Your IPO’s new listing on the NYSE or LSE debuts your brand on an international stage. With global eyes looking at your business, localising your IR website for foreign investors is mission-critical to your success. The only problem is that localisation is an art form. If your team of IROs doesn’t have experience localising content, even your polyglottal officers can face challenges when adjusting content for new audiences.
Below, you can find some of the most common hurdles standing in the way of the average IR team, and what your team can do to overcome them.
1. IR Web Design
After building an attractive IR website, you could easily believe you only need to swap out your original text with the translated content. But you have to consider user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) factors. Otherwise, your localised IR site could suffer from architectural problems that deter visitors.
The IR experts at Q4 treat UI and UX as closely related principles when creating their award-winning IR web design. These factors play off each other to create visually stunning website templates that support intuitive browsing. You can see these principles in effect on their own localised Q4 Denmark site.
If your IR web designers don’t localise the UI and UX of their sites, you can run into some glaring design issues:
- A translated text that’s longer than the original, so text overlays images and infographics, or navigation buttons are too small for the translated call to action.
- Depending on your target audience, your old site template won’t support right-to-left writing systems like Arabic, Hebrew, or Persian.
2. Cultural Differences that Go Beyond Words
Literal translation is only half of a localisation expert’s job. The other half involves adjusting your copy to reflect the cultural norms, expressions, and symbolism that is unique to your corner of the world.
English-speaking businesses are notorious for relying on corporation jargon and idioms that leave non-English-speaking colleagues, customers, and shareholders scratching their heads. Confused? To scratch one’s head is an example of just that kind of idiom. It describes someone who has to think long and hard about something before coming to a conclusion. Like other popular sayings in the office (popular ones include getting your ducks in a row or tabling an issue), they can do more harm than good.
Localisation experts can find an equivalent version of such an idiom in your target audience’s language (if there is a one-for-one replacement), or they may recommend when to omit these puzzling additions altogether.
3. A Modest Budget
Lastly, the biggest challenge faced by IROs today is a small budget. C-Suite has been asking you to do more with less each year, so the cost will always be at the forefront of your mind. Your bottom line is a hard, black-and-white number that you must follow.
Luckily, boutique IR firms are scalable, so you can access full-suite solutions at any stage of your journey — from before your IPO announcement to the day you become a mega-cap stock.
Don’t Let These Obstacles Stand in Your Way
Your IR site is a reflection of your company. To make the best first impression with foreign investors, plan to localise your website today.
