How to Successfully Localize Your SaaS Platform?

In a distinctive setting, a SaaS product or service is more than just a website. It’s a solution that ensures to capture all the user needs and demands in a handy way. This includes presenting information in a manner that’s easy to grasp and use. That’s why it is crucial to understand the localization of SaaS. 

How to Set the Right Priorities to Localize SaaS platform? 

Chart out a list of priorities in the first place as it is one of the crucial steps towards the successful localization of your SaaS product or service. To aid you, here we have listed the most pressing ones to localize saas platform:

• Choose the Right Locals 

Offer the right translation to the right prospects. It covers a judicious selection of translated text and specific locales. For example, if you are targeting China or Japan, it is logical to prioritize Japanese and Chinese translation to gain traction. In the beginning, you can maintain a small list of available locales, but it should be relevant to be more maintainable. Later on, you can slowly expand the list with locales to increase your user base. 

• Translation Coverage

Be sure to take care of as many translation strings as practicable. It doesn’t make much sense to have half-baked or missing translations in several places—for example, modal messages, labels, or buttons. With an effective translation management system, you can efficiently keep track of missing messages. Furthermore, it will help reuse translation strings across multiple projects and aid you in keeping things up to date. 

• Invest in Automation 

 When it comes to the SaaS model of the agile application, we see a lot of automation and continuous delivery. If you want to be supple, you must also automate your translation pipeline in order to add tasks and events that help in the successful delivery of the end product. Things like chat-ops, webhooks, or git-ops can make a significant difference in allowing you to stay ahead of the competition. Mind you, the more you invest in automation, the easier it will be to promote the business and add new functionalities. 

• Invest in Localization Software      

Finally, and most importantly, another SaaS vendor could aid you to localize the SaaS platform at some stage. It means you can consider investing in specialized software to broaden the localization process and meet your requirements as you go. For instance, you may have a limited plan at the outset that consists of a few tasks. However, as you grow, you might require upgrading that plan and include external integration, management, translation memory, and more. 

It’s logical to include it in the initial phase of the product so you and your team know how to work with it and master it along the way. This will allow you to find suitable translators that will help you perform the localization. 

Workflow Process to localize the SaaS platform    

Now that you have set your priorities and love to move forward to perform the actual translation, you need to do some preparation before that. Following are the essential steps to achieving the goal:

• Select the Target Media 

First and foremost, choose what to translate and how. For example, the text remains the top choice; you could also consider localizing images and videos. It will give you a notable edge over the competition as it will depict that you have a unified approach to localization. If you offer a service that dynamically generates content after retrieving it from an API, then updating the translations will be more pleasant. 

• Organize Your Teams 

All the teams or stakeholders involved in the localization process should be in tune with one another. For example, hire a localization manager who will have the last word on the technological decisions and software requirements. The person will also help the teams reconcile with one another to reach a consensus and achieve task estimation. Unhindered communication is also critical here, so he or she must work to make teams agree on the preferred ways of exchanging information. 

• Manage Tasks by Establishing Priorities   

Record all localization tasks in individual tickets. This way, you can quickly identify evergreen, more refined, platform-specific issues and standard tasks. It will require you to spend some time with your teams and chart out the best way forward to complete all the tasks beforehand. The reason being is that adding localization should be a ‘fire and forget’ solution. This means you don’t have to go back every once in a while, to fix something, except it’s proven it’s better.  

• Perform Translations

Make the job easier for your translators by providing them with all the required context they need to perform well. In case they need particular software to perform their job, provide it promptly. If they require pictures or designs, be sure that your design team delivers that. Make use of translation management software to track and record all the translation strings. 

• Test Your Translations 

Engage a team of testers to perform automated and manual localization testing and ensure that everything is right on track. Instruct them to point out when the content or text is excessively long, contains special characters, images aren’t loading correctly, or the right locale is not detected. Also, check for any delays in displaying the text, number formats, currency, or flickering issues. In brief, the testers must provide a conclusive report of all the relevant test cases they have audited.