If your company aims to reach an international audience the internationalization of the mobile website becomes essential for internationalization. Internationalization (often abbreviated as I18N) is the process of designing your mobile website so that it can easily be adapted for different languages regions and cultural contexts - without being required to redesign.
This article leads you through the best practices to ensure that your mobile website is optimized for international visitors and that user experience SEO and ultimately improves conversions worldwide.
Why the internationalization of the mobile website is important
Mobile internet use continues to increase worldwide with over 60% of the weaving traffic of mobile devices. If your website is not properly internationalized:
- Visitors can be exposed to language barriers or poorly formatted content.
- Your SEO efforts could be watered down due to double content or incorrectly oriented Hreflang tags.
- User experience suffers and leads to higher bounce rates and lost sales.
Internationalization is the basis for localization -the actual translation and cultural adaptation -but it ensures that your mobile site structure and code can support several languages and regions seamlessly.
Best practice for the internationalization of the mobile website
1. Use language and region specific URLs
Separate URLs for different languages and regions are crucial.
Common approaches are:
-
Subdomains:
fr.example.comfor French users -
Subdirectories:
example.com/fr/ -
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs):
example.fr
It is important for mobile devices to type or share the URLs clean and easily. Avoid excessively complex query parameters for language selection as these can be problematic for SEO and user experiences on small screens.
2. Implement the right Hreflang days
Use Hreflang Days in your HTML to help search engines understand the relationship between localized versions of your pages. This prevents double content problems and ensures that the correct version in the search results is displayed depending on the language and location of the user.
On the mobile phone where the side speed and SEO are even more important visibility in target countries can significantly improve.
3. Design reaction fast and flexible layouts
Your website must adapt to different screen sizes and text lengths. Some languages such as German tend to have longer words while others such as Chinese use more compact characters.
The best procedures include:
- Avoid elements of solid width that break through the layout when expanding the text.
- Use scalable fonts and flexible containers.
- Test your design with different language inputs to catch or cut overflow.
4. Offer a simple language change
Place a visible voice selection that can easily type on mobile devices. Ideally it should remember the preference of the user via cookies or local memory so that you do not have to change every visit.
Make sure that you accidentally change languages when users type near the selector - Opt for larger Touch targets and clear user interface.
5. Optimize the mobile performance across regions
Mobile connections vary strongly worldwide. Optimize the images use the caching and minimize JavaScript to keep the loading times low everywhere.
Use CDNs with Edge servers near your target regions to deliver content faster. Remember that slower mobile speeds in developing countries can drastically influence user experience and conversion rates.
6. Support local formats and input methods
Internationalization is not just about language. Adjust yourself to regional formats for data times numbers currencies and addresses. Also make sure that forms support local input methods and sign rates e.g.
7. Use the UTF-8 coding
Always use UTF-8 sign coding to correctly process all language scripts. This avoids mutilated text and ensures that all special characters are displayed correctly on each device.
8. Test thoroughly with real users
There is no lot of technical improvements to test your mobile international website with actual users of target markets. Use tools such as Brows Stack or Device ABORS and carry out usability test sessions in different regions.
To avoid common pitfalls
- The only thing that depends on the detection of browser languages: This can be inaccurate if users travel or share devices.
- Mix several languages on the same side: This can confuse users and search engines.
- Ignoring SEO implications: If you do not use or use proper URL structures you can reduce the ranking of your website internationally.
- Overloaded from pages with heavy scripts or uncompressed images: killing Mobillade times and users.
