eCommerce Localization Managing 60,000 product descriptions and 20,000 updates a year

Tennis-Point An online store that also operates brick and mortar stores. 250 employees 100% annual growth 60 million EUR revenue 16 offline stores Eurosport exclusive partner >600,000 orders a year

International presence And localization requirements 11 languages Top markets: Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Switzerland 40% revenue based on international traffic

What is special about online store localization Highly repetitive content Huge volumes Content types: eStore UX product names product descriptions marketing email, videos Huge volumes: 150-200 words per product * 50 000 products = 1.1 – 1.5 million euros per language to localize manually Highly repetitive content: most product titles contain the same words Fast content lifecycle: 5-6 months before wear get out of fashion eCommerce lingo Thousands of small batches

Challenges: 60,000 20,000 Limited budget Volume, speed, budget products 20,000 updates per year Limited budget

Product titles Generated from attributes Rule-based Building from product attributes Applicable to French, Spanish, Italian, English, and many more languages 5,000 strings initially Tennis Clothing Aussi Open Tank-top Damen

Integration eStore product information system TMS with memory Submit portal Marketing newsletters Product titles Metadata Article descriptions

Localization department Process BEFORE the integration: New product Content manager Localization department LSP Manual updates: > 1,000 man-hours a year

Our process AFTER the integration: New product Content manager Localization department Automated transfer Auto-updated product information TMS LSP / Freelancer Approve translation in TMS

From LSP to freelancer model Why? Lack of integration on LSP side Lower cost Faster delivery Varying translation quality Important: Keep control over translations and translation memory Centralized translation management Automation, project templates Implement a quality check LSP

Wins Half a year in work hours for content management Fewer translation requests Attribute usage for product-titles / bullet points Translation memory reuse Quality assurance Approve internally Approve by a second translator

Next step: product descriptions French German

Conclusions How to localize an eshop into 11 languages without spending millions? Define parts to translate first Shop system FAQ, UX Product attributes Focus on product titles Implement automation rules Translate product descriptions of top products first

Vendor perspective on eCommerce l10n

Is eCommerce lucrative for LSPs? Retail ecommerce sales worldwide Source: eMarketer, August 2016

17% think this way What's the most attractive industry vertical for LSPs in the next 3 years? Source: Slator

LSP working with online shops Tech is your friend Integration expertise New products Autolocked TM matches for updated content MT Product descriptions User reviews (Tripadvisor, Booking.com) 99% of content Analytics Localization vs PPC/SEO budgets

Shop systems More than 120 exist… Source: ecommerce-platforms.com

But only a few have preconfigured connectors 8+ Few shop systems are multilingual and connect to TMS out of the box 5+ 3+

Work with tools before the buyer Most established shops have IT teams DIY: APIs, modules Scalability & speed most important Offer more than localization Multilingual SEO Email marketing globalization Content adaptation (images, country standards) Sentiment analysis

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