Things to Take Care Of While Designing a Multilingual Website
Thanks to the latest technological advancements, that has created a wide range of smartphone devices and tablets bringing the world closer to each other. Today, the people of the US can very easily get in touch with someone in Asia and this easy communication has greatly influenced business owners of various countries. In fact the geological limitations have reduced, making your site widely accessible to customers in various countries. This helps to build the brand and increase revenues considerably.
It makes sense to create a multilingual website when your potential customers speak and understand different languages. But there are many things that you have to keep in mind while planning for multilingual web development. The look and feel of a site should always be taken into account as it is the cornerstone of a successful business campaign. The site must be properly localized before launch.
Let’s take a look at some of the points in this piece of writing.
Consider the Text: A reputed multilingual development agency will always be more inclined to the front end designing aspects of the site. The letters and characters are displayed by a number designated to each other. Earlier, there were various encoding systems covering different languages, but today Unicode is used as it can be used for over 90 scripts. Most web designing apps like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page facilitates the creation of Unicode web pages.
Web content: No one will visit your site simply for the attractive design. Visitors want to know more about your products and services; they want to read testimonials and reviews about the company to check the reliability. And overall, content is the mantra of online marketing and offering useful and relevant content for your domestic and international visitors are the best means to target a wider market base.
Domain name: It is always cheaper to have a single domain for all your targeted locations, but considering it from the SEO point of view, it is always best to have a dedicated top level domain allotted for each targeted country. The website domain is important to search engines, so if you support multilingual website design, then it is always better to create a different sub-domain for each specific language.
Website optimization: A multilingual website development company should always optimize the site for international markets instead of simply translating the key phrases directly from the English website. Local people may use certain abbreviations, synonyms or acronyms to find information for products locally. It is important to use such terms in the content to target specific markets and to increase the visibility of the site.
Site navigation: This is another crucial aspect of the web design process. Proper navigation will always help the visitors to find their way while browsing through your site. A vertical menu bar on the left of your web page is suitable for your English website, but it is better to shift this to the right for languages that read right to left.