BIMobject is a global marketplace and as such the platform supports over 20 languages. We do our best to ensure that the UI of the platform is accessible in these languages for the best possible user experience.

However, we appreciate that it's not always possible for our customers to support these languages, especially when the languages are predominantly for markets that you don't operate in. We appreciate that the cost/benefit trade-off to the individual customer may be prohibitive to translating product information for the users' benefit, but stress that it can greatly increase the visibility of your products on both search engines and our own platform's search.

To overcome this obstacle we are now machine translating product descriptions into key languages:

This means that if you choose not to translate your product descriptions to these languages will have your descriptions automatically translated. These translated descriptions are then included on the product page where the translated keywords can be picked up by search engines and our platform for greater discoverability. They are also available to the user with a clear label so that they can read in their native language or switch to the original in English.

We tested this strategy with the Japanese market and saw a 20% increase in engagement, although the impact will vary depending on the market, category or product, we expect it to have a positive effect across the platform for both engagement and usability.

If you would like to add your own translations you can easily override the machine-translated version by adding a translation in Publish.