What Is Mobile App Localization & Why Is It Vital for Global Success?

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Mobile devices have become an essential part of our everyday lives and have evolved to the primary tool for a good number of our activities. This is the result of the mobile technologies development, that offers easy to use and affordable solutions for almost everything we do. The vastly increasing number of mobile apps for whatever you can imagine, as food, information, communication, transactions and much more, was the next step to this trend.

One of the main concerns of a mobile app developer nowadays is to expand the reachability of their app far beyond their geographical borders, since mobile technologies can now support this move. Mobile app localization intervenes at this point to “adjust” a mobile app both linguistically and culturally, in a way to make it not only identifiable and reachable to a remote audience, but also appealing and worth purchasing.

What is mobile app localization?

Mobile app localization is much more than the simple translation of the mobile app interface. It is about the adaptation of the app to the cultural nuances and particularities of another population. The final result should make the app appealing, offering a positive experience and a clear and well-defined value proposition to the users. This way, they will be willing to take a look at the app, download a demo, discuss it with others and finally come back and perform further actions, or else “conversions”. But what happens until then and what comes next? How can localization help at the preliminary but also at a later stage?

It turns out that the whole effort should also cover all content related to the app, known as the app’s “metadata”. For example:

-What are the keywords that could lead to the app discovery?

-What are the trending terms that could be used for referencing the app?

-What is a very well customized promotional message that would convert a potential search to interaction with the app?

-The wording used by competitors in order to outline similar apps or by users in their reviews are other examples of important content categories, worth to be localized.

And there is more, beyond the text level! For instance, the visual part: it is equally important to take care of the imagery of an app, as different countries and cultures have different preferences and perceptions when it comes to visuals. All the above should be taken into account in the mobile app localization process, so that it is successful.

Why is it important for global success?

Searches worldwide have shown that most mobile users prefer to use apps in their native language. This is stressed by the fact that the use of mobile devices has expanded to diverse groups of the global population, and is not restricted to highly specialized users. Web-enabled mobile devices have penetrated into many different population groups, regardless of their age, educational level, interests and of course geographic location. So further increase of mobile apps users is more than expected. This is finally why mobile app localization is the means to effectively leverage the potential of today’s open, global environment.

The result of this effort should lead to an effective product, built to be meaningful to various audiences. If the localization of the app is good, then the developer will see higher visibility and exposure, more downloads, higher conversion rates and a better ranking in local competition for their mobile app.

It is widely known that the world gets more and more interconnected and the result is an amazing change: our world becomes bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger because people can communicate, search, buy, sell and much more, far beyond their natural borders, with a flexible, easy to carry, mobile device. Smaller because distances for all the above have been completely eliminated. There is therefore a vast and diverse global market, full of new opportunities for mobile app developers. It is easily reachable in terms of technology but the driving force for this move is undeniably mobile app localization!

Want to learn more about mobile app localization? Contact our friendly team and find out how to reach global audiences.

Dina Kessaniotou

Dina Kessaniotou is a Project Coordinator/specialized linguist at Commit. She has 20 years of experience in IT, marketing and other fields, with an emphasis on social media for the last few years. When she has time, she enjoys walking and travelling to the countryside.