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Your home site translated is not a market website

The brand and the product truth travel. The proof points, the references, the pricing logic and the search structure do not, and those are the parts that convert.

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Typical duration
8 to 12 weeks
Starts with
Time with product and quality
Build
Your developer, mine, or Quiamo
Includes
Search structure, not just design

Why the translated site underperforms

This is the most common brief I receive from overseas companies and the most commonly misdiagnosed.

  1. The proof is the wrong proof. References and certifications that persuade a buyer at home are frequently not the ones that matter in the new market, and the ones that do matter are missing.
  2. The structure follows your product hierarchy. Buyers search applications and problems. A site organised around your internal range does not appear for any of it.
  3. The pricing logic is invisible. Different markets expect different signals about scale, minimum order and lead time, and their absence filters out serious buyers.
  4. There is no technical contact route. A form to a shared inbox tells a technical buyer nobody who understands the product will reply.
  5. The content was translated, not rewritten. Which is accurate and unpersuasive, and it is invisible from inside the company because everyone reading it already knows the answer.

What gets built

The build is the commodity part. The content and the structure are where the value and the time sit.

01

A content plan from the market's questions

Built from what buyers there actually search and ask, not from your sitemap at home.

02

Capability and product content

Written after time with production, quality and application engineering. Specific, verifiable, and in the buyer's terms.

03

Application pages

What you have made, for which industry, solving what. These are the pages that rank and the pages that convert.

04

Search structure

Information architecture, page titles and internal linking built around real queries in that market.

05

Design within your brand system

Consistent with the identity rather than a separate visual world. Brand guidelines if the system does not exist yet.

06

Schema, sitemap and technical SEO

Structured data, clean markup, fast pages and a sitemap that a search engine in the target market can actually use.

07

Enquiry routing

Named technical contact, stated response time, and the qualification fields your sales team needs.

What the two sites share

Four decisions, taken once, and they save an enormous amount of argument later.

The top row is identical everywhere. The second row is where most companies over-share and under-adapt. The bottom two rows have to be built market by market and cannot be translated at all.

Getting this framework agreed in week one is what stops the project becoming a translation exercise with a design refresh attached.

What two markets share, and what they must notONE BRAND, TWO SITES, FOUR DECISIONSSharedBrand, positioning, product truth, visual system01SplitProof points, applications, references, pricing logic02LocalLanguage, contact, compliance notes, channel links03SeparateSearch structure, content calendar, campaign spend04TRANSLATION ALONE SOLVES THE TOP ROW ONLY
Most companies translate the whole site and wonder why it underperforms. The bottom two rows cannot be translated. They have to be rewritten for the market.

Redesign, or content only?

A surprising number of enquiries that arrive as redesign requests turn out to be content problems. The site works technically, looks acceptable and says nothing a buyer can use.

In that case a content project costs a fraction of a rebuild and produces more. I will tell you which one you have after looking, and I would rather sell you the smaller piece of work than the larger one.

Where a rebuild is genuinely needed, usually because the site cannot be edited, is not responsive, or has no search structure at all, then the content work happens inside it rather than after.

Questions overseas teams ask

Do you build the site or just write it?

I own structure, content and search. Build runs through developers I work with, through Quiamo, or through your existing vendor. Where you already have a working site, this is frequently a content project rather than a rebuild.

Should the site be in English or the local language?

For B2B and industrial, English is usually sufficient and often preferred, because international purchasing works in English. For consumer categories, local language is generally necessary. The decision belongs in week one because it changes the content plan.

How long does it take?

Eight to twelve weeks, and the constraint is nearly always your own team's time for the technical content rather than anything on my side. Budget for that and the rest moves easily.

Can you improve our existing site instead?

Often the better answer. A structure and content project on a working site is faster, cheaper and usually produces a bigger improvement than a rebuild with the same content carried over.

Related

Send me your URL and the market

I will read your site the way a buyer in that market would and send back a written note on what is missing. It takes me an hour and it is free.

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Kunal Waghmare · Padmavati Hills, Mokai Vasti, Bavdhan, Pune, Maharashtra 411021, India
office@quiamo.com · +91 90216 02686 · English