Product localization strategy: The ultimate guide

Every year, more products enter the global market — and that trend isn't slowing down. In April 2025 alone, 42,423 apps were released on the Google Play Store, and 47,130 on the iOS App Store.

To compete, you need a globalization strategy — or, in other words, a product localization strategy. In this article, we’ll walk you through the importance of product localization, its types, how to develop a localization strategy, and examples of brands that have done it successfully.

What is product localization?

Product localization refers to adapting content and products for a target market. It includes translating, engineering, design, and testing to ensure the product meets local expectations.

Localization removes language and cultural barriers, helping businesses enter new markets more effectively. It makes it easier for customers to connect with products — leading to faster growth, higher satisfaction, and stronger engagement.

This process involves tailoring elements like language, layout, and functionality to the region. It often follows internationalization, which prepares a product for easier adaptation across multiple regions.

There are four main types of product localization:

1. Linguistic Localization

This involves translating content while preserving tone, clarity, and intent. Skilled translators ensure it feels natural in context, conveying meaning clearly. Linguistic localization helps products connect with a broader audience and reflect communication styles in localized experiences.

1. Cultural Localization

This adapts content to local values, norms, and symbols. It may involve changing imagery, humor, or gestures with different meanings. Cultural localization ensures localized products feel familiar and relevant to the target audience and supports expansion into new markets.

1. UX and Technical Localization

This improves usability and performance in local contexts. It includes adapting layout and formats like currency and date. It starts with internationalization, enabling translation and smooth localization of a product experience as it expands into new markets and reaches broader audiences.

1. Legal and Regulatory Localization

This ensures a product complies with local laws and standards. It may involve translating privacy settings, disclaimers, or accessibility features. Legal localization supports expansion into new markets, builds audience trust, and ensures localized experiences align with regulatory expectations.

4 benefits of product localization strategy

Below, we’ve listed a few critical benefits of product localization:

REMOVES LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL BARRIERS

A CSA report found that 66% of B2B buyers will invest in an app with a local language experience. Since most websites are in English — yet only 25.9% of the global population speaks it — there’s a clear gap.

Localization helps remove language and cultural barriers, improves accessibility, and expands your audience, making your product more competitive in new markets.

ACCELERATES TIME TO MARKET

With a localization-from-the-start approach, businesses can shorten the timeline for entering new markets — without waiting to open physical locations.

Rather than developing features first and localizing them later, a concurrent strategy integrates localization into the product development process.

This alignment with internationalization allows for faster product launches and more efficient expansion into global markets.

INCREASES YOUR CUSTOMER BASE IN A SHORTER PERIOD

Product localization is key to reaching more customers and increasing satisfaction across diverse regions.

By tailoring your product to match the culture and language of your target market, you make it more approachable for a wider audience.

Translation by expert translators ensures product information is clear and accurate. This builds trust — an essential driver of successful internationalization and global expansion.

HAS A POSITIVE IMPACT ON YOUR BOTTOM LINE

When you create a localized product experience, you increase customer engagement and build a sense of familiarity for users in multiple languages.

When users feel your product is custom-tailored for them, they're more likely to engage with the product and become recurring customers. As your customer base grows, so does your revenue — driven by stronger product loyalty and sustained engagement.

3 examples of successfully localized products

Many global businesses have found immense success with product localization. Here are a few that excel with this strategy:

DOMINO’S

Domino’s tailored its products and services to the Indian market — localizing menu and pricing to match local tastes. They added pizzas with regional flavors like paneer tikka and chicken keema, hired chefs and marketers for customization, and built a localized website and app with foreign language content. These internationalization efforts enabled efficient expansion and online delivery at scale. From 128 stores in 2006 to nearly 1,500 by 2021, Domino’s shows how localization and translation fuel growth in new markets.

NINTENDO

Through localization, Nintendo expanded its global user base to over 100 million annual users. As a Japanese company entering the US market, they had to translate and adapt games to fit local sensibilities — especially during the more conservative 1980s.

This meant complying with censorship rules: removing sexual or graphic content, emotional scenes, and offensive language. By tailoring content for foreign language audiences and cultural norms, Nintendo successfully localized its games and became one of the most trusted gaming brands worldwide.

SLACK

Slack used localization to expand into international markets and reach users in more than 150 countries outside North America.

The company began by translating its interface into multiple foreign languages, including French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. It also added regional features like contextual language support, foreign currencies, and localized customer service. This thoughtful approach enabled Slack to scale efficiently while maintaining consistency and relevance across global markets.

Creating a product localization strategy: Key insights

Successful localization depends on more than just good intentions — it requires a strategy, structure, and the right translation and localization software to scale effectively. Consider these strategic insights to effectively integrate localization into product development and successfully release in global markets.

1. Deep market and audience research sets the foundation for effective localization

Before beginning the localization process, conduct thorough market and audience research to understand the context of the new language and culture. This includes broad topics like trends, politics, and consumer behavior.

Review macro trends — market demand, local competitors, buyer power, app adoption — and micro insights like demographics, income levels, and lifestyle. Analyze sentiment and feedback on your product to gauge fit with the target market. This research informs what should be included in the creative brief.

2. Internationalization is a critical foundation for scalable product localization

When developing digital products, internationalization prepares your product for efficient localization. It separates source code from localizable elements, enabling a single code base for multiple markets. This saves time, effort, and cost.

Make your product Unicode-aware to support double-byte characters and right-to-left scripts. Avoid concatenated strings, and ensure your UI handles various date/time formats, currencies, and units. Effective internationalization sets the stage for smoother localization and expansion.

3. A well-prepared localization kit improves quality and accelerates workflows

A localization kit (or creative brief) gives translators the context needed for high-quality work. Without it, even skilled translators can face issues with tone, character limits, or UI constraints.

Outline what needs translating, how it should be handled, and any requirements — style, tone, deadlines, character counts. Include reference materials like screenshots, glossaries, and brand guidelines. Define the target audience, including linguistic preferences and cultural nuances. The more context upfront, the fewer revisions later.

4. Scaling localization requires the right technology mix

Managing this multilingual content at scale requires a smart strategy and the right tools. These often include software localization services that combine automation and human expertise to boost efficiency and reduce costs across markets.

Smartling’s translation management system (TMS) helps businesses manage localization programs efficiently, drive consistency, and support global growth. It centralizes workflows and gives teams access to glossaries, context, and style guides throughout the translation process. And with built-in integrations for your CMS, Smartling makes it easy to localize all product content — from websites and mobile apps to support articles and more — without disrupting your existing systems.

To reduce translation costs without losing quality, pair your TMS with Smartling’s AI Translation solution — blending AI-powered automation and machine translation with human expertise to scale content for a global audience.

5. Quality assurance ensures success after launch

Before launching a localized product, validate its performance with beta testing and QA. This helps catch translation issues, functionality bugs, and compliance gaps — avoiding costly fixes later.

Strong QA includes checking translation accuracy, UI behavior across languages, and alignment with regional regulations. Some regions may need additional testing due to strict privacy laws or limited infrastructure. Post-launch feedback also helps teams iterate, improve user experience, and support long-term success in each new market.

Localize your product with Smartling

Product localization is invaluable for companies looking to expand their product offerings into new markets.

It improves a product's usability, appeals to consumers in the target market, and ultimately boosts product sales in foreign markets. When done correctly, it prevents the company from isolating potential customers due to language barriers and cultural differences.

Also, investing resources into product localization shows customers that businesses are dedicated to providing products that prioritize accessibility, user experience, and overall satisfaction. By applying smart business localization practices, companies can create locally resonant digital experiences that drive growth and loyalty.

Ready to localize smarter? Download our guide, 10 Strategies to Boost Translation Efficiency, to learn how automation, the right translation mix, and data-driven decisions can help you reach more of the world — without increasing your budget. Get the guide now and start scaling globally.