Software Localization Strategies

“Sorry, but your name has invalid characters.” 40 False Assumptions About Names In Interfaces (https://lnkd.in/esFQZBch) lists 40 wrong assumptions that usually result in poor error messages, lock-outs and dead ends. Key takeaways: ✅ People often have multiple full names. ✅ People don’t always have 1 full name which they go by. ✅ People’s names do change over time. ✅ There are dozens of various naming schemes worldwide. ✅ Allow people to type their name as they prefer. 🚫 Names aren’t always written in a single character set. 🚫 Don’t impose space or character limitations. 🚫 Not everyone has a last name, family name or middle name. 🚫 First names and last names aren’t always different. ✅ Names may include numbers and punctuation. ✅ Names also include prefixes, suffixes, everything-in-between. ✅ Systems often use different names for the same person. We shouldn’t make any assumptions about people’s names. There are literally dozens of different naming schemes around the world, and validating any names is usually a dangerous path to take. People whose names break validation aren’t outliers. They are real people with real names that don’t match our validation restrictions. The way out is easy: accept any name that a user provides, whatever characters they include, and whatever way they choose to type it. Useful articles: Creating More Inclusive and Culturally Sensitive Forms, by Mark H. Anbinder https://lnkd.in/eBBHuKyn How To Ask Users For Names, Gov.uk https://lnkd.in/eYTQutVh Designing Forms for Gender Diversity and Inclusion, by Sabrina Fonseca https://lnkd.in/e2UGu9N2 #ux #design

🛍️ Apple just made retail history in Saudi Arabia—and every global brand should be taking notes While curating this week's cross-continental retail developments, Apple's Saudi Arabia online store launch perfectly demonstrates what I've been tracking: localization isn't just translation—it's total brand transformation. As someone who curates retail insights across markets, here's what makes this significant beyond just another market entry: • Language as competitive advantage: Arabic support isn't cosmetic—it's Apple acknowledging that 400+ million Arabic speakers globally represent massive retail potential • Cultural product integration: Free Arabic engraving on AirPods and Apple Pencils shows how personalization drives local market penetration • Physical retail strategy: The planned 2026 Diriyah flagship signals Apple's understanding that Middle East luxury consumers still value experiential retail spaces In my research across retail transformations, I consistently observe that successful global expansion requires brands to become cultural chameleons, not just product distributors. Apple's approach—from Arabic customer support to localized payment options—demonstrates mastery of this principle. This launch positions Saudi Arabia as Apple's Middle East retail laboratory, potentially influencing how the tech giant approaches other emerging luxury markets. What retail localization strategies are reshaping your industry? 👇 #GlobalRetail #RetailStrategy #TechRetail #RetailLocalization #MiddleEastRetail #topretailexpert #retailconsultant #publishedauthor

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐧𝐚𝐦 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐢𝐭) 𝟒 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐈 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫: After a decade working in PR and Communications, helping international brands enter Vietnam, I've watched the same patterns repeat over and over. Brilliant companies with massive budgets and proven track records elsewhere. But when they land here? Complete disaster. It's not because Vietnam is "difficult." It's because they make the same 4 mistakes that could have been avoided with better preparation. 👇 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟏: 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 "Vietnam is an emerging market, how complicated could it be?" Very complicated, actually. Take Zoomcar. Car-sharing worked in India, so why not Vietnam? Turns out, Vietnamese consumers have completely different relationships with vehicle ownership and mobility preferences. They didn't dig deep enough into local behavior patterns. 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟐: 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐟𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 Remember when Changee launched and immediately got boycotted because of a map showing the nine-dash line? One image destroyed their entire market entry. Vietnamese consumers are incredibly patriotic and will unite against brands that disrespect our cultural values. → This isn't political correctness - it's basic respect for the market you want to serve. 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟑: 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 Gojek tried to localize as “GoViet” - the original name of Gojek when entering the Vietnamese market but still lost to Grab. Even worse? Local player Be has been quietly gaining market share with campaigns perfectly tuned to Vietnamese humor - like "Be Thuyền" during flood season and "Be Trực Thăng" during military parade season. → Local competitors don't just understand the market better. They move faster and speak the cultural language fluently. 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟒: 𝐈𝐠𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 Uber and Air Asia both learned expensive lessons about the Vietnamese regulatory environment and business practices. → What works in Singapore or Thailand might be completely wrong for Vietnam. Here's what I tell every international client: Vietnam isn't a smaller version of another market. It's its own ecosystem with its own rules, preferences, and cultural dynamics. The brands that succeed here don't just translate their global strategy. They rebuild it from the ground up with Vietnamese insights. Respect the market, and the market will respect you back. Think global, Act local What's the biggest cultural mistake you've seen an international brand make in your market 🔔 Follow me Ivy Nhi Chau for more content like this.

To be a successful product engineer, it is important to think from a user perspective and make the user journey as seamless and frictionless as possible. Devtools Tech serves a global audience with large international user base. While designing the payment flow, I had the challenge to build it in a way that adapts to regional payment preferences. The Challenges: - The payment partner didn’t support regional pricing out-of-the-box. They were always showing INR based pricing. The customer had to see confusing international conversion during checkout - leading to drop-offs. - How to reliably identify user’s country and show regional plans? - Based on the country, how to show supported payment methods? - Bonus: If a customer sees the international pricing on the first visit and convert to a paid customer then they should see the same pricing always irrespective of the geo. My Solutions: - Created multiple pricing plans in major currencies within our payment system. - Rather than integrating any third party API to determine user’s country, I used the CDN provider’s (Cloudflare) headers to detect user country. This helps reduce latency. - Used the country to showcase the correct regional plans and personalised the payment order creation to show region based payment methods for a consistent and reliable experience. - Stored the region during subscription creation to ensure geo based pricing on subsequent visits! This helped me provide better user experience, apply my learnings, and improve overall product conversion. You can apply the same thought process to your job/side-projects/products and make your customers happy! To know more of such product learnings and master advanced frontend, be part of the journey - https://lnkd.in/gYkaCskP

Is KYC risk assessment becoming more complex by the day? 🤔 With stricter global regulations and increasingly sophisticated financial crime tactics, it's a challenge we can't afford to overlook. I recently found a guide from iDenfy that offers practical insights and actionable strategies for compliance professionals. Even better, it's completely free, not even a gated content page, and you can directly get it from my post! It explores some of the biggest hurdles in our field, like: 📌 Managing regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions 📌Tackling high onboarding volumes without sacrificing accuracy 📌 Minimizing false positives and false negatives in risk assessments 🪡 What caught my attention is how it emphasizes modern, tailored solutions. For example, you can: ➡️ Adjust risk levels based on specific industries (think gambling, fintech, or healthcare) ➡️ Assign custom risk weights for better compliance alignment ➡️ Use no-code tools to create rules that meet your unique needs with ease 🛡️ Another highlight for me was its focus on countering emerging fraud risks, like synthetic identities, deepfakes, and hidden ownership structures. It explains how technologies like AI and biometric verification can help us stay ahead of these threats. 🌐 Beyond the tools and technologies, the guide stands out for its practical, risk-based approach to global compliance. Whether you're improving cross-border operations or automating workflows, the strategies feel grounded and relevant. If you’re looking for valuable insights to optimize your compliance processes, I think you’ll find this resource very useful. Sometimes, small changes in how we assess and manage risk can lead to big results! 💪 Are you passionate about an AML-related topic? 🤔 Would you like to write about it and reach over 23k compliance professionals? 🔥 If so, just send me a message to work out the details! 🙂 #compliance #financialcrime #moneylaundering #aml Viktor Domantas Darius Robert

🛍️🎯 Personalization in B2C Marketing: Enhancing Customer Experiences In the realm of B2C marketing, personalization is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance customer experiences and drive brand loyalty. Let's delve into the importance of personalization and explore strategies for tailoring messages, recommendations, and promotions to individual consumer preferences: **1. Understanding Individual Preferences: Personalization starts with understanding your customers on an individual level. Collect data on their purchase history, preferences, and interactions with your brand across various touchpoints. **2. Segmentation for Targeted Communication: Use segmentation to categorize your audience based on shared characteristics. This allows you to create targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with specific groups, delivering more relevant content. **3. Tailored Messaging and Content: Craft personalized messages that speak directly to the interests and needs of your customers. Whether it's email marketing, social media posts, or product recommendations, tailor the content to match individual preferences. **4. Dynamic Website Content: Implement dynamic content on your website that adapts based on user behavior and preferences. This can include personalized product recommendations, content suggestions, or even a personalized homepage experience. **5. Personalized Email Campaigns: Leverage personalization in email campaigns by addressing recipients by name and recommending products or content based on their past interactions. Use dynamic content blocks to tailor the email content for different segments. **6. Recommendation Engines: Implement recommendation engines on your website and other digital platforms. These engines analyze user behavior to suggest products or content that align with individual preferences, fostering a personalized shopping or browsing experience. **7. Behavioral Retargeting: Utilize behavioral retargeting to reconnect with users who have visited your website but didn't make a purchase. Display personalized ads showcasing the products they viewed, encouraging them to return and complete the transaction. By embracing personalization in B2C marketing, businesses can foster stronger connections with their audience, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. 🛒💻 #B2CMarketing #Personalization #CustomerExperience

Recently, I had the opportunity to share my learnings and insights from "Launching Products Globally" with an amazing audience at Plug and Play Tech Center with the presence of global audience including entrepreneurs from HKSTP - Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation. Here are a few learnings and insights from the evening: 1) You need to "localize" your product & go-to-market strategy: This doesn't only mean just translating or localizing your product. It's a lot more than that. You need to localize your "go-to-market" motion as well. You may have product-market-fit (PMF) locally, in the first country/region you launched, but that doesn't mean you can take the same product and go-to-market strategy to launch in a new country/region. As an example at Fitbit, we learned how the French think about fitness (they count walking to a restaurant to get a glass of wine as their "fitness") is very different than how Americans define workout and fitness. So all our marketing and go-to-market strategies had to align with the way locals will see benefits in our products. 2) Having boots on the ground is essential for successful global expansion: You need to have boots on the ground who truly understand the nuances of how to go-to-market, how to sell, and how to deliver your value proposition to customers in different regions. There are a lot of nuances of how to do business locally that will take outsiders to any market a long time to learn. At Cleo, where we had global customers like Salesforce, Redbull, Pepsi, and Uber, we had to have local health Guides to deliver our services with an intimate understanding of customers needs and approaches in that region. 3) Understanding local, cultural, and social aspects is critical to a global expansion success: Even though at the surface things may seem similar in each region, there are a lot of nuances that make your go-to-market strategy and the way you deliver your services resonate with the local customers or not. At Teladoc, we've learned that people in different countries think about their mental health and how to get support for that "very differently" than each other. Huge thank you to my hosts Rahim Amidi, Dr. Yahya Tabesh, Amir Amidi, Ahmadreza Masrour, and Akvile Gustaite, and HKSTP leaders, Albert Wong & Pheona Kan, who are interested in continuing these conversations. It was awesome to meet great entrepreneurs and see old friends: Reza Moghtaderi Esfahani, Daniel Lo, Houman Homayoun, Wayne Chang, Golnaz (Naz) Moeini. #product #gotomarket #globallaunch #globalbusiness

We are excited to share our #RAL2025 paper "Drift-free Visual SLAM using Digital Twins"! We remove drift in #VSLAM by aligning the sparse 3D point cloud from VSLAM to a Digital Twin using point-to-plane matching; no visual data association is needed! The result? Accurate, globally consistent localization, even without GPS. Code released! PDF: https://lnkd.in/gRdGpcfX Video: https://lnkd.in/g-m7RMr6 Code: https://lnkd.in/gqjqeT6g Kudos to Roxane MERAT, Giovanni Cioffi, Leonard Bauersfeld! University of Zurich, University of Zurich Faculty of Science, UZH Department of Informatics, European Research Council (ERC), AUTOASSESS, UZH Innovation Hub #SLAM, #Localization, #DigitalTwins

There is a correlation between innovation and diversity, Gartner says. But, how do you lead a cross-cultural Product Design team to tap into their full potential? In today's globalized world, design teams are more diverse than ever. Companies are recruiting remotely, and individuals are increasingly seeking opportunities abroad. Embracing cultural sensitivity is a reality that enriches everyone’s life, but also may need some adjustments on leadership.  It requires us to adapt and find new ways to ensure that every team member feels included and valued. From my own experiences, here are a few things to consider: - Empathy is Key: Take the time to understand your team members' cultural backgrounds. Empathy fosters trust and helps bridge gaps in communication. - Effective Communication: Language barriers and communication styles can vary. Encourage open dialogue, and be patient with misunderstandings. - Diverse Perspectives: Embrace the richness of diverse perspectives. Different cultures bring unique insights to the table. - Cultural Nuances: Be aware of cultural nuances in design preferences and user behavior. What works in one culture may not in another. - Continuous Learning: Stay curious and never stop learning about different cultures. It's a journey, not a destination. Leading cross-cultural teams can be challenging, but it's also incredibly rewarding. When you create an environment that celebrates diversity and values every voice, innovation flourishes.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from building businesses in Saudi Arabia is the power of what I call glocalization, which is the art of blending global strategies with local market insights. For brands to thrive in today’s interconnected world, they need to balance the strengths of global expertise while staying deeply connected to the local culture. Here’s how glocalization can help create a brand that resonates with Saudi consumers while positioning it for regional and global growth: 𝟏. 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭: Saudi Arabia is undergoing a rapid transformation, but local values and cultural nuances still drive consumer behavior. Understanding these insights allows you to tailor your offering to meet local expectations while leveraging global best practices. 𝟐. 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 & 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲: When I worked at Majorel and now with X-Shift, we focused on embedding our brand into the local fabric by being authentic and owning our Saudi identity. Localization is not just about the translation of material to Arabic, but about relevance and creating real connections with consumers. 𝟑. 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬: Don’t just import a strategy. Make it yours. While global frameworks provide a solid foundation, they need to be adapted to fit the unique needs of the local market. Successful brands take the best of both worlds. 𝟒. 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡: Once you’ve built a strong local presence, you’re ready to scale. By aligning your brand with local needs, you set yourself up for expansion into regional markets with similar cultural touchpoints then later realize your global ambitions. There’s no universal formula for success, but the key is finding the perfect balance. My experience building businesses in Saudi Arabia has taught me that success comes from creating something that truly resonates with people where they are, all while thinking ambitiously. When you master this balance, you build a brand that is not only deeply connected to its local roots but also flexible and ready to thrive on the global stage. What strategies have you found most effective in balancing local relevance with global ambition? Share your thoughts in the comments! #business #global #local #growth #KSA #SaudiArabia