Spanisch: Der Schlüssel zu einem florierenden E-Commerce mit ConveyThis

Did you know that the U.S. is the second largest Spanish-speaking country? It became the world’s second-largest Spanish speaking country in 2015, and since then, the number of speakers hasn’t stopped growing. According to the Instituto Cervantes in Spain, the amount of native Spanish-speakers in the U.S. has surpassed that of Spain, the birthplace of Spanish. In fact, the only other competitor for the number one spot is Mexico.

If we also take into account that ecommerce in the U.S. constituted over 11% of total American retail sales last year and it’s a $500 billion market, we can safely conclude that welcoming the 50 million native Spanish speakers that live in the U.S. to ecommerce platforms is a brilliant way to increase sales.

Despite the U.S. being famous for being cosmopolitan,  just 2,45% of its ecommerce sites are multilingual, that means that over 95% percent of U.S.-based ecommerce sites are available only in English.

If we analyze the multilingual sites, we’ll see that less than a fifth of them have Spanish versions of their website. These pioneers were able to identify an important consumer base and have their eyes set on captivating it.

How to become un sitio bilingüe

Die USA sind bei der Erstellung und Gestaltung mehrsprachiger Websites hinter dem Rest der Welt zurückgeblieben. Genau wie im wirklichen Leben hat die englische Sprache eine große Priorität gegenüber anderen Sprachen, was bedeutet, dass diese Verbraucherbasis ignoriert wird. Geschäftsleute in den USA verpassen eine große Chance für finanzielles Wachstum!

Considering the facts mentioned before, it’s reasonable to assume that you are at a great disadvantage if you want to start in the U.S. an ecommerce site only in English due to the vast amount of competition there, but if you add a Spanish version to your website, the odds will change drastically and tip in your favor.

But to engage the bilingual user base is not as simple as copypasting your store content into Google Translate and working with those results. Luckily you are in the right place, this article will tell you how to create a multilingual strategy, but first here are more great reasons for making your store available in Spanish.

Sprechen Sie in der Öffentlichkeit Englisch, surfen Sie aber auf Spanisch, das ist die zweisprachige amerikanische Art

Amerikas Muttersprachler, die Spanisch sprechen, arbeiten hart an ihren Englischkenntnissen, und die meisten von ihnen sprechen fließend Englisch und verwenden es häufig in Alltagssituationen in der Schule oder bei der Arbeit. Es ist jedoch bekannt, dass ihre Geräte auf Spanisch gehalten werden und ihre Tastaturen ein ñ und haben Ihre KI-Assistenten geben auf Spanisch Anweisungen, wie man zur nächsten Tankstelle gelangt.

According to Google, bilingual searchers use English and Spanish interchangeably and represent over 30% of online media consumption in the United States.

Wie können Sie also Ihr neues Publikum gewinnen?

1. Holen Sie sich ein spanischsprachiges SEO

A key fact: search engines like Google know which language your browser and devices are in. It’s important to play with this aspect of the search engine algorithms and have it work in your favor. If you have your phone set to English, the odds of finding a top search result leading you to a French or Japanese website are very low, the same thing happens with other language settings, you get results in your language first. Sites in Spanish will be prioritized over monolingual English sites.

So if you are based in the U.S. and don’t have your site available in Spanish, you are at a disadvantage, surrounded by competitors. You might want to consider jumping on that bilingual bandwagon as soon as possible. Since this is an untapped consumer base, the sooner you open your store in Spanish, the greater the rewards will be.

Once you do so, don’t forget to check your Spanish-language SEO (ConveyThis will do this for you), this will help search engines identify you as a relevant website available in Spanish. You may have a beautiful Spanish version of your site up and running, but you need the search engines to help your customers find you.

2. Entschlüsseln Sie die spanischsprachigen Metriken

Denken Sie daran, Ihre Leistung in den spanischen Versionen von Suchmaschinen und auf verschiedenen Agglomerat-Websites zu überprüfen!

Google Analytics gathers lots of useful data like which language version of your site are visitors using and also how they arrived at your website! Knowing how new visitors find you if whether through a search engine or Google or a backlink will help you make sound business decisions in the future instead of betting on unfounded assumptions on how users like to browse.

This Google Analytics feature can be found in “Language” under the “Geo” tab (don’t forget to check the other features, they are also extremely useful).

Hispanische Amerikaner, begeisterte Internetsurfer

Check out this little tidbit from the Think With Google blog: “66% of U.S. Hispanics say they pay attention to online ads—almost 20 percentage points more than the general online population.”

Hispanic American bilinguals are big fans of online stores, 83% of them check the online sites of stores they have visited and sometimes they do this while inside the store! They consider the internet a key tool for shopping, they can make purchases from their phone and also look up information on different products.

This group is definitely a coveted audience for online retailers and it’s very likely that their browsers set in Spanish are making it difficult for you to connect with them. Search engines interpret your English site to mean that you want to attract and English-speaking audience. The solution? A multilingual marketing strategy with bilingual ads and content.

Ich habe bereits erwähnt, dass der bloße Einsatz einer Übersetzeranwendung nicht ausreicht, um erfolgreich zu sein, da dies keine solide Marketingstrategie ist und einen Schlüsselaspekt der Werbung außer Acht lässt: die Zielkultur.

Erstellen multikultureller Inhalte

Mit jeder Sprache ist mindestens eine Kultur verbunden. Stellen Sie sich also vor, Sie würden zweisprachig aufwachsen! Jeweils zwei! Zwei Sätze von Grammatiken, Slangs, Traditionen, Werten und mehr. Einige mögen widersprüchlich sein, aber jeder hat seinen eigenen Weg gefunden, diese Unterschiede zu lösen und sowohl Sprachen als auch Kulturen zu einer Quelle des Trostes zu machen.

Bei gemeinnützigen Kampagnen sind die Botschaften unkompliziert und eine direkte Übersetzung mit nahezu identischer Formatierung funktioniert perfekt, wie im Fall dieser Anzeige der Stadt New York zur Bekämpfung räuberischer Kreditvergabe.

But if your trying to sell a product, the marketing will take more effort and require adaptation. There are two options: modifying an existing ad campaign or creating a new campaign tailored to Spanish speaking audiences in the U.S.

Wenn Sie sich für eine Anpassung entscheiden, müssen möglicherweise einige Aspekte geändert werden, z. B. Farbpaletten, Modelle oder Slogans.

On the other hand, you may want to seriously consider creating something exclusive for Hispanic American customers, like the American discount shoe store Payless did. The Payless ShoeSource strategy consisted of creating TV and online ads that were unabashedly designed for the Hispanic market and broadcasted them in channels that were popular with Hispanic users and not very much with English-speaking users.

This strategy – one campaign for each audience – was highly successful, and thus, profitable.

ComScore, ein Werbetechnologieunternehmen, hat alle seine Daten in einem praktischen Diagramm zusammengefasst. Die gesammelten Informationen spiegeln die Wirkung aller drei verschiedenen Arten von Anzeigen wider: Kampagnen, die für den spanischsprachigen Markt erstellt wurden, Kampagnen, die vom Englischen ins Spanische angepasst wurden, und Kampagnen, bei denen nur der Text ins Spanische übersetzt (oder der Ton synchronisiert) wurde. Die Ergebnisse sprechen für sich: Kampagnen, die ursprünglich für spanischsprachige Zuschauer konzipiert wurden, werden den anderen Typen eindeutig mit großem Abstand vorgezogen.

Die Stichprobengruppe der Studie bewertete ihre am meisten bevorzugten Marken oder Kampagnen im Vergleich zu anderen ähnlichen Marken. Die Grafik zeigt, dass spanischsprachige Amerikaner von Anfang an besser mit Kampagnen zurechtkommen, die speziell für spanischsprachige Zielgruppen konzipiert wurden.

The most difficult way of reaching a Spanish-speaking audience is with ideas and images that reflect English-speaking experiences and desires. The Think With Google article identified some key cultural elements among Hispanics like food, traditions, holidays and family, these should be researched when planning an ad campaign. For example, a campaign that tries to incite affinity through references to individualism and self-sufficiency won’t work at all because it will clash directly with the importance that is placed on family and community. You’ll have a much better chance to resonate with your audience if you at least adapt your content and, for best results, Spanish-language-market-specific ads are pivotal.

Auswahl der besten Anzeigenplatzierung

There are so many ways to reach the Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. like radio stations, TV channels and websites but, according to the ComScore study mentioned earlier, the best one is online ads, their impact is greater than ads played on TV or on the radio. Be sure to optimize all your digital touch points and campaigns for mobile.

According to data from BuiltWith.com, only 1.2 million of U.S.-based websites are available in Spanish, this may seem like a large number but it only represents 1% of all site domains in the USA. We’re talking about millions of Spanish speakers that have their phones in Spanish and are a meaningful part of the ecommerce user base despite only being able to access 1% of the available websites in the U.S. in their native language. It is the second most widely spoken language in the country but online web content does not reflect that. This is a fantastic opportunity for taking a step into the world of multilingual expansion.

Optimieren Sie mehrsprachige Werbestrategien

Wie wir bereits besprochen haben, erhalten Sie mit einem spanischsprachigen SEO wertvolle Erkenntnisse, aber wofür sind sie gut? Sie helfen Ihnen, Ihre Outbound-Kommunikation mit Ihrem spanischsprachigen Publikum zu optimieren.

To adapt an English campaign so it has a suitable Spanish version you’ll need the help of native speakers, who, instead of translating word for word, will use a process called transcreation, through which they will recreate the message in the original ad while taking into account that the cultural contexts are different and the resulting ad will have the same effectiveness.

The process of transcreation takes a lot of forethought and knowledge about the target audience so it shouldn’t be rushed if you want good results, otherwise you might risk getting something too close to a word for word translation, which, as mentioned before, are not as well received by audiences.

Legen Sie Wert auf Ihre mehrsprachige Website

Your brand new website design must be of first-rate if you want to captivate audiences. You have successfully attracted them with a riveting ad campaign tailored to them, but that level of dedication and quality has to be consistent at all levels. The browsing experience has to convince them to stay.

This entails following through on this new multilingual expansion project, this, according to globalization-oriented content creation firm Lionbridge, means also having a landing page in Spanish and Spanish-speaking representatives in customer support.

Globales Website-Design

Das Entwerfen einer globalen Website ist komplex. Möglicherweise sind einige Änderungen am Layout erforderlich. Spanisch ist etwas wortreicher als Englisch, sodass Sie Platz für die zusätzlichen Zeichen und Zeilen schaffen müssen. Sie werden wahrscheinlich mit vielen verschiedenen Elementen wie Überschriften, Modulen und Bildern arbeiten, aber Ihre Site-Building-Plattform ermöglicht es Ihnen (mit ein paar Tipps und Tricks), Ihr Layout schnell an die Sprachumstellung anzupassen.

Denken Sie wie der Benutzer

All site design decisions are made with the user experience in mind. We want our users to find the site comfortable, intuitive and for them to have fun using it. We can help you add to your site experience-enhancing elements such as videos, forms and pop ups in the chosen language, and more!

Überbrücken Sie die Kommunikationslücke

There is no need for you to speak Spanish to be able to create the Spanish-speaking version of your site. If you desire to expand and attract that untapped market, we at ConveyThis are the best option for a professional translation. Your new multilingual site will be as captivating in Spanish as it is in English.

Make your way onto the bilingual market con estilo

No matter what platform your site is hosted on, the ConveyThis team will ensure you get your website translated into Spanish with regular updates and maintain its SEO on Spanish-language search engine. We’ll create a bridge so visitors can find you and your business will become visible to a population that represents 1.5 trillion in purchasing power.

All dies ist möglich, ohne dass Sie Ihre Markenidentität aufgeben müssen. Mit ConveyThis ist der Weg zum mehrsprachigen E-Commerce ein Kinderspiel.