App localization became one of the hot topics in 2013 for app publishers. Seemingly every couple of weeks another article or blog post came out touting the benefits of localization on app downloads. Combined with an increasing need to globalize distribution, being an app developer suddenly means you are a global business. New companies, like our partner Tethras, focused specifically on app translations have popped up everywhere. Analytics providers like Distimo and AppAnnie support the wonderful benefits of localizing your app with well researched reports and highly attractive graphs and charts. But is it really that easy?
Now to be sure, these benefits are certainly real. Our preferred app store partner Opera Mobile has 100 million monthly users and most of those users are not in the U.S. They also show there to be huge increases in visitors to their storefront and CTRs on their campaigns when they used localized content. In fact, their content teams are actively scouring their catalog for quality localized content to feature on their storefronts (yes, we’re talking free feature placement!). And in regions like Latin America, just two languages reaches a huge market.
So, if a pot of gold sits on just the other side of the localization rainbow, why isn’t every developer localizing?
That’s the question we asked when we started CodeNgo. Why aren’t developers publishing everywhere and localizing for optimal sales? Among the plethora of reasons, we learned that the primary factor comes down to cost. Not the monetary cost of the translations themselves but rather the cost in terms of dollars AND resources necessary to acquire, manage, submit & measure results. Together these have pushed localization down the priority list. Similar to distributing to alternate app stores, we figured that if we could make it easy, even seamless to quickly have your app marketing text translated by real people at the time same time you’re submitting your app, then there will be very little reason not to at least localize for language. This means a huge savings in terms of time and effort for most publishers.
Soon every app submitted through CodeNgo can have the marketing text translated right from your account making the localization decision a much simpler one. Even if you make changes to the English version we’ll keep track and you can update your translations as well. We’ll soon add in-app translations as well. Localizing your app no longer needs to be a headache or suck up valuable time & effort meaning you now have another critical tool available to you to maximize your downloads.
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