The best ways for app developers to think global but act local

There's app localization, and then there's what Runkeeper said it was doing.

According to a recent post on the company's blog, the popular fitness app wanted to offer "region-by region" localization so that the various audio cues it offered runners could be tailored to U.S. cities. In its hometown of Boston, for example, Runkeeper would be pronounced "Runkeepah."

The maker of the avatar app Face My Phone, Glue Applications, used TraductoPro for localization.

Astute users probably noticed the Runkeeper announcement was posted on April Fool's Day, but to most developers, the business opportunities provided by localizing an app's content to a specific country or language is no joke. According to a report released last fall from BI Intelligence, localization can lead to more than 100 percent increases in downloads and 25 percent increases in revenue. That's undoubtedly why so many firms are jumping into the business of streamlining the process of localization, which may scare off indie developers who worry about cost and resource constraints.

"Developers need to think about being in every market possible, because they have no idea where your app will take off," said Jules Ngambo, founder of New York-based Traducto, which offers app localization tools. "There are those who just don't think about it until the last minute, until they get to the point where they have a great app and then need to monetize it."

Localization normally involves extracting "strings" from their code which must be translated. Then they need to submit their apps through iTunes Connect (if they're working in iOS) and repeat this process for each new language or region they support. TraductoPro 1.2 allows them to upload metadata, keywords, app store subscriptions and other information once and then order translations on an as-needed basis, then export the results automatically to iTunes.

"The pain point varies immensely. There are some customers with just a few hundred strings. For the first time localizer, it could involve hours of reading the documentation to do it manually," Ngambo  said. "Then you need to run some kind of script to extract strings from your code. Before you even do that, you need to have made them localizable by wrapping it with a localization macro. The majority of people who don't think about it end up with hundreds of strings, sometimes thousands, and what do you do at that point?"

Kriz

Localization as pre-emptive move
Just as website developers have had to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure their content is indexed by Google, app developers are beginning to recognize the concept of "app store optimization" (ASO), said Michael Kriz, founder and president of New York-based localization agency Acclaro. As the app stores get more crowded, it is vital that developers think of how localization can be a pre-emptive move against competitors.

"If you really think you're onto something, and if you don't produce it for other markets, somebody else will," Kriz said. "If someone's eating my lunch, I'd rather it be me. If there's a concept that's successful, it will get filled."

That said, ASO also will resemble SEO in that there can be vast differences in the quality of third-party localization services. Kriz warned developers against those that look for a pennies-per-word scenario.

"It comes down to effort. Good translation is very much like good writing, which I think people oftentimes overlook," he said. "You can subscribe to a service and submit strings... In some cases that's okay. Some developers just want an approximation... But when you're talking about a handful of words in an app store title and description, you want to invest more than 15-20 cents per word."

Identify priorities
Devs should look to their current download stats to discover which markets are their top priorities, suggested Robert Lo Bue, founder of Applingua. You can identify which countries are already showing demand for your app, then appease those users by providing quality localizations.

Lo Bue

"Each and every app is different and there isn't one rule for all. However, if you're looking to localize a v1.0, then no one would call you a fool for choosing the big markets: simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German," he said. "I always recommend waiting before localizing. In my experience of most development cycles, a lot of last minute changes go into a v1.0 and no one wants to be waiting for localization updates pre-deadline. Additionally, you often learn a lot about how your users interact with an app post-release, which allows you to tweak your base language before getting it localized."

If you are localizing a v1.0, try and lock strings at least a week before release and give deadlines enough breathing space for this process to be completed without too much of a rush, Lo Bue suggested.

"Think about localization even before you are thinking about localizing. Many SDKs now offer quite a lot of technologies and APIs to make localization very easy down the road," he said. "iOS localization gets easier with every release of Xcode, which is fantastic. Just utilize good developer practice at all times and you will be okay."