By the end of last year, more than half of e-commerce purchases were made via mobile devices, and that number continues to rise. In order to meet the needs of today’s consumer, retailers must implement a successful mobile strategy to accompany their e-tail platform.

Retailers are increasingly more aware of the necessity for optimizing their websites for mobile consumers, but it’s equally important that they invest in ways to communicate with global customers as well. This need for optimized mobile content that is also customized for an international market has led to partnerships arising between e-commerce platform builders and language service providers. Integrating your mobile optimization and content localization strategies has several benefits:

1. Boost conversion rates. Based on a study done by Forrester Research, the percentage of visits to a mobile site that convert to a sale drops by over 75 percent if the business cannot provide an optimized mobile shopping experience.  By the same token, retailers who have localized their sites and mobile devices for international consumers have seen upwards of a 40 percent increase in conversion rates. It’s simple: making the mobile shopping experience more customized to the consumer results in higher sale numbers.  
2. Support the “buy online, pick up in store” trend. Mobile e-commerce speeds up the retail process for consumers in many ways, particularly with respect to the idea that you can literally shop from wherever you are. The one area where e-commerce does not provide instant gratification, however, is in the post-sale: shoppers have to wait for their purchases to be shipped, as opposed to walking out of a storefront with that day’s purchase.  An emerging trend is for shoppers to buy an item from their smartphone or tablet, and then pick it up from the physical store.  Localizing your site or mobile app to reach all consumers in their target language will make it easier for you as a retailer to capitalize on this trend.
3. Create return customers.  The technology, cultural awareness, and language knowledge necessary to optimize your website for mobile and global markets falls outside the scope of most companies’ abilities.  By partnering with a qualified third-party language service provider, retailers can focus their internal efforts on other facets of the customer service experience. By employing professionals to assist with building the mobile platform and creating foreign-language content, retailers can rest assured that the end product will provide global customers with a high quality experience that results in repeat visits.

By creating an optimized mobile experience that incorporates localized content, a business can provide a one-stop-shop for m-commerce. At TransPerfect, we are continuously establishing relationships with leading e-commerce platforms to assist brands with site launches that are engaging mobile shoppers in their target language.