Shopping online is the new normal as growing numbers of people make more of their essential and not-so-essential purchases on the Internet. And that was before the pandemic. In 2019, ecommerce retailers worldwide brought in more than $3.5 trillion.

Ecommerce offers shoppers greater convenience and now Covid quarantine security. Yet, that’s often not enough to make customers feel at home and ready to take out their credit cards on just any website.

The checkout page is where the ecommerce magic is supposed to happen. However, according to Stripe’s “The State of European Checkouts in 2020” report, there’s less magic going on than you’d hope for. The checkout page is where nine out of ten lost sales occur. And tellingly, 74% of Europe’s top ecommerce websites didn’t translate the checkout page into other languages, potentially cutting off valuable customers. But this isn’t just a European problem.

Ecommerce websites in the United States are also leaving money on the table. US ecommerce websites are still typically monolingual affairs, or they don’t translate a whole customer’s journey—often stranding customers without the information they need at key junctures, like the checkout page.

There are millions of Americans and US residents (totaling 8.3% of the country’s population) who speak English less than very well. And like their fluent English-speaking peers, there are products they want or need to purchase online. Or at least they would if they knew about them. In some categories, this represents an untapped market.

In addition, the US is a major international shopping destination, for brick-and-mortar stores as well as ecommerce websites. People come from all over the world to stock up on goods that are harder to find or more expensive in their local market. Ecommerce websites allow foreign visitors to plan their purchases or ship items to US-based friends and relatives.

In fact, translating your ecommerce website into key languages like Spanish, or translating your current website more completely, can open up new markets and new audiences, and bring in more revenue.

By translating all the key elements of your customer’s journey, like your site’s product and sales information, navigation elements, contact information and yes, the checkout page, you will be going a long way toward giving new visitors and customers a pleasant, frictionless experience.

And with that, they will be one big step closer to becoming repeat customers and brand evangelists for your ecommerce website.

Multilingual Expertise

Responsive Translation can help you communicate with customers and stakeholders around the globe. We provide professional translation, localization and other foreign-language services in more than 200 languages and dialects.

For more information, please contact 646-847-3309 or [email protected].