How is the investment narrative different

After delivery, the second narrative is the investment narrative. The “investment” narrative says, “we invest more in our local offering by investing more in localization.” 

From the interviews: watch Francesca from Pinterest talk about the crucial distinction between that of a service provider and strategic partner

    Identifying & communicating ROI 

Identifying & communicating ROI is the easiest way to shift the dial in terms of how your team is perceived. But calculating ROI is much harder in localization – which is why our interviewees had a lot of advice for how to think about it. 

What people say about ROI

The formula for ROI is

The formula seems simple, but it becomes much harder when we get to the metrics and costs involved in localization, on the next page.

A complicating factor is that you don’t “own” these metrics, you’re merely inferring an effect on these metrics. That would imply measuring the metrics before and after a localization activity, which is tough – especially if you’re localizing from the outset. 

Added value metric examples

Cost component examples

It is not possible in a small l10n team to calculate all those numbers. For l10n teams with fewer resources, l10n relies often on a fuzzy sense of their value and a corresponding mistrust in their numbers.

Some of the l10n professionals we have spoken to off-the-record have described a struggle to articulate the ROI: they struggle to calculate it first of all; and then they struggle to generate credibility that their numbers are accurate.  

Here’s what our interviewees had to say. 👇

    ROI: the advice from our interviewees 

1. Use analysts for the best results

Where possible, you should use analysts to do the work for you.

Francesca, Head of Internationalization @ Pinterest said, “I’d work with our team of [business] analysts and ensure that they had analysts dedicated to international [users]”. 

Localization Operations Lead at Shopify said: “Return on investment is elusive. Everybody says there’s a formula. But at [former employer & HR management platform] Ceridian, I asked a colleague who calculates ROI for customers for a living to help.”

A HubSpot localization manager in another podcast referred to the use of analysts, too: “HubSpot Research is doing a lot of really original, data-based research…” he also describes the findings. “We’ve found that for certain locales, we’ve found that native-language content vastly outperforms localized content.”

Having somebody outside of the l10n department marking your effectiveness is also best practice in getting other teams to buy into the ROI figure. Not everybody has access to analysts, but you should at the least try to influence your data operations to create an international dashboard.

2. Attune your value frameworks to your organization 

“You need to talk about [ROI] in your organizational language,” argued Oleksandr, the Localization Operations Lead @ Shopify.

 “Let’s say [your employer is] product- and technology-obsessed. Then, you have to talk in those terms… create a roadmap. Talk about short- and long-term parts, present the benefits and communicate, communicate, communicate. Never shut up about that roadmap.” 

“The biggest mistake [that new localization managers make] is not aligning with the goals and principles of the company you were hired into. Wanting to build things the right way, the localization way. You’re hired, and you’re paid, you're employed to do things for the business,” said Oleksandr. 

Robert, Product Program Manager @ HubSpot, argued that you should reduce the complexity across functions by ensuring that you are unified on a single organizational value framework. “I think one of the main challenges you run into in a company is that sometimes teams can work at cross-purposes,” said Robert.

HubSpot’s framework: “What’s the value to the customer? That question starts to bring everybody into alignment. At the end of the day, if you’re not building things your customers need, neither of those matter.”

3. Ask not what your stakeholders can do for you… 

By the same token, you can win the trust and appreciation of your stakeholders by looking at their metrics in closer detail. 

“I think you need to identify the KPIs of your stakeholders,” argued Iggy, Localization Content Manager @ Deliveroo, “and help them to be successful eventually. That's the only way that you can start changing the attitude of your stakeholders as well – who might think about you as a contributor.”

This mirrored the advice of Francesca, Head of Internationalization @ Pinterest. “When I have [the NPS] for all the markets I’m serving, I can finally start to speak the same language that a PM is speaking.”

Oleksandr, the Localization Operations Lead @ Shopify, said: “learn the language of your internal customers.” 

There is a point where generating value for stakeholders needs to be more than reactive. Imagine for a second that your function is an external agency hired by your organization and that your job within it is the account manager. 

If you were trying to grow the account, you would need to sell the value of your work. That would involve not only identifying key success KPIs, but also suggesting new lines of work. Unfortunately, sales is a part of every job – yours too. 

4. Don’t neglect the cost in your ROI calculations

It’s important to not simply advocate for l10n in a blanket way without referring to the cost. 

That’s for two reasons. First, “you can definitely get to a level with too much complexity.” Argued Iggy, Localization Content Manager @ Deliveroo. Nearly all interviewees tiered localization investment by country; there is no way to make practical decisions without tracking costs. 

But second, it’s vital to advocate for initiatives; and it reinforces the idea that localization is not a commodity but an investment with a return.  

Francesca, Head of Internationalization @ Pinterest, described the way that they calculated cost for the decision to make native [non-localized] content. 

“We partnered with local teams and teams across the company to understand their needs. Local teams lamented the fact that our narratives were very US-centric. But we also have limited resources.” 

“So we ran a number of pilots on some specific programs – we hired copywriters, put together a workflow, so that we’re able to create native content. Now we create native content for 10 markets."

5. Focus on generating an international data picture 

Francesca, the Head of Internationalization @ Pinterest explains the problem: 

“Sometimes, you have access to very little data in localization. Dashboards are built by the US teams for the US teams. So, if you manage to have access to an international dashboard, that’s going to advocate for your initiatives.” 

Using data, “I can corroborate my strategic instinct… if you ask to develop a feature, the data has to corroborate what you’re asking for.” 

Here’s our advice for getting the data to proceed with recommendations. 👇

  Making basic, low-fiction, tactical recommendations

The next chapter will be all about recommendations. But as we come to talk about international data, it’s useful to start with recommendations which don’t have lots of friction.

Let’s start with something easy. The first stage of your l10n recommendation engine should be to identify quick-wins and low-hanging fruit.  Find the lowest-friction, highest-return recommendation you can make, find a local, short-term, high-downside problem and identify the cause. 

Here’s the kind of statement we’re looking for:

1. The problem is local, because it seems to be specific to France
2. The problem is product-local, because it seems to be specific to the checkout 
3. It’s short-term because the checkout is not a lag indicator. Something like churn or NPS may give a less precise indication of what could be at fault 
4. It’s high-downside because poor checkout conversion has a clear, measurable impact on a metric somebody cares about 
5. It’s a problem because it’s on the “objective” end of the objective-to-subjective continuum. This is a mistake, a bug, or something done poorly 

The what vs the why 

Many of the dashboards built by local professionals focus on the “what”, which is to build a data picture of performance in different markets. For the “why”, it depends a little on your business how to calculate it. For example, HubSpot described an engaged B2B user base which were happy to act as beta testers and would communicate their issue in some detail.

But other teams, we need a  “local story” – your explanation for why a localization activity might have an effect on a metric. 

But a “local story” could be something broad, or could be something narrow. Here’s a shortlist.

As a side effect, we can see that the role of quality has changed. In the “narrow functional bugs” space, localization is binary and commodified, and a quality issue is a mistake. In the “broad user problems” area, localization is about users, and quality is about user fit.

    Tests appropriate for low-friction recommendations 

Localized product flow testing 

One of the most popular kinds of tests on live products that we conduct for localization teams at Global App Testing is localized user flow testing. This is common to businesses of all sizes, but investment and strategy-stage businesses tend to do product flow testing as a matter of routine. 

To do this, send test cases [steps a tester should follow during a test] to real individuals in desired locations via the Global App Testing crowd. We set these projects up as a mixture of local user survey, functional test, and LQA, in order to give a 360 degree view of why performance is poor.

Exploratory testing 

Where you’re unable to isolate the issue so precisely – e.g. to the checkout – we’d recommend running exploratory tests. With the same mixture of survey, functional exploratory, and LQA, you can find possible explanations for poor metrics in a 48-hour timeframe over the weekend.

Our advice to do these well 

👉 Real users in real places | It can be tempting to try to run the functional element of this kind of QA out of an emulator. But functional bugs can be hard to emulate. Choose QA which involves routing your test through the country or region in question. 

👉 Native speakers and cultures | To execute on the LQA element to the highest standard, you should focus on people experienced in local language & culture. We summarized our LQA approach in chapter 2, but be sure to find testers who are genuinely local as well as operating locally. 

❌ Avoid internal panel building which can take a long time | For a fast or iterative product environment, panels are too slow; and they are also typically not sufficiently specialized to give practical, actionable feedback. By using a local software crowd, you can go faster, cheaper, and more focused than a local panel.

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    Key takeaways from Chapter 3