-class technical translation and localization solutions in the languages of the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Our mobile app localization services are done by a team of expert linguists and highly qualified technical engineers.
We have helped many international brands access lucrative opportunities in the dynamic MEA markets. Partner with us now and localize your application at the highest quality and most competitive prices.
Contact us now and get your free quote!
