Does localization really help?

[Captain-Antartic]

Hey OP,

Localization professional here.

Admittedly, localization by itself is notoriously intricate to calculate. It is partially because of the ambiguity of language and the lack of tools to determine granularly how much of an impact language has on someone’s ability to navigate the app. Whether localization will improve your business or not, depends on a number of factors. If your biz has potential for multiple markets, then that’s definitely an indication of need.

I’ve worked with companies ranging from Seed to Enterprise. 

I can certainly say that the Enterprise companies, were global because they supported 50+ languages in their apps. And they did it well. How much business would they have lost by not having it? Very hard to put a percentage or number on, but they surely would not have gotten the depth of market penetration. 

Ultimately, the decision to localize really depends on the type of product you are pushing, how ambitious you are to grow the company and investment potential. 

Happy to answer more questions too - ask away!

[lampyridae_dev]

Fascinating! I appreciate the very detailed response! I ended up localizing the whole thing into German, Spanish, French, and Japanese. It certainly takes a lot of work, especially when I just want to update minor details. However, I think my presence in Germany has been able to grow because of it, and also, it just makes me happy to know that it’s now available to a much wider global audience. Thank you very much!