Mobile app localization paves the way to accessing international markets which leads to increased revenue, downloads, and active users. Our Store Intelligence product is an excellent place to start marketplace research. Truly understand where most of your users are and where competitors have successfully expanded their reach. For apps with an established presence, use App Analysis by Country to see which regions it makes the most sense to expand in. This guide mainly focuses on Localization Strategies using our App Intelligence product.

Localization is the process of translating individual parts of your app and its keywords so that it can be understood and seen in other countries. To put it simply, by making an app available only in English speaking countries, you lose out on exposure, active users, and revenue! Apps like Games have a broader audience appeal, so localizing and making it available to more users tends to increase your downloads. 

Figures from our Store Intelligence product confirm that almost 60% of downloads and revenue is generated from non-English speaking countries. Internationalization is the process of customizing your code so that an app selects the user-preferred set of resources at runtime. For ASO and User Acquisition purposes, they are the same thing.

To start localizing, we need to understand and determine where the majority of users are by Country. Use our Internationalization module to find out how your app is doing globally or identify which apps have successfully localized. Here, we can track the percentage of users in any country compared to the average app out there. Compare your app against categories or competitor apps to benchmark your localization efforts.

Using Clash Royale as an example, we can compare their localization efforts compared to other games in the Gaming/Strategy Category.
 

Our color-coded icons confirm whether an app has fully, partially, or not at all localized their descriptions, title, language support, Keywords, and Screenshots. 

The columns on the right-hand side show a percentage of Clash Royale app users in each country compared to the average percentage of users in the Gaming/Strategy category. These percentages provide us with a color-coded Ratio in the last column, explaining how well an app is doing in a specific country. Higher ratio numbers indicate a more significant presence in the country.

Use this module to pay attention to all the textual metadata available to optimize your app’s visibility. Most countries except the USA, Australia, Canada, and Japan, use a combination of English (UK) and their native language.

Another excellent place to identify potential users is to check competitor reviews for other countries. Use our Review Analysis and Review History modules to examine what various users are saying. Select terms such as “love it” and translate the reviews to see what users are saying about other apps.  

Once you’ve completed your research, it’s time to get started on localizing your keywords! It's easier to start localizing with your existing string. You can look for new keywords from competitor metadata on the App Overview page. Just make sure to change the country to see the profile as displayed to native users.
 

Translate existing keywords from your ASO workflow using our Keyword Translation module. Here you can input keywords to see translations for the most popular app store languages. (It’s always best practice to double-check translations with a native speaker for regional dialects, you don’t want to offend anybody!). 

Begin tracking these translated keywords in a new tab to see their relevance, traffic, and difficulty scores. Replace any irrelevant keywords and continue optimizing your keyword string. Identify countries with similar alphabet characters for smoother translation and regional expansion. For example, it's easier to begin localizing an English app in other European countries. For best results, make sure to localize all your text, images, audio, numbers, currency, and date formats. 

Just like ASO, Localization also involves much testing, (international) marketing, and continuous monitoring to see what works best for your app. It's also useful to look into local support for any user queries and positive user experience.

To achieve maximum desired results from our Localization modules, we advise you to use these alongside our comprehensive ASO tool. Remember to distinguish between languages and their locale. Some languages have many locales and need their own different keyword strategies. If in doubt, check out our Store Intelligence product to identify the top-performing worldwide markets.