Localisation must become an essential component of your marketing strategy, especially in the world of mobile apps and games. The market is growing around the world, with much of the accelerated growth coming from the Asia Pacific region.
There will be 5.7 billion smart phone users around the world by 2020. These users will have more choice than ever, so translating games into the native language is not enough. Localisation is the key, and here are seven key reasons to invest in it for your next mobile app.
1. Loss of Immersion
Japanese people have thousands of Japanese games to choose from. Why would people who are looking for easy entertainment choose an English game and lose immersion because they have to look up a weird word every 30 seconds? The answer – they won’t.
2. Expanded Customer Base
This is a huge advantage for social games, such as those in the MMORPG genre. Mobile networks have expanded to the point that they can support huge games like this across continents, and social gaming will soon be connecting people of different languages and cultures through sophisticated localisation techniques. If you are not on this train, then you will be missing out on billions of users in Europe and Asia.
3. Accelerated Entry into Emerging Markets
If you are looking to expand into emerging markets, you must do so quickly. If the Philippines and India are any indication, the speed of mobile enablement is accelerating. Emerging markets will become mature markets in a faster timeline, and new dev companies will not waste time saturating those markets. Now is the time to get into smaller markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa and create a stronghold there through a proper localisation strategy.
4. Higher Immersion Means Lower Bounce Rates
Getting users to download your apps is one thing – it is quite another for them to hold onto your apps long enough to initiate microtransactions and other in game upsells. If you localise, you increase the odds of your content staying on the phones of your target audience for longer periods of time. The lower your bounce rate, the higher your upsell capabilities.
5. You Want to Go Viral, Don’t You?
If your app is localised in a particular market, it can be more easily shared by the people in that area. Going viral is the best marketing that you can receive, because it requires no scaling of expenses on your part. You want your users to become the primary drivers of growth for your app, and localisation is the investment that you need to make for this to happen.
6. Diversification
Diversification of a customer base is a characteristic of viral content of all kinds, including games and apps. When you have customers in different countries, your product naturally has more reach. However, customers across borders can create an entirely new level of interaction that a single market app cannot achieve.
7. App Stores Will Help You
There is very little chance that app stores in other countries will push an app that is not localised. Because that content is not as relevant as local content, app store search engines literally cannot give it a leg up. If you want to take advantage of the organic marketing that you can achieve through app store algorithms, then you owe it to your product to localise it to the target audience of that geographic area.
App stores have plenty of tools that will help you localise, so there is truly no excuse to skip this step. For instance, if you have translated title text, the screen on all major app stores will automatically adapt to the new language. Numbers and dates also get fully adapted to Google Play and Apple App Store users by their location, but your app needs to have the basic infrastructure to support the network.
The thoughts above are only a few of the reasons to localise your applications and games. If you want to be on the cutting edge of the gaming industry, with reach that expands beyond the borders of your primary market, localisation is the key!
