Expert playbook for building a localization strategy

What is a localization strategy

A localization strategy is a step-by-step plan for making your product feel native in every market you enter. It sets out how you’ll adapt language, design, features, pricing, checkout flows, support hours, and legal fine print, right down to date formats and preferred payment wallets.

Localization is how your customers get a “built-for-me” experience from day one. It also keeps product, marketing, and ops teams in sync, sparing you the scramble of last-minute fixes and wasted spend.

Why do you need a localization strategy

Too many teams treat localization as a box-ticking side quest. It’s often something to tackle later in a project. But to deliver a standout customer experience, you need to pull it into the boardroom and include it into your core growth plan.

Localization shouldn’t be an afterthought in your business expansion strategy. Here’s why you should prioritize it:

• Stronger relationships: Speak to buyers in their own language and context, and loyalty follows
• Faster wins: A local-friendly brand beats rivals to revenue in new markets
• Healthier finances: Efficient rollouts reduce re-work and fund further expansion
• Lasting reputation: Consistent, culturally tuned experiences make your name ring true everywhere

Put simply, you need a gameplan to localize your brand and grow in international markets. Now, let’s learn how to build this strategy from the ground up.

Start by naming every touchpoint that shapes a customer’s first impression. Think website copy, signup flow, in-app cues, pricing, support hours, even the number of digits in a phone field.

Then, get leadership to agree on which of these must feel native on day one and which can wait. A shared definition keeps side projects from spiraling into “surprise” must-haves two weeks before launch.

Here are some scenarios:

• If you want to introduce your product, you might translate the copy but keep the visuals in English
• If you want to reassure the audience that they’ll be able to use the product, an effective way to do this is to show a picture of the localized product
• If you want your audience to believe that your product is really easy to use, you might need a localized video to prove this

The more elements there are to localize, the more skills are needed to do it, the longer it takes to coordinate all the stakeholders to get the final product, and the more their collective time will cost.

The next step is to decide to which degree you want to localize your content.

Step #2: Pick your depth (relevance vs. scalability)

Full cultural immersion (e.g., new visuals, adjusted hardware specs, local payment wallets) wins hearts fastest, but strains budgets and timelines. Light-touch tweaks ship quicker, yet risk feeling imported.

The degree of localization needed can vary significantly across markets and languages and must be balanced with customer expectations. 

So you need to do the research and write down your observations, assumptions, and conclusions. For example:

• Observation: In some non-English speaking countries conversion is very similar or even higher compared to English-speaking markets
   
• Assumption: High levels of education and income are highly correlated with English language proficiency → High overlap between our target segment and English-speaking population in some countries
   
• Conclusion: Localization is beneficial in countries with low level of English but high level of education and income 

The point of this exercise is to map out the level of localization needed by different target markets.

Step #3: Align all teams

Product fears layout breaks. Marketing dreads inconsistent voice. Support worries about answering tickets in six languages overnight.

Walk each group through how localization supports their KPIs, show the upstream planning that limits fire drills, and assign a single decision owner for disputes. When teams see their goals reflected in the plan, resistance fades.

Just think about it. If localization already seems such a pain, do you think that these teams would also be willing to change the way they work? Not likely.

To reiterate, you need to make sure that localization aligns with each team’s goals, ways of working, and the standards that they set for their work.

Step #4: Flag the big hurdles upfront

Right-to-left interfaces, on-device fonts, strict data laws, or shipping rules, there’s truly a lot of localization challenges that might pop up. Instead of being reactive, note them in the plan in advance, along with clear owners and timelines.

Make sure to pair each hurdle with a first step, and that’s how you’ll turn potential show-stoppers into scheduled tasks. What you’re essentially doing here is risk analysis and smart pre-planning.

Step #5: Give translators and localization experts a living style guide

Building a style guide is an ongoing process. Make sure to learn from your translator’s mistakes and keep updating your guidelines. It’s important to come up with better alternatives in similar scenarios and write down what you would (and would not) do in such situations, and why.

Write the voice rules, taboo topics, and sample “before/after” lines. Include the why behind each rule.

If you don’t want religious references in your translations, the best way to avoid them is to explain why you don’t want them in your brand messages.

For example:

• We don’t use words or phrases with strong religious connotations which might suggest that we want to express religious views and preferences.
• We choose to paraphrase or omit idioms when we risk saying something that can be misunderstood

Step #6: Build a business case (cost, complexity, and ROI)

Executives will green-light localization only when they see a clear path from spend to payoff. This is why it’s important to wrap up your plan in a concise, numbers-first snapshot.

Create an executive summary that outlines:

• What you will localize and how
• What you expect to achieve by doing localization in terms of business benefits
• How you will measure success in numbers
• How much it will all cost, how much revenue it will generate, and what kind of investment is needed

Here’s one example.

You might group markets based on the degree of localization your target customers expect. So you can also set expectations with stakeholders and sponsors around the efforts you put into support in the market entry and growth.

Step #7: Roll out in two levels

“Localization is best divided into two levels”, shared Tatiana. Rolling everything out at once is a sure-fire way to blow deadlines and budgets.

Instead, treat localization like a home makeover. Refresh the front customers see first, then upgrade the behind-the-scenes systems once the new space is paying for itself.

This two-level approach delivers quick wins, proves the ROI, and gives teams room to plan the heavier lifts. Let’s take a closer look.

Level 1: Localize the shop window first

Start with everything the customer sees and clicks before and right after purchase:

• Website and landing pages
• Checkout flow, error messages, price displays
• Onboarding emails, in-app tooltips, how-to videos
• Self-service areas (returns portal, FAQs, knowledge-base articles)

These assets are quick to translate, simple to A/B test, and directly tied to conversion and CSAT.

Level 2: Localize the engine room when it pays off

Once early revenue covers the basics, move behind the scenes:

• Operations and tax (e.g., local invoicing, VAT/GST handling, compliant receipts)
• Fulfilment and returns (e.g. regional warehouses, local carriers, translated RMA flows)
• Customer support (e.g., native-language agents or AI chat)
• Channel partners (e.g., reseller contracts, training decks, co-marketing assets)

This work is heavier and touches finance, logistics, and legal teams.

The two-level approach works because you get to capture early wins without over-engineering, and then reinvest proven gains into durable, locally compliant operations.

Stakeholders see a tidy budget story, teams avoid burnout, and customers experience a steady, polished rollout (instead of a rushed half-launch).

Your job is to estimate the profitability of your localization efforts and prioritize high-value, low-effort initiatives.

You might also decide to start with the easiest markets that are not necessarily the most profitable, so you can gain experience and maximize your chances of success when you enter markets that need more complex localization.

Localization expectations vary by touch point and target market, so you need to find a way to balance these. A good question for a sanity check is:

What’s the extent of localization that would be enough for X market to buy the product?

And another layer of complexity on top of the differences in customer expectation is the difference between the target language and the one you would be translating from it’s a lot easier to translate from English into Spanish than into Arabic because you don’t need to change the layout across all customer surfaces to accommodate for the fact that the language is written right to left.

Top 3 best practices for your localization strategy

1. Anticipate localization needs in the design stage

Traditionally, companies build their products, websites, and other resources in a primary language first. Then, they scramble to localize everything once it’s complete. This reactive approach treats localization as an afterthought. 

As a result, team members discover localization challenges too late in the process and struggle with costly reworks, design constraints, and unanticipated delays.

In an ideal world, you should be thinking about localization from the design stage. 

Design-stage localization is a powerful way to continuously release fully localized products like mobile apps, web apps, and games. This approach proactively brings localized content considerations into the design process and creates more adaptable layouts from the outset.

When you design with localization in mind, you designers can:

• Create prototypes and mockups in Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD
• Populate them with different languages based on your target markets
• Check how the design will look with different marketing translations early in the process

That means your designer can adapt the design to suit different locales before a single line of code is written. You’ll catch any potentia

2. Implement an agile localization workflow

Once you’ve designed your brand keeping localization at the front and center of your strategy, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get the ball rolling. But even the most thorough localization strategy can collapse under poor execution.

That’s why, at Lokalise, we recommend agile localization—a set of software development methodologies based on iterative and cross-functional team collaboration.

In the agile framework, teams work on localization needs right from the start of the development cycle. When new iterations are released, translators can localize these changes in real-time.

Here’s what this localization workflow management looks like:

• Developers supply the source code to product managers/marketers
• Product managers/marketers submit the content for translation
• Translators work their magic and localize the material
• Stakeholders review the localized content

The result? Your team can localize every asset in real-time witho

3. Deploy local user testing panels

Create multiple testing panels of native speakers to collect customer feedback and steer your localization efforts in the right direction. No amount of internal review will give you the clarity and intel that these testing panels can offer.

Conduct testing at multiple stages:

• Early concept testing with wireframes
• Milestone-based review of translated assets
• Pre-launch testing of the localized experience
• Continuous feedback collection after the launch

Look beyond linguistic accuracy to focus on assessing more critical aspects like cultural relevance and emotional resonance. In a continuous localization environment, you can ask a mix of objective questions and scenario-based tests to get actionable feedback throughout the development cycle.

More importantly, close the loop by integrating this feedback into your localization workflow. Set up checkpoints in your process to refer back to user feedback and make changes.

Case study: Inside Revolut’s localization strategy

What happens when you get localization right? Just ask Revolut—the financial app serving over 20 million customers across 30+ countries.

What started as a scattered effort without a dedicated localization team turned into a strong growth lever, fueling an impressive 186% increase in their customer base.

But how did the team achieve this feat? By building a robust localization infrastructure to manage its high-volume requirements effortlessly with Lokalise. 

Every Revolut asset—mobile/web apps, notifications, emails, FAQs, and blog posts—lives in a centralized hub on Lokalise. Automated workflows take care of the handoffs between internal and external stakeholders at every stage of the localization cycle. 

In short: Every asset automatically flows from creation to translation to implementation without any manual intervention.

The results speak volumes:

• Scalable implementation that grows with their business
• Lightning-fast implementation without compromising quality
• An astonishing 60,000 words localized daily across 22 languages

Ready to create your own localization success story? Now that you understand what goes into a localization strategy, it’s time to put it into action. 
Grab a free Lokalise trial to implement your localization strategy, so you can improve your customer experience and accelerate international expansion.