E-Commerce Localisation

E-commerce localisation is not the same as translating a product catalogue. The product copy is the part that is obvious. What breaks international stores is everything else: the size guide that uses the wrong measurement system, the shipping policy that references Italian consumer law on a German store, the payment page that uses formal register when the German market expects informal register, the review prompt that sounds mechanical in the target language.

We localise the complete store, not just the product listings. That means category navigation, header and footer links, checkout flow copy, transactional emails, return and shipping policies, error messages, and the various micro-copy that most people only notice when it is wrong.

We work directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Prestashop export formats. For Shopify stores, we deliver a completed XLIFF or CSV that imports directly without text re-entry. For WooCommerce, we deliver in WPML-compatible format. We tell you which format we need from you before starting.

SEO is a consideration in e-commerce localisation that often gets treated as an afterthought. The product keywords that generate traffic in Italian are not always direct translations of the German keywords that generate German traffic. We advise on this as part of the localisation process, though we are translators, not SEO specialists — we flag the issue and recommend the right keywords, and you implement them in your SEO tool.

In practice

Questions about this service