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How To Get Your Amazon FBA Translations Done To Get Results

Feb 13, 2019

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Over the last 10 years, Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) has expanded its platform for sellers to offer their products in foreign marketplaces. Places like France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, and more to come. Amazon FBA handles all the logistical details from inventory management to ensuring product delivery to a customer’s doorstep. They basically handle all of the boring stuff.

So what is the seller’s role?

The seller simply gets to focus on bringing awesome products to the marketplaces and present themselves as the best solution within the product listing.

Increase Sales By Choosing Your Amazon Market Wisely

There’s an ocean of sales opportunities available outside of the U.S marketplace due to less competition and other countries becoming more comfortable with e-Commerce. The numbers below reflect the size of Amazon markets in 2017. In short, Japan, the UK, and Germany were at 40 million while the USA was at 120 million. That is a third. What we know is that the USA is the early adopter in western markets so that ratio is only going up in the other 3 countries. This means that each year that passes, your foreign market translation is worth more as those countries become more and more used to buying on Amazon.

increase sales by choosing your amazon market wisely

Let’s say for an example that listing for beauty cream is performing well in the US and UK marketplaces, and the seller is looking for to boost sales this product.  Then one day seller learns about an opportunity called Amazon FBA. However, there is one huge caveat.

Amazon requires all sellers to operate their business in the language of the marketplace

What happens if a native English speaker isn’t fluent in German, will they be able to sell in Germany? This is a frequently asked question and Amazon FBA has made it simple to operate in the foreign countries where you’ll have your listing translated and provide a simple answer to minor questions if the listing was done properly.  By the end of this post, you’ll have a very clear understanding of how to translate a product listing that performs well on Amazon.

What Do Amazon Buyers Expect?

Amazon has won the e-commerce war by making the shopping experience convenient for all the shoppers on the platform.

So, what do buyers on Amazon.com get?

  • Shoppers can find what they are looking for quickly.
  • They have a really simple ways to pay.
  • They can now get often the product within 2-days without leaving the house.

This is something to keep in mind when creating your listing and optimizing it to perform over time. You’ll see sales fairly soon, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that you’re building an asset that will only create more income as time goes on.
When buyers enter words in the product search bar they expect to see relevant examples shown to them. Sellers conduct keyword research to make sure their product listing align with the phrases that buyers use so it’ll be visible.
People feel more comfortable spending large sums of money when they can better understand what is being offered.  Sales copy written in the marketplace’s language allows buyers to not be distracted by reading a foreign language or poorly translated listing.  The marketing message can have its strongest effect.

What Are the Key Components of a Quality Amazon Listing

The listing is where the product is presented to the marketplace as the gateway to sellers getting paid. An effective Amazon product listing truthfully describes a product and it’s merits so people are compelled to buy.

The listing feature offers plenty of opportunities to answer potential objections towards your product. A great place to do this is within the body of the listing, visual media, or questions and answers. However, it takes more time for the buyer to watch a video or dig through direct questions so preemptively answer these with the body text if possible.

The components of a typical product listing include:

  • Product Title
  • Product Description
  • Body Text-Bullet Points
  • Keywords
  • Photos and Video

We’ll ignore visual media such as photos and video for this post since we’re talking about translating text (so called Amazon FBA Translations).

Below is an example of an optimized listing for the latest version of the Amazon Fire Stick which we’ll analyze by each component:
amazon product listing best practices

 

Product Title:

As you can see from product title “Fire TV Stick 4K with all-new Alexa Voice Remote, streaming media player”, it offers a short and clear explanation of what is being offered.
From the listing, we learn that the product is a remote and the newest version of its kind, is integrated with Alexa and streams media in 4K. That’s a lot of information packed in such a short description. Now that product title has gained are interest we can now inspect the body text to confirm that this the right item to purchase

Body Text:

Amazon product listing best practice employs bulleted points to present the most important benefits to the customer. Five bullets points is a good amount to your but it’s up to the seller to determine how many are necessary to sell the product.

Keywords:

These are the words customers type to search for your listing. They must 100% be optimized in the target language of the buyer. If not, your listing will become harder and harder to find, as other products which are listed more accurately than yours get more clicks and sales – so consequently Amazon reward that success with  For English speakers, this product is referred to as “remote control”. For Spanish speakers the same product is referred to differently, in Spain “el mando” or “telecommando”, and in Mexico “control remoto”. These are subtle differences to take note of when optimizing a listing. Knowing which one or ones to choose, is key to winning this game.

What Does A Bad Amazon Product Listing Look Like?

Most of us who have shopped on amazon or even the internet have had the opportunity to come across an awful product page. Here’s a quick example of what not do to avoid losing sales and destroying your seller rating.

amazon product listing optimization - what not to do

Let’s begin with the Headline,“Zoomies Hands Free Binoculars 4X Magnification Zoom Enlarge Glasses Telescopes”. Besides the brand name “Zoomie” it looks like the author couldn’t decide what to call the product product. At first it’s describing hands free binoculars that only zoom up to 4x magnification and it’s an enlarge glass telescope.
Simply put, descriptions like these confuse people and leave too much room for interpretation in a buyer’s mind

Next, the body copy lumps every single dimension, feature, potential application, and two english manual 1 bulleted statement. This a flagrant misuse of using a bulleted statement which should be pointed and cover a single thought.
I’m sure you’ve been wondering what the product looks like based on the description. What you read in the listing above was used to describe the plastic glasses below.
plastic glasses

This product is currently rated 2 stars in an English speaking marketplace. It’s safe to assume that translated this listing as it is into German won’t help this product perform as well as it could. A translation is not a magic fix for bad marketing.

 

What Does An Optimized Listing Translation Look Like

We’ve established what high performing optimized listing looks like and why we want to avoid poorly created listing that provides an underwhelming buying experience.

 

We’ll continue using the Amazon Fire Stick listing to offer a comparison between a software translation and a translation performed by a human with marketing experience.

Example 1:

English Version: The most powerful 4K streaming media stick with a new Wi-Fi antenna design optimized for 4K Ultra HD streaming, with more storage for apps and games than any other 4K streaming media stick.

Google Translate (Spanish): El stick multimedia 4K más poderoso con un nuevo diseño de antena Wi-Fi optimizado para streaming 4K Ultra HD, con más almacenamiento para aplicaciones y juegos que cualquier otro stick multimedia 4K.

Human Translation (Spanish):

The Key differences

Example 2:

English Version: Alexa on Fire TV provides the most comprehensive voice experience of any streaming media player—view live camera feeds, check the weather, dim the lights, and stream music.

Google Translate (Spanish): Alexa on Fire TV ofrece la experiencia de voz más completa de cualquier reproductor de medios de transmisión: vea las transmisiones de cámaras en vivo, verifique el clima, atenúe las luces y transmita música.

Human Translation:

The subtle differences:

What Translation Options Are Available For Sellers?


If you were worried about not knowing how to speak a foreign language, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are economical means available to ensure that your listing can be translated for a new marketplace.

There are 3 main ways to go about translating your listing:

1. Translate the product listing yourself

Sure, you can invest the time and money to become fluent in a language so you can write your own listings. Alternatively you could ask a friend who speaks the language you need. Both of these are options. But you are going to miss out on the nuances of the description by doing this, which is going to mean that you will definitely lose sales and be selected in search less often.

2. Use a translation software like Google Translate

Google Translate is super easy to use. Simply copy any text and paste it into the program, and within a second a functional translation will be provided. This translation works great for answer minor customer service requests or getting the gist of what’s being said in a foreign language.
The shortcoming of the service is an inability to make subtle adjustments that are important is special conditions. This is crucial for marketing copy because any misused words or botched grammar will distract the customer focus on things unrelated to the product.

3. Hire a native translator

 A native will be able to effectively communicate in the marketplace language and avoid committing unnecessary blunders

4. Hire a native translator with marketing experience

This group can take an optimized source listing and translate it so that carries over the persuasion qualities that has enabled the product to perform so well

What is the Best Option for a product listing translation?

It depends upon product, price point, and what you’re comfortable with not being perfect with your operation.
The product listing page is the gateway to sales on Amazon and a way for the seller to take the necessary moves to capitalize on every opportunity. Choosing a translation service for your product listing is no different to any other marketing business decision. You are best of using someone who does that job day in day out and has success under their belt. That means using someone that regularly works with Amazon businesses and understands marketing as part of its DNA to implement a solid listing with the intention of getting your listing to make more sales.

If you’re curious about how to get more out of this, you can read our guide: How To Improve Your Amazon Listing: Effective Selling In New Markets, or hit us up. We love solving problems and answering questions, so please give us the chance! We’d love to hear from you. It only takes 15 seconds to comment on this, and you’d be doing us a huge favour! We promise we’ll respond quickly as your success on Amazon is our mission!