Having a website that’s not only functional but also has a localization-friendly user interface can help you offer an excellent user experience to your target customers. If global expansion is your number one priority, you can’t avoid the significance of designing a compelling website that can meet the needs of local customers. For example, a US-based company that wants to expand its business in the Chinese market must have a captivating website with a great layout and localization-friendly user interface to remain relevant to Chinese customers.

However, sometimes, even the biggest brands in the world underestimate the significance of creating a website that’s imperative to offer that much-needed information to local customers. And perhaps that’s the reason they find it hard to transform their dreams of expanding their business globally, into a reality.

Things to consider while designing localization-friendly user interface

Design a Flexible Yet Dynamic Layout

Designing a flexible and dynamic layout is an integral part of website localization process for global expansion. While planning the layout, you must keep in mind the expansion and contraction of text in different languages.

When a user belonging to some other country translates your website into their native language, the text in it should complement the design, or it should fit into it appropriately. However, if the information on the webpage fails to fit into it, after translation, it means your site is poorly localized.

Most of the times, the text goes over the edges, after localization, which not only makes it difficult for users to view it but they look at your business as highly unprofessional. It breaks their trust in your brand forever, which affects your business in a big way. However, if you have a flexible layout, the content on your webpage will look the same even after localization, irrespective of the language you choose.

Simplify Language Selection

For expanding your business into a foreign country, it’s essential that you make it easier for local customers to select their native language when they visit your website. When a user finds it easy to choose their language type to translate the text into their native language, they will spend more time on your site, if you are offering them the information they want. In short, the visitors look for a user-friendly website, where they can easily find the information they need.

For example, if you want to expand your business in South Korea, then your South Korean customers must be able to get the information in their local language; otherwise, they will leave the site within 10-seconds.

To simplify the language selection process, allow the users to select the language by its type.

Select The Right Fonts

For global consistency, it is imperative that you choose the right font to enhance the experience of your visitors. The inappropriate selection of fonts can give a highly unprofessional look and feel to your website that can annoy your users. For improved layout and readability, it’s indispensable to pick the right fonts that offer multilingual support.

Besides choosing the right font, you should also fouse on its size. Yes, proper font sizing is also a crucial element of the localization process. There is little dispute that two different languages will display in different sizes, even if you use the same font. Both a too small and too big font size will affect the readability as well as the appearance of your website. One of the best ways to fix this issue is to use a readable font size for localization. You will have to change the font size based on the country in question to localize your website.

Precise Character Encoding

Precise character encoding is one of the most significant parts of the localization process. The presence of unwanted characters can affect the quality of your website to a great extent. Imagine, if a customer finds a meaningless character while going through the text on your site, how will they react to such problems.

It doesn’t only affect the readability by distracting the users but also talks volumes about your unprofessionalism. What you need to remember here is, no one trusts in a company that’s unprofessional.

Avoid Embedding Text In an Image

A well-localized website should fulfill the needs of your visitors effectively; however, that doesn’t happen always. And that’s because you have to consider several things to localize your site.

For example, you should always try to avoid embedding text in an image.
The reason for that is, if a customer in a foreign country tries to view the information on your site in their local language, the text in the image remains the same.

So, website localization is not only about allowing foreign language users to translate the text on your website into their native language. It’s about offering an ideal user experience to them by creating a localization-friendly user interface. Yes, users across the world should find your website attractive and equally functional.