
Phrase and beyond
Localization strategy
Food delivery? There’s an app for that. Online banking? There’s an app for that, too. You get the idea: From entertainment and education to transportation and business—if there’s a task you want to complete or information you need, it can most likely be found on your smartphone.
With 255B mobile apps downloaded to connected devices worldwide in 2022, users have never been so “hungry” for content in their native language. If you want to reach as many users as possible, language and culture shouldn’t be barriers to having them benefit from your app.
The key ingredient that can amplify your mobile app’s coverage, download rates, and revenue figures worldwide is app localization. A multifaceted process with many steps involved, app localization requires a sound strategy and robust technology.
In this guide, we’ll look at both the benefits and challenges of app localization, explain how an app localization tool can streamline the process, and provide app localization tips to help you get started with a future-proof workflow. Let’s dive in!
Mobile app localization is the process of adapting an app's user interface and functionality for users in different target markets.
Localizing mobile apps goes significantly beyond simple translation: While translation focuses on the literal transfer of textual content from one language to another, localization ensures that every asset of your app—be it user interface (UI) elements, specific features, in-app copy, graphics, or app store descriptions—are tailored to users’ cultural preferences, habits, or expectations.
While English is widely considered a “lingua franca”, a universal language that facilitates communication between different native languages, research shows that users prefer content in their own language.
Taking the app localization route is a no-brainer for businesses with global aspirations. There are billions of app users worldwide who can’t be reached with an app that isn’t localized—localization lets you target app users in every country around the globe and maximize your app’s exposure and coverage.
Some business benefits of app localization include:
In the same way that you can develop only the core functionalities of an app to solve a particular problem and satisfy a certain niche—which is known as a minimum viable product (MVP)—or go all-in with your development, app localization can be carried out at different levels.
There are two main types of app localization to consider, according to their scope.
MVL aims at localizing only the app’s key features or content, app store descriptions, and app store metadata. This type of app localization is ideal for early-stage app startups that prioritize a fast time to market and a high ROI, as it demands less effort and resources than full app localization.
A good example is how Evernote, a popular note-taking app, launched in China in 2012 with a simplified product, a local-language brand name—Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记), which translates as “memory notes”—and a basic language pack.
A year later, when Evernote was already claiming 4M Chinese users, the company launched Yinxiang Biji Business. The Business platform is a fully Chinese product that even overcame internet connectivity challenges—resulting from very small network bandwidth between China and overseas countries—by hosting app data locally within China.
Global app companies that are committed to creating a fully localized app and maximizing their app’s reach, user base, revenue opportunities, and ROI should consider full app localization.
This entails adapting every app element for each target market, app store localization included. Full app localization guarantees that users across all markets feel at home when using your app.
A good example of localization carried out at the full app level is Airbnb—for each of its 220+ locales and 60+ languages, the app has localized everything from the app UI and content to the available payment methods. Ge Zhongjun, former Language Manager at Airbnb, describes what this looked like for the Chinese market:
"Enabling Alipay and WeChat Pay, launching WeChat mini-apps, using Chinese maps, following the latest marketing tactics in China, making hosting and listing search easier for Chinese hosts and guests, setting up servers in China... The localization of Airbnb in China is a highly comprehensive one, covering localized product development, local hiring, local operations, local decision-making, exchanges of tech and information between the HQ and local office, etc."
The app localization process starts with strategy. In other words, you need a solid plan. Your app localization strategy should take into account:
Your app localization strategy can vary from app to app and change along with your app’s needs, but it’s a good idea to make localization part of your app’s life cycle by planning for localization during app development and design.
Whether you want to launch your app globally or just want it to be localized for a few selected markets, you might encounter numerous challenges that can slow down your work and even cause problems if not addressed ahead of time.
It’s not rare for app development companies to design and code an app without considering its future global expansion, forgetting about localization until it’s too late.
Why it matters: This misstep can lead to problems down the line when it’s time to adapt the app to new markets—problems you might not be able to fix at that point without causing delays and extra costs.
While reducing manual work and bottlenecks through automation and centralization can certainly help reduce costs and speed up app localization, they likely won’t help much if app development is not designed with app localization in mind from the start.
The best way to ensure a smooth app launch is to take care of app internationalization in the early stages of app development and design. When you build your app to support multiple languages from the start, you can manage app localization efforts and costs more effectively.
Many localized apps hit the app stores only to find that app localization mistakes—such as app strings that were mistranslated or even incomprehensible—make their app completely unusable.
Why it matters: Localization problems at app release can damage your app’s reputation, cause users to abandon your app after failing to properly use it, and even get you bad reviews.
The best way to avoid app localization mistakes at the app’s release is to invest in testing and quality assurance for every language. For cases when it’s not possible to fully test every single string, layout, date, time, number, and currency format, consider using pseudolocalization—substituting all localizable UI elements with a pseudolanguage to check whether any source strings contain issues that would require fixing before the translation process begins.
There are several pseudolocalization tools for developers to test for usability, readability, space requirements, and user input—you can start by checking GitHub for repositories that might work with your own project.
In a fast-paced development workflow, if localization is set up as a separate function outside the agile framework, localization work may lag behind app development.
Why it matters: Having to wait for app localization before app launch can increase costs by causing delays in app release and preventing app developers from working on new features while waiting for app translation. Moreover, ongoing communication and feedback loops across all stakeholders—including translators—break down, resulting in potential time, money, productivity, and quality loss.
The best way to avoid app localization lagging behind app development is to set up an app localization process that’s built into your agile app development framework. Continuous development calls for continuous localization.
Localizers should be included in app development teams from the start, working side by side with app developers, sharing knowledge on app design, and slicing topics through regular feedback loops. It’s time to break down the silos: All stakeholders should work together in an agile, iterative framework that allows for constant communication and short feedback loops, allowing you to build an app that’s localized “right out of the box.”
Many app localization challenges can be solved simply by using the right app localization technology.
Why it matters: When you don’t have the right tools in place, your workflow suffers—long email back-and-forths become the norm, developers spend more time tracking down app strings and feeding them to translators, app releases take longer because of bottlenecks, mistakes go undetected, and localization quality suffers.
These challenges can be solved simply by using a dedicated app localization platform that was designed from the ground up with developers, product teams, and localizers in mind.
A solid app localization platform provides the best toolset by automating app string data collection, enabling you to centralize all localization projects in a single workspace, facilitating translation management by grouping all tasks and requests in one place, integrating with app development tools, pushing out notifications automatically, and much more.
Investing in an app localization platform—a software solution designed to optimize the app localization workflow—can be well worth it. Let’s look at some of the benefits and features these platforms provide.
By streamlining app localization processes through automation and centralization, a strong localization platform acts as a one-stop shop with a wide range of features that make app localization faster and easier, such as:
Having a single source of all app localization data is a must-have for app localization efficiency. A dedicated app localization platform provides this one central solution, which makes it the perfect tool in your app localization toolbox.
Your localization process should fit into the agile workflow of your development team, and an app localization platform makes that possible by:
All of this means app localization can be done faster and easier—without any waste of time or translation errors that could harm the user experience and your app’s success.
Now that we’ve covered strategic considerations and pre-emptied some app localization challenges, let’s consolidate app localization best practices. The tips below, which we’ve organized into separate areas, will help you avoid potentially costly mistakes on the one hand, and set up a localization process that’s built into your app development workflow on the other.
Turning an app into a fully localized one, equipped for the global market, requires preparation work at the app development stage.
This step is called internationalization—the process of developing a mobile app that can adapt to and operate in any market without having to change code or make UI customizations after its release.
Some common mobile app features that need early internationalization consideration include:
UI design should also factor in localization early. If app UI elements are not flexible, the app will be extremely difficult to localize. The app screen layout should fit all types of languages—not just one or two scenarios (which often happens).
Some best UI design practices for global apps include:
Once app development and design are complete, it’s time for copywriters and localizers to work on the content and copy.
Here are a few actions you can take to make copywriting and copy translation easier for your team:
Visual assets play a big role in app localization as well. For example, the app stores’ banner images that show up when users browse the app store listings on their phones have the power to increase app download rates.
You should aim to localize images for each app market to ensure they stand out from competitors and get noticed by locals.
Consider:
Once your strings are translated and your resources returned, it’s time to move everything back into your app. While it might be tempting to think this is the end of your localization process, issues can arise later on if you fail to check your app for errors.
Here are a few steps you can take to minimize this risk:
To make the most of app store exposure, it’s a good idea to optimize your product for the app stores’ search. App store optimization (ASO) is the process of optimizing app titles, keywords, screenshots, app descriptions, etc., for app stores.
With a global app, ASO needs to be performed from scratch in every language. The first step is finding the most popular search terms in each locale and adapting your app’s original title, description, and other relevant sections as needed.
The next step is considering how the different app stores handle optimization. One example is the keyword field in Apple’s App Store having a 100-character limit.
Another example is the fact that Google Play offers the user a more complete visual picture than the App Store: A prominent feature graphic at the top of the page is followed by the icon, rating, a short description, and the screenshot gallery dipped beneath the fold. These elements, therefore, need the most localization effort if you’re localizing your app for Android.
Let’s look at some elements that need your consideration regarding app store localization.
Keywords are the primary means to get app users’ attention. Translating keywords word-by-word into every app store language isn’t often the best app localization strategy—since online search is heavily influenced by culture and language.
The smart way to go about it is to perform keyword research from zero for each market. This way, you can be sure that app store users will find your app when they search for related words or phrases in their language.
Optimizing app metadata for each app store can help increase app visibility, downloads, ratings, and reviews—and that’s a great step toward maximizing app store revenue.
You’ll need to localize app titles and app descriptions so they appear in app stores in all relevant locales and compel users to download your app.
Have you included screenshots within your app store assets? If so, they need to be localized and adapted as well. App screenshots are a valuable opportunity to help you get the app noticed and show your app in its best light, so ensuring that local users can understand what they see in the screenshot is critical.
When you’re localizing your mobile app for Android and iOS, think about things like your icon and how it will look with both rounded edges (the iOS app icon) and a squared-off bottom (the Android app icon).
Moreover, stop to think whether the icon itself is culturally appropriate. For example, while the “thumbs up” sign may be almost universally accepted, in Iran, it’s considered obscene.
If your app is location-specific (e.g., Cabify Argentina vs Cabify Spain), it’s a good idea to add positional information—such as city or region name—where it’s relevant, to help app stores better index your app when users search for your app by location.
You don’t want to overlook app ratings and reviews—they can make or break app downloads. User ratings and app reviews are important for app discoverability, ranking, visibility, and adoption, so make sure that they are localized across markets.
If you’re planning to include video content in the app store somewhere, you’ll need to localize app video assets as well.
A localized app video in the app store can help visitors understand what your app looks like, how it works, and why they might want to download it.
Many apps include units of measurement. Whether it’s a weight loss app helping you keep track of the pounds or kilos you shed, or a weather app showing rainfall in inches, app users will expect these units of measurement to make sense.
If you’re looking to expand app usage and app visibility outside your core market, app localization is the answer.
A dedicated app localization platform can smooth and automate your app localization process end to end, making it easy to:
Once you decide to go forward with it, any measure you take to improve the app localization workflow can help you save a lot of time and resources. This will ultimately impact the success of your localization efforts. After all, the faster you launch in the target market and the higher the accuracy of your localization, the more app users you are likely to attract—and delight.
Last updated on May 8, 2023.