Evaluate Website Translation by Calculating the Return on Investment
Understanding how to evaluate translation costs is crucial for maximizing your investment. Depending on your industry, where you are in the translation lifecycle, and how easily you can tangibly track returns to your website, you might need to evaluate what solution is best for you by using a Return on Investment (ROI) or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology.
What is ROI and How Can It Be Calculated?
Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment. In the context of website translation, ROI helps determine the financial benefits gained from translating your website compared to the costs incurred. Calculating ROI involves measuring the increase in revenue or other key performance indicators (KPIs) attributed to the translated website against the total costs of translation.
To calculate ROI in terms of easy-to-understand percentages, use the following formula:
Here’s a step-by-step approach to calculate ROI for website translation:
- Identify Revenue Increase: Measure the increase in sales, leads, or other relevant metrics that can be directly linked to the translated website.
- Calculate Net Profit: Subtract any additional costs associated with the translated website from the revenue increase. This might include marketing expenses, maintenance costs, etc.
- Determine Translation Costs: Include all costs related to the translation process, such as translator fees, technology costs, and any additional expenses.
- Apply the ROI Formula: Use the formula above to calculate the ROI, giving you a percentage that represents the return on your translation investment.
Evaluating ROI Across Different Industries
E-Commerce
Consider an e-commerce company expanding into the French market. By translating their website into French, they immediately make their products accessible to millions of new customers. The company tracks an increase in conversion rates and average order values within the first quarter of launching the translated site. They calculate that for every dollar spent on translation, they earn five dollars in revenue, demonstrating a high ROI.
Travel and Hospitality
A travel agency translates its website into Spanish to attract more customers from Latin America. They notice a significant uptick in bookings and inquiries from Spanish-speaking customers. By measuring the increase in bookings directly linked to the translated pages, the agency can clearly see the ROI, validating the investment in website translation.
Technology
A software company localizes its product and website for the German market. They track user engagement, subscription rates, and customer feedback, finding that the localized content leads to a 20% increase in subscriptions. The ROI calculation shows that the initial translation costs were recovered within six months, and continued growth is expected.
When to Focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
In certain industries, the benefits of website translation are less immediately quantifiable in terms of direct revenue but are crucial for other reasons. Financial services, healthcare providers, and government agencies often fall into this category. These organizations, should focus on calculating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) rather than evaluating strictly on net new ROI. That is, assuming translation is a cost of doing business and not solely a revenue driver.
In many cases, translation makes an even greater impact to ROI as measured by different KPIs such as positive customer experience metrics, higher customer retention metrics, lower customer support costs, or mitigating regulatory compliance risks.
For instance, translating a government website to ensure information accessibility to all citizens, or a hospital translating patient consent forms to comply with legal requirements and improve patient safety, provides value that goes beyond net new financial returns. In these cases, considering the long and short term maintenance costs, ongoing updates, and compliance requirements to onboarding new resources versus outsourcing experienced professionals is a more prudent way of evaluating the best approach to website translation.
The TCO approach helps these organizations plan for sustainable translation investments that protect their reputation and operational efficiency.
Calculating Cost of Ownership: MotionPoint vs. Hiring Internal Staff
A major factor of ROI is how much money you are putting into the project. While some organizations try to manage translation internally, staffing full-time employees for website translation typically means hiring translators, project managers, quality assurance specialists, and localization engineers. Each role demands specific expertise and continuous professional development, which further adds to the cost. Estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for internal website translation services can be illustrated by calculating the number of full-time employees. For instance, if a company employs a full-time translator or LSP (language service provider) and at least one project manager, the combined salaries, benefits, and overhead costs for these employees can easily exceed $100,000 annually.
MotionPoint can significantly reduce expenses compared to hiring internal staff. Internal translation teams often require substantial investment in recruitment, training, and ongoing salaries. Additionally, the overhead costs associated with managing an in-house team, like adding technology to manage the process and building new standard operating procedures, can compound costs even further.
When considering ROI, it’s crucial to factor in the overhead costs of starting a translation project, especially when outsourcing the core competency of website translation to experts. This approach yields a faster speed to market compared to trying to onboard, hire, train, and manage the process internally, which typically incurs a very long learning curve. MotionPoint’s MP Concierge can be 5 to 10 times less costly than that. It significantly reduces TCO by leveraging advanced automation and expert translation services, eliminating the need for in-house staff or additional technology costs. MP Concierge already has everything you need built-in and handles the entire translation process for you. From initial content extraction to final deployment, it provides a seamless, cost-effective solution that allows companies to reallocate their internal resources to other strategic initiatives. This includes Adaptive Translation, designed to deliver AI-driven machine translations that adapt to the specific brand of your website to ultimately reduce the need for expensive human post-edit review.
How MotionPoint Helps You Achieve Consistent ROI
MotionPoint’s translation solutions are designed to maximize your ROI by combining advanced technology with expert human translation. Here’s how MotionPoint ensures consistent ROI:
Translation Flexibility: MotionPoint offers a range of approaches to fit your needs, including server-based proxies, browser-based proxies, and connector solutions. Plus, with AdaptiveQE, you can ensure quality and efficiency in your translations.
Adaptive Translation: Limit expensive human post-editing with Adaptive Translation, which leverages Brand Voice AI to maintain consistency and accuracy, reducing costs while enhancing quality.
Beyond Word Services: MotionPoint provides comprehensive services, including quality assurance, technical support, and ongoing optimization to ensure your translations meet the highest standards.
Effective Localization: Connect deeper with your target audience by not only using the right language but also the right idioms and expressions, ensuring cultural relevance and engagement.
AdaptiveQE: Our AdaptiveQE (Quality Evaluation) system ensures that translations meet high-quality standards by using a mix of automation and expert human review. This approach allows us to quickly adapt to your brand’s specific needs and preferences, minimizing costly revisions. Additionally, our consultative approach with the internal team (IC) ensures that we understand your unique requirements and can provide tailored solutions that enhance overall translation quality and efficiency.
Brand Voice AI: Our Brand Voice AI technology ensures that your brand’s unique voice and tone are consistently maintained across all translations. This AI-driven tool adapts to your specific brand guidelines, ensuring that every piece of translated content resonates with your audience just as it would in the original language. By reducing the need for extensive human post-editing, Brand Voice AI helps lower costs while delivering high-quality, brand-consistent translations.
By leveraging these strengths, MotionPoint provides a reliable, cost-effective solution for your website translation needs, ensuring that your investment yields consistent, measurable returns.
Conclusion
For a more detailed analysis and to see how MotionPoint can specifically benefit your organization, get a free website translation diagnostic scorecard. This tool will help us evaluate your current translation needs based on your business goals, helping you identify the best approach to solving website translation for you. By leveraging MotionPoint’s expertise, you can ensure that your website translation investment delivers consistent and measurable returns.