Benefits of Integrating Google Translate in Your Digital Business

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]

Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Digital Transformation, take a look at Flevy's Digital Transformation Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

* * * *

Google Translate is one of the most powerful and flexible translation tools available at the moment, providing businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of all that it has to offer through API technology. Indeed, translation API’s are extremely popular, with a number of alternatives available if the free Google translator API doesn’t suit your needs.

While you may have experienced a small portion of what Google Translate can do for individual users, to appreciate its commercial benefits you need to consider how it can help digital start-ups to seriously enhance their services.

With that in mind, here are a few examples of instances in which harnessing Google Translate will give up-and-coming organizations the edge over the competition.

Handling bookings

If your business is based in the travel industry, chances are that you need to cater to customers from around the world who may not speak the same native language as you. In this case, taking bookings can be a challenge because you may not have the resources to manually alter every aspect of your input forms to factor in the myriad languages that users will bring to the table.

Integrating Google Translate will let you overcome this challenge in a straightforward way, as you can harness the official API to automatically carry out the necessary conversions so that users can book on your site or app without issue, and the information they enter can be stored, analyzed and retrieved at your end with ease.

Selling products

E-commerce is a vast, growing industry which is seeing an increase in cross-border orders as consumers from different parts of the world seek to get the best deals on items which may only be stocked by retailers operating overseas.

Of course if you want to snare the lion’s share of international visitors to your e-commerce site, you want to be able to ensure that those that do touch down on your landing pages are able to click through and make a sale without the language barrier getting in the way.

Once again, integrating Google Translate can eliminate any obstacles and also improve customer satisfaction. From product descriptions to the checkout process, being able to seamlessly present localized versions of your pages to visitors will also lead to improved conversion rates.

Catalyzing collaboration

It is not just customer-facing aspects of your digital business that can be augmented through the integration of Google Translate; it can also be an effective ally if you are attempting to manage teams of employees and enable them to collaborate smoothly, even if they are geographically dispersed and drawn from a range of nationalities.

Google Translate can make it easier to work on shared documents and projects together without finding that your efforts to boost productivity are foiled at every turn because the people involved in the collaboration do not share the same mother tongue.

With remote working on the rise, it is safe to assume that startups in particular will benefit most from any tools which make it possible to hire talented individuals without being limited by their location. The same goes for working together with outside contractors or consultants, as well as with business partners and even clients. In any context where digital collaboration is necessary, the potency of Google Translate can be brought into play.

Mastering social media

For many businesses, social media will be their first point of contact with customers, so if you are expecting to have to field questions, queries and complaints from people who may be based in other parts of the world and using other languages in their communications, using Google Translate to achieve this makes a lot of sense.

There are various ways to take advantage of Google Translate as part of your social media management strategy, whether you choose to leverage it independently, integrate the API with your own apps in-house or take advantage of established platforms like Hootsuite, which offer Translate support at a price.

In most cases, this kind of integration will essentially speed up the process of translating text that is sent to you on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, meaning that you can dissect and respond to interactions more efficiently and accurately. At a time when the reputation of your business is tied to social media more closely than ever, this could be a significant step in the right direction.

Want to Achieve Excellence in Digital Transformation?

Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Digital Transformation. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.

Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations of all sizes across most industries. In the Digital Age today, technology creates new opportunities and fundamentally transforms businesses in all aspects—operations, business models, strategies. It not only enables the business, but also drives its growth and can be a source of Competitive Advantage.

For many industries, COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline for Digital Transformation Programs by multiple years. Digital Transformation has become a necessity. Now, to survive in the Low Touch Economy—characterized by social distancing and a minimization of in-person activities—organizations must go digital. This includes offering digital solutions for both employees (e.g. Remote Work, Virtual Teams, Enterprise Cloud, etc.) and customers (e.g. E-commerce, Social Media, Mobile Apps, etc.).

Learn about our Digital Transformation Best Practice Frameworks here.