Listing Translations – Get it Right First Time

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David Barry joins to cover listing translations

Funny Anecdotes

EU125 pendant on sale and the second word meant ‘rotten’
A razor for stainless steel beards
HSBC ran a campaign around the time of the financial crisis – the slogan was ‘assume nothing’ but had been mis-translated into ‘do nothing’ across several languages

Danny pays EU200-300 for listing translations
Don’t spend next to nothing on Fiverr for a poor listing as it’s false economy and won’t make any sales
Danny’s had a confusing listing that read like it had been written in several dialects and not the native tongue
Having someone that can speak different languages may not hit the mark for listing translations to convert

A translator isn’t a conversion optimiser and Marketer
It is one thing to re-write a listing culturally
Do they know how to find converting keywords
Spot popular search terms versus relevant search terms
Where do they get their data
Difficult minefield to go through
Tool called sonar-tool.com uses images to get relevant images for that search term
Need to converse with someone with a native tongue for that country
Keyword research and localisation of country are different skills
Better to split them out as skills

Instruction manuals, product packaging, eBooks
Italian customer but manual is only English or German
Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer in that country
Reduces refunds and returns, questions from customers and reduced negative reviews too

You go to a new marketplace or territory you start small
Send in test products to test the market and get a feel for it
But with the translation you need to go ‘all in’ and use the right keywords etc to have the impact
If you don’t speak the language then you are flying blind
Maybe the time isn’t right to do the instruction manual translation as well due to costs
European markets are a more moderate risk
Spain has lower sales across the marketplaces so more of a risk in going in without the best chance possible
But the cost of launching in Germany would be the same but a better success rate in a bigger market
It’s not just the listing that needs translating, you need your emails, facebook ads and inserts/instructions too

Start with the Keyword Researcher – look at competitor listings using tools to identify best keywords to target
Provide the list to the ‘Localiser’ to take the sales copy from Amazon.com and put it into the Local market – mix of local culture and translation
So it reads correctly to the buyer in that country boosting your credibility
Proof reader goes through everything to make sure there’s no spelling mistakes etc.

Have a UK trademark that lets you use it across the US and a door opener for brand registry that leads to Enhanced Brand Content
A steady increase in the number of people with EBC
European marketplaces are a few years behind the US market
Conversion depends on the quality of the listing, EBC can look amazing but if images are poor then you won’t get the boost

The three Ps:
- Product
- Price point
- Photos
This gives listing success
If your price is 30% higher than the market, no listing optimisation will help
Do your research on the market and be sure there are sales there before going in
Make sure you work with a native speaker and copywriter – the goal is conversion and sales
Just translating a US listing into a word for word translation to German just won’t work

German search term campaigns in German were difficult
Look at your keyword indexing
Danny was using the PIPES symbol in headlines to separate keyword in Germany that caused big problems for auto-campaigns but he didn’t know
Launch with a limited number of products into new territories