The possibility of offering products and services in foreign markets and through multiple channels all around the globe has opened up new business opportunities for growing and mature companies that were successfully established in their home markets and looking to expand their businesses further. Ecommerce has also created completely new business models based purely on the intranet as sales channel to sustain and grow globally.
However, many online retailers, both B2B and B2C, face challenges since they offer a vast amount of products online, which requires multilingual website translation and localization.
Our experience of working with ecommerce clients has taught us that the three main challenges for ecommerce managers require appropriate language technology solutions.
Before We Dive in, Let's Talk Ecommerce Glossary
You'll read a lot of acronyms and brand names in this blog, and in case you're not 100% sure of what they are, here is a handy guide to start:
ERP – enterprise resource planning. An ERP system helps companies handle all or parts of their administration, planning and logistics. ERPs include supply chain, manufacturing, operations, reporting, and human resource activities.
CMS – content management system. A tool that keeps track of different versions of files and publications. Some CMS have special features to update multilingual websites and other content. There are enterprise WCMS such as Adobe Experience Manager – a web content management system with integrated ecommerce platform Magento; and free open source systems such as WordPress.
TMS – translation management system. A system where you can request translation quotes, manage translation orders, track all your localization projects in regards to timeline, budget and other KPIs. You can also access other language tools through the TMS, like Self-Service Machine Translation or Terminology Management.
PIM – product information management. A system that handles information about products in an easily manageable manner. It keeps information consistent and correct, and distributes product information to different channels.
API – application programming interface. An interface between different software, which enables the software to communicate and exchange information.
Now that we have our ecommerce terminology in order, let's go back to our main topic.
The Top Ecommerce Content Challenges and How You Can Solve Them
1. Constantly Updated Content
E-tailers generally update their product catalogs on an ongoing basis, sometimes even daily. Every time new products are introduced or updated versions are made available, there is usually a new piece of text that comes along with them.
For operators of multilingual online retail sites, any changes made to the original site need to be carried over to the other language versions. This creates a steady but potentially uneven flow of text segments, both large and small, that needs to be translated and published quickly.
In particularly difficult cases, an e-tailer may only want to update a few of its country specific sites with new information if, for example, a product cannot be shipped to all markets. Needless to say, making sure product information is updated when and where an e-tailer wants is a complicated issue.
2. Complex Exporting and Manual File Handling
Without a convenient way to extract new or updated segments from their content management system, clients often resort to one of two things. They either manually export text by copying and pasting from the CMS into a Word or Excel document or they export everything they have into a database format such as .xml.
Neither of these options is ideal. Copying and pasting is time consuming and can easily lead to errors such as forgetting to copy information or, once translations are delivered, pasting information into the wrong place. Extracting text wholesale, on the other hand, ensures no information is unintentionally excluded, but this method has other drawbacks. The main drawback is that clients usually end up sending more information than is necessary.
As your translation partner, language service providers (LSP) can, of course, use translation memories to parse out updates and exclude material that has already been translated. However, performing this process whenever there is an update adds time and costs that could be avoided with a more refined approach. All in all, the manual process is time-consuming, laborious and not the most cost-efficient way of working.
3. Content Versioning Chaos
Another disadvantage of manual exports is that confusion often arises when files need to be sent back and forth via email, leading to problems in terms of both keeping track of versions and exposure to security risks.
If several translation companies are used for multilingual website translation and localization, this problem increases exponentially.
Add the validation process where internal validators need to send feedback to the different companies and you have a real challenge.
