In 2021 CSA Research, a Massachusetts-based consultancy, surveyed 9,909 consumers in 33 countries. Forty percent of respondents said they would not buy from a website in a foreign language.
Localization for merchants can seem as simple as turning on an ecommerce platform’s automatic translation. But readable is not the same as credible.
I’m writing this from my native Poland. In E.U. markets, where shoppers are already wary of cross-border sellers, auto-translation is only the first step.
Nearly all Europeans have used the internet. Roughly three-quarters of those have purchased goods online.
Trust
Eurostat, the statistical office of the E.U., found in 2025 that 95% of European adults had used the internet and 78% of those had purchased online (PDF).
The shoppers are there.
Yet cross-border buying remains relatively low in some markets. Only 20% of Germans and 13% of Poles bought from sellers in other E.U. countries in 2024, according to a report from Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The cause is more than language: delivery, payments, price, returns, and trust matter too.
But language is arguably the top hurdle. For many shoppers, awkward, overly literal copy is a warning. Machine translation gets the meaning but often stumbles on tone. The phrasing can be technically correct and still feel foreign, eroding trust before checkout.
Sometimes the best translation is an adaptation. A U.S. fashion store might describe an outerwear item as “your new go-to jacket.” A literal German version — “Ihre neue Jacke, zu der Sie immer greifen” — is understandable but awkward. A local copywriter might choose “Ihre neue Lieblingsjacke für jeden Tag” (“your new favorite everyday jacket”).
It’s the same promise with a recognizable idiom.
Engines
Translation software has improved, but I know of no universal solution. DeepL offers glossaries and formal or informal tone controls and focuses on a smaller language set. Google Cloud Translation includes more languages and publishes usage-based pricing.
Coverage, features, and prices change continually; compare platforms in real time rather than rely on a fixed, dated ranking. Test on your own product pages, support copy, and checkout before choosing.
I admit an affinity for DeepL: its founder is a fellow Pole. In my experience, DeepL’s European-language output is more natural, but results vary by language pair, content type, terminology, and brand voice.
And nothing replaces a human review. Software can narrow the gap, but it doesn’t remove accountability.
French copy often uses formal address; a German store must choose between du and Sie. French copy written for France may not fit Belgium. German copy may require different shipping, tax, payment, and address information for Germany than for Austria.
Currency, prices, dates, measurements, address fields, payment options, and transactional messages also need local treatment. An otherwise localized product page can feel unfinished when reviews and FAQs remain in English.
Search
Search engine optimization for multiple languages is rare. Google introduced the hreflang HTML attribute in 2011 to help it and other search engines detect local languages. Yet only about 20% of global websites use hreflang, per published reports.
Machine translation doesn’t violate Google’s rules and can still rank. The SEO risk comes from publishing thousands of unreviewed, near-duplicate translations merely to capture traffic.
Start Small
Don’t attempt to translate an ecommerce site into every E.U. language. Choose one or two markets based on demand, margins, and existing traffic. Create a glossary for product names and brand terminology and use a storefront localization app for the first pass. Weglot is cross-platform and runs on DeepL, Google, and others. Shopify’s free Translate & Adapt is enough to test a market or two. WooCommerce stores can use WPML.
Retain a native-language specialist to review the pages that drive sales, such as product descriptions, checkout, returns, and transactional emails.
Then track conversion rates, search traffic, and customer engagement by market. The results will show what needs improving and where to expand next.
