Although Germany’s economy has stalled a little of late, the years beforehand saw an unparalleled level of steady progression. All this action contributes to a thriving domestic and international market, one that can be tapped into by making sure your website is in German as well as English.
Connecting to audiences who speak either language (or both) expands your business and increases your outreach.
Furthermore, with the global online marketplace crowded and packed with cookie-cutter sites offering services and products that seem largely indistinguishable, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Add to this the fact that search engine optimisation (SEO) in English is highly competitive, and it becomes key for German and European websites to have websites in German.
Not to mention, individuals respond well to text in their native language. With an estimated 220 million speakers worldwide, ignoring this market is not wise.
Translation tools are of little use to German speakers wanting to understand text in a foreign language either, these usually miss the mark completely and are rarely as nuanced as translations by native German speakers. Check out our post on machine translation fails if you’re still not convinced.
Need more reasons to have your website translated to German? Here are some compelling points.
Europe’s Largest Economy
Thanks to some pretty impressive industrial advances, Germany is at the fore of European economic development and exports many more goods than neighbouring countries do. In line with demand, businesses hire more staff who, in turn, spend their wages in the home market and beyond.
Generating online interest from German speakers and consumers is a natural step for European businesses.
Online Business is Booming
Websites with text in English and German (and other European languages) cast a wider net over the potential customer base. The German-speaking base, in particular, responds very well to online promotions. In fact, 2014 saw Germany a close second to the United Kingdom in the number of internet sales. The nation hit a staggering one-fifth of total online sales across the continent.
Moreover, online payments and transactions are popular. That same year, more than 60 per cent of all transactions in Germany were conducted digitally — a percentage even higher than that of the United States.
Unemployment is Low Across Germany
In August 2019, Germany boasted an impressive 3.1 per cent unemployment rate, one of the lowest in the world and a record-breaking figure for the nation. The steady period of financial growth enables staff to gain and maintain jobs that pay at and above a livable wage and generates expendable income.
Much of this extra cash finds its way into the coffers of online businesses and grows the digital sales sector in all niches. As imaginable, native speakers choose to vote with their wallets and easily align themselves with companies that speak directly to them, in their mother tongue.
SEO Matters — And it’s Easier in German
It’s no secret, English dominates the digital sphere. Despite the fact that roughly 20 per cent of the global population speak English, more than half of all the content on the web is in English.
Search engine optimisation is now a fact of life and something that all businesses have to consider, whether they operate fully online or maintain a slight digital footprint. Consider the world’s top-ranking websites across all industries, imagine how many people open those sites just because they appear on Google’s first page? If your business is in a highly competitive field, SEO matters even more.
Differentiation your website can be as simple as getting some first-page Google power with clever SEO in a language that is not English. Ranking highly in search results is simply easier in German than in English because there is less competition.
Make Sales With German
While Brexit may be taking its agonisingly slow toll on Europe as a whole, the German economy has remained steadier than expected. Now is the perfect time to incorporate German text into your website and make sure you reach the German-speaking market.
But there is a right way to add text in German (or any language) do it with the help of fully qualified human translators. Sub-par content in any language is off-putting and may scare off the very clientele you’re trying to court.
Need to get your website ready for the German market? Talk to us today to find out how we can help with German to English and English to German translation services.