Whether you’re new to online selling or you’ve had an online presence for years, you may be considering the future of your ecommerce business. International expansion is a great way to introduce your products to a new global audience. Creating a compelling product listing for your new audience is vital, but what if you’re not fluent in the language of the region you want to expand to?
Using a translation tool or hiring a professional translator can help you translate your product listings to make a better impression on new consumers in international markets. The more you can connect with potential customers in their native language, the better chance you have of enticing them to shop with you.
Read on to learn more about the importance of translating your product listings for international stores, how Amazon’s Build International Listings tool can help machine-translate listings with ease, and how the Amazon Service Provider Network can connect you to professional translators who can help you meet your international product listing goals.
Do you need to translate product listings for global Amazon stores?
If you want to expand your business, Amazon Global Selling is an excellent way to introduce your products to customers in other countries. You can expand your business by listing and selling your products in our stores in the Americas, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa.
It’s important to translate your Amazon product listings to match the regions you’re expanding to—so much so that Amazon requires your product detail pages to be translated into the local language of each country-based store you’re selling in. Everything on a product detail page, from the title to the description, bullet points, and product specifications help customers discover and consider purchasing your product. Remember, less than a third of the world speaks English, and customers tend to prefer making purchases in their first language because it’s easier for them to understand and evaluate the product you’re offering.
Translating your product listing for global audiences not only helps you connect with customers searching for products like yours, it’s also a powerful marketing strategy. When you can address customers in their preferred language, you can speak more directly to their needs and help them understand how your product fits into their lifestyle. Presenting international shoppers with localized listings can help you connect with more customers, which can lead to more sales.
How does Build International Listings work?
The Build International Listings tool is a valuable resource for sellers who want to sell their products to global audiences. It helps you create and update offers for multiple target stores in a single source store in Seller Central, allowing you to manage international offers based on settings you choose in a centralized place. Build International Listings can work in regions with multiple stores, like Europe or the Americas, and across regions when you connect them by linking accounts.
Before you start using the Build International Listings tool, you’ll need to create a selling account in the region or country where you want to expand, and connect it to your existing selling account. For example, if you have an established selling account in the US and you want to expand to Germany, you should create a Europe selling account that’s connected to your US account.
Explore the Build International Listings dashboard
What are the benefits of Build International Listings?
The Build International Listings tool makes easy it is to create, translate, and publish your listings in new global stores. It also saves you time by automating tasks, including:
- Creating offers from a source store to a target store when a product exists in both stores
- Adding or deleting offers in your target stores when you make changes to eligible products in your source store
- Adjusting prices to reflect currency conversion fluctuation in your international stores based on their local currencies
- Synchronizing offer prices in your target stores based on the price rules you set in your source store
- Attempting to translate and create product detail pages in a target store
Benefits, strategies, and costs of using a translation service
When you first start selling globally, Build International Listings is a valuable tool to help you translate your product listings quickly and easily using machine-generated translations. But as you continue expanding your selling business in global Amazon stores, using a translation service can help you refine your approach and hone your product listings for your intended audience.
Product listings that are poorly translated run the risk of not connecting with the customers you ultimately want to build loyalty with. This may happen because the machine translation didn’t use the right keywords or descriptions to rank high enough in local search results, or customers viewed the product description and found it hard to read—or it missed nuances in dialect that didn’t cross the language barrier. Whatever the case, product listings that don’t resonate with customers can lead to lower conversion rates, which means lower sales.
Here are some things to keep in mind when you start looking for a translation service:
- Make sure you start with a strong product listing in your home store’s language. No matter where you launch your selling business with Amazon, your product listing should share all the key details of your product and its benefits. The stronger your product listing is in your home store’s language, the better foundation your translator will have to build it in another language.
- Seek out translators or agencies with certifications and recommendations. As you’re researching potential translation partners, make sure to ask about their educational background, experience, and credentials or certifications that support their expertise. You may also want to ask if you can speak with previous clients to learn more about their experience in working with the translator or agency you’re considering.
- Look for a translation service that is familiar with Amazon product listings. Translators who have worked with Amazon product listings will know more about the nuances associated with creating a strong and impactful product listing, and may be more capable of helping you navigate any language barriers or listing requirements that are indicative of each region or country you’re expanding to.
- Try to find a translator who knows how to work with SEO. Translators who can work SEO keywords into your product listings can make it easier for your listings to rank higher in Amazon search results.
- Do some research on SEO terms that are local to the international market you’re expanding in. Whether you’re working with a translator who is fluent in SEO or you’re building your listings in your local language before having them translated, use an SEO keyword tool to help you discover keywords in the region you’re launching new products in so you can rank higher in local search results. For example, what a US audience refers to as “cookies,” a UK audience calls “biscuits.” Attuning your product listings in this way can help you find your customers more easily.
- Aim to hire a translator or translation service who is fluent in the languages you’re translating. For example, if your listings are in Japanese but you want to translate them for an English-speaking audience, look for a translator who is fluent in both Japanese and English so they can effectively translate the nuances in each language. A service may have translators who can translate in several different languages.
- Make sure your translator is communicative, collaborative, and sticks to deadlines. You don’t want to entrust your product detail page translations to someone who takes your source materials and vanishes—especially when you’re working toward a launch date for selling globally. You can always interview several translators to see which ones meet your needs and support your launch goals.
- Take your translations beyond basic language. While it’s important to make sure your product listings speak to customers in the language they’re accustomed to, your product listings should go beyond standard verbiage. That means using localized formatting for date and time, currency symbols, units of measurements, and more.
- Make sure your translations account for all text. If you have product videos or images that feature text on them, that text should be translated into the appropriate language of the store you’re selling in. While Build International Listings can translate titles and bullet points, a professional translation service can help translate the entire listing across multiple touchpoints, including titles and bullets, along with A+ Content integrations, and more.
The cost of hiring a translator can vary—some will charge by the word, while others may charge by the listing. You may find translators who charge a bulk rate for a number of listings. Do your research and comparison shop to find the translator or agency that works within your budget and the scope of your translation needs.
How does the Service Provider Network help with translation?
Amazon sellers who want to work with a translator can lean on the Amazon Service Provider Network to help find a qualified provider. The Service Provider Network is a network of vetted third-party service providers who can help with almost every step of selling with Amazon. Each provider within the Amazon network is required to meet a set of standards, and they’re qualified and trained on Amazon guidelines and policies, so you know you’re working with providers who are fluent in the Amazon selling experience.
Service providers in the Amazon Service Provider Network are continuously monitored to ensure their performance continues to meet Amazon standards. You can search for providers based on the service type, location, language, and more, and see their verified reviews and ratings to help you decide which provider is right for your business.
Providers in the Amazon Service Provider Network offer services across a wide variety of categories including accounting, compliance, international shipping, manufacturing, sustainability, and more. You can also find translation services to help you create your product listings to effectively expand your business on a global scale.
Find a translation service provider
Once you create your global selling account, it’s easy to start machine translating your listings with Build International Listings. And when you’re ready to expand, the Amazon Service Provider Network is ready to connect you with a professional translator to take your product detail pages to the next level. And it all begins with a Professional selling plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
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