How to deliver global digital experiences while keeping costs in check

If you want to cut localization costs, you need to prioritize

Trying to localize everything leads to budget overruns and underwhelming results. The key word here is focus. You should put your budget and effort where localization drives measurable business value.

Here’s what high-impact localization looks like. Instead of spreading resources thin, zero in on content that:

• Influences conversion, activation, or retention
• Is frequently accessed or customer-facing
• Creates friction if not localized (e.g., legal, support, onboarding)

Most teams see the biggest return on localization in onboarding flows that help new users succeed faster, pricing pages and product overviews that influence purchase decisions, and support content that reduces ticket volume.

Notice a pattern? You probably see it’s about the key touchpoints that are directly connected to either retention or conversion, and both come down to customer enablement. 

Using a scoring model to decide what to localize

So, how do you actually decide what’s worth localizing? To cut localization costs and make strategic decisions, implement a basic scoring model.

Evaluate each content type or asset using three filters: business impact, user exposure, and localization sensitivity. This is how you’ll be able to at least partially quantify localization business value.

This kind of structured approach also makes it easier to get buy-in. Instead of just asking for more budget, you’re showing exactly where the investment goes and what return to expect. That’s how localization becomes a business growth lever versus an expense item your CEO will frown upon.

Once you’re done with scoring, you can decide the right level of effort for each piece of content:

We need to emphasize that for the most important markets, it’s likely that you’ll need to localize everything. The entire experience needs to feel native, as if it was originally built for them.

If you can, prioritize internationalization before localization

Localization gets expensive when internationalization isn’t done right. Hardcoded strings, layout issues, encoding problems, and lack of context are examples of technical gaps that lead to costly rework, delays, and developer frustration.

That’s why internationalization (i18n) should be treated as a product requirement. It’s the foundation that makes localization faster, smoother, and significantly more cost-effective.

A product or website is internationalized when it can:

• Separate text from code so it’s easily translatable
• Handle different character sets, text directions, and currencies
• Support dynamic variables (dates, names, numbers) in any language
• Adapt layouts to fit translated content (especially for languages like German or Arabic)
  Integrate easily with translation management systems like Lokalise

Without this foundation, every localization effort becomes a patch job, one that costs more and takes longer every time you scale to a new market.

Putting numbers to it

Let’s try to do some basic napkin math to illustrate the value of internationalization.

We can agree that fewer bugs mean fewer developer hours. Let’s say each localization sprint leads to 10-15 string formatting or layout bugs due to poor i18n. If fixing each issue takes ~1 hour of dev time, that’s 15 hours per market.

Multiply that by 6 new markets and you’ll easily reach 90 hours of unplanned work.

If we assume an average fully loaded cost for a developer is $100/hour (a conservative mid-range figure for global companies factoring in salary, taxes, benefits, etc.), this means you’ll pay $9,000 per rollout.

Mind you, this is an additional cost caused by completely avoidable rework.

Now imagine you’re entering 6 markets this year.

That’s $54,000 in wasted dev effort alone, not including project delays, missed revenue, or increased localization QA time.

The value of internationalization is in three things:

• Faster time-to-market (launches turn into plug-and-play motions)
• Automation and continuous localization are made possible (​​content flows automatically without manual copy-pasting)
• Duplicate work is eliminated (you can localize the same string in five different ways across five product areas)

Add the revenue side, too

Let’s look at the opportunity cost as well. Studies on global buying behavior show that:

• Around 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy from sites that offer information in their own language, and
• Roughly 40% say they won’t buy at all if the site isn’t in a language they understand

If you launch in a new market with $1M in projected annual online revenue and an English-only or poorly localized experience, you can expect significant losses.

If even 10-20% of potential buyers bounce because they don’t fully understand your content or don’t trust it, that’s $100,000-$200,000 in lost sales per market, per year.

So when you invest upfront in internationalization, you’re doing three things at once: protecting your team’s time, unlocking faster launches, and protecting revenue in every new market.

Now, let’s move on to other localization efficiency strategies.
 

Automate repetitive tasks and free up your team

Every team knows the pain of repetitive, manual work. Yes, we’re talking about copying and pasting strings, uploading files, chasing updates, tracking down missing context, checking if the latest version really is the latest version.

It’s both a time suck and a cost multiplier. Project managers, developers, and translators all spend hours on work that could (and should) be automated.

That’s where a platform like Lokalise helps teams lower localization costs and scale operations without scaling headcount.

By automating repetitive localization tasks, you free up your team to focus on higher-value work. They have more time to improve the digital experience for the global audience. Plus, you can expect to reach new markets faster.

Task automation and localization ROI

Automating repetitive steps is one of the most effective localization efficiency strategies. It helps teams cut localization costs, reduce delays, keep quality high, and protect project managers and translators from burnout.

With the right setup, you can automate:

• Content extraction directly from product, marketing, or support systems
• File uploads and downloads, including version control
• Assigning tasks to translators or reviewers QA checks for things like placeholder mismatches, missing translations, or inconsistent terms
• Syncing updates between systems (e.g, dev tools, CMS, product UI)

But how much can you really save through automation? What’s the expected localization ROI, when you do it right?

How smart workflows cut localization costs

Let’s say your team localizes 25 new features or pages per month. If you spend even 30 minutes per item on manual prep, coordination, and QA, that’s 12.5 hours/month.

Over the course of a year:

• 12.5 hours x 12 months = 150 hours/year
• At $60/hour (typical PM or translator blended rate), that’s $9,000/year

And that’s just for one content stream. Multiply that by support articles, product updates, marketing campaigns… You’ll probably get dizzy with zeros.

Let’s give a conservative estimate of localization costs that come extra when manual work is a part of the equation.

This amounts to a total of $24,000-36,000/year, and that’s a conservative estimate.

If automation eliminates even 50% of the manual workload (which many Lokalise users report), your potential annual savings could be up to $18,000/year.

And that’s not including the indirect savings from faster time-to-market, reduced human error, and more bandwidth for high-impact work.

Make your content work harder before localization

Bad source content is one of the most expensive mistakes in localization. Overly complex sentences, inconsistent terminology, and culture-specific phrasing lead to slower translations, more back-and-forth with linguists, and quality issues that surface too late.

This is where localization-aware UX and copy matter. Localization-ready content comes from designers and copywriters who understand what happens after a page, flow, or screen is created:

• UX designers who design with localization in mind leave room for text expansion, avoid hardcoded text in visuals, and think about how layouts behave in languages that read right-to-left or use longer words.
• Copywriters who are localization-aware write with clear intent, avoid puns and wordplay that break in other languages, and structure messages so they’re easy to adapt across regions.

When design and content teams work this way, translators don't need to “fix” assets and engage in endless back and forth.

What “translation-ready” content means

Teams that take a little extra time to prep content before sending it off for translation see fewer errors, faster turnaround, and lower overall costs. It’s one of the easiest wins in any multilingual content strategy.

Here’s what “translation-ready” content actually means:

• Keep it clear and simple: Long, ambiguous, or jargon-heavy sentences don’t translate well. Plain language always wins.
• Avoid culture-locked phrasing: Idioms like “the ball’s in your court” or “on the same page” don’t always make sense globally.
• Use inclusive, globally relevant language: Write for everyone. Swap “ZIP code” for “postal code,” “he or she” for “they,” and so on.
• Set guardrails with a glossary and style guide: Define your key terms and tone upfront so translators don’t have to guess. That means less rework, more consistency, and better brand alignment across markets.

This doesn’t require a massive process change. You should instill a collective habit across all teams to write with localization in mind from the start. It’ll save your localization budget more times than you think.

Choose tools that are localization-ready

Content isn’t the only thing that needs to be “ready.” Your tech stack plays a big role in how easy (or painful) localization becomes. Tools that have prioritized localization in their design make it much easier to work at scale. For example:

• Design tools like Figma (and plugins such as Figma Buzz) that support multi-language layouts and string management
• CMS platforms like Webflow or Storyblok that treat multilingual content as a first-class citizen
• Customer engagement platforms like Iterable or MoEngage that offer strong localization capabilities and APIs

These platforms have already done a lot of thinking about how to localize content and built the right APIs to support it. That makes it far easier to connect them to a localization platform like Lokalise, automate content flows, and avoid fragile, manual workarounds.

You don’t need a huge operational overhaul to benefit from this. The goal is to instill a shared habit across teams. Write with localization in mind and choose tools that don’t work against you. Over time, that mindset will save your localization budget more times than you can count.

Reuse what you’ve already paid for

If you’ve translated something once, you shouldn’t be paying to translate it again. But that’s exactly what happens when teams don’t have the right systems in place.

Translation Memory (TM) is your hidden cost-saving engine. TM stores every previously approved translation so it can be automatically reused across projects, languages, and teams. It’s one of the fastest ways to reduce translation volume, improve consistency, and stretch your localization budget further.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

• You launch a new product page. 30% of the content already exists in your TM, so there’s no need to retranslate it.
• Your team updates onboarding flows in three languages. A platform such as Lokalise flags previously translated strings, and your linguists only work on the new parts.
• You refresh your help center. TM pre-fills repeated answers and phrases, so your language service provider spends time where it counts (hint: rewriting “click the button” five different ways is not a good use of their time).

It’s quite simple. The more you reuse, the less you pay. And consequently, the more consistent your multilingual content becomes.
 

Add nuance with local experts, but only where it counts

Automation, AI, and translation memory can take you far. But not everywhere. Some markets need more than translated words. They need cultural clarity, regional context, and local nuance. That’s where in-market experts make all the difference.

That’s why the most cost-efficient global teams don’t rely on humans for everything, but they do rely on them strategically.

Here’s where local experts deliver the most ROI:

• High-stakes content: Legal terms, compliance pages, contracts
• High-context content: Campaign messaging, hero copy, product launches
• Culturally sensitive regions: Where direct translation can impact trust or brand perception
• New market entry: Where you don’t have usage data yet and can’t afford to get it wrong

Local experts help you shape messaging that resonates. They catch subtle issues early, help avoid costly missteps, and ensure your content feels made for the local audience.

Can you scale localization without scaling costs?

Expanding globally doesn’t have to mean doubling your localization budget. The most efficient teams are already proving this by combining automation, AI, and human expertise in the right places.

Lokalise cost savings are quite impressive, with customers reporting ROI that sits between 140% and 3000%. This is possible because of three main things:

• AI translation capabilities help you save up to 80% of translation costs without sacrificing quality
• Human translators are freed up to focus where nuance matters
• Automation keeps everything running smoothly (reduce time-to-market by 30-50%)

When you think about it, manual localization slows everything down. You’re forced to play email ping-pong, deal with version mix-ups, and handle dev bottlenecks.

Given the fact that localization project managers often spend 10+ hours/week on repetitive tasks, removing that burden with automation built into every step is incredibly valuable.

With Lokalise, you automate:

• Content extraction from source systems
• File management and task assignment
• QA checks and translator workflows

Less chasing, less clicking, more time for strategic work. That’s how teams free up hundreds of hours a year and scale without hiring more people.

Lokalise is trusted by companies such as IBM, Amazon Prime, DHL, Nespresso, Hyundai, and more. If you want to see why for yourself, sign up for a free 14-day trial, no credit card required.