Localization testing is critical to ensuring global brand consistency

Extensive software testing is required to ensure global brand consistency when deploying to new locations and targeting new audiences. In light of location and language nuances, your product needs to fit the needs of its intended audience, speak to them in terms they understand, and provide a user experience that feels so intuitive it drives adoption and long-term retention.

While the role of localization testing focuses on adapting content, modifying designs, and tweaking features to fit a local or regional context, the real goal is not a contextual translation but to communicate the value of your offering to a new audience in a way that is uniquely on brand. Your standard UX checklist will cover general usability problems, including language, currency, format, and layout issues — but it can’t account for cultural nuances and political sensitivities. A single misstep here can lead your brand into the crosshairs of controversy. Localization testing combines a quality user experience consistent with the established brand persona. 

Location testing vs. localization testing

Yes, location testing plays a vital part in deploying to new countries. Product owners need to ensure that an app is functional in the brick and mortar locations worldwide. Make sure to consider the importance of real devices used by real people in real locations. Localization testing goes beyond functionality and dives into cultural nuance. Here’s a quick guide.

Location testing is performed:

• in any physical location throughout the world
• at brick-and-mortar locations, including stores, stadiums, homes, workplaces
• with functional, location-based functional, usability, linguistics, and/or exploratory tests
• to test functionality, connectivity, and other experiences
• to help better understand behavioral paths and improve the app-driven customer experience regardless of the location

In contrast, localization testing: 

• analyzes and validates that an application fits a target audience’s linguistic, cultural, and other needs. 
• often involves more than just linguistic translation and may include adjustments to numeric/date/time formats, currency/keyboard usage, sorting, symbols/icons/colors, and cultural references to avoid misunderstandings or insensitivity.
• checks native UI, language, currency, payment gateways, and date & time formatting to meet the standards of that country. 

Users who download an app or software expect it to make sense: in their native language, with their native currency, and without wonky UI issues. Localization is the only surefire way to maintain brand consistency – color, imagery, tone, voice, and functionality – throughout all locations.

Ensure global brand consistency through localization testing

Customers demand digital continuity. They want the same brand experience, voice, level of quality, and processes across all locations and devices. Localization testing is a critical tool for deploying your web and mobile app and subsequent brand across the globe. Proper localization tests don’t just test for bugs but for brand consistency, giving users in different locales an equivalent experience that matches the quality customers expect from brands that have earned their trust.

Your brand’s unique charm makes it recognizable — and, more importantly, distinguishable- from other brands. That’s why localization entails much more than translating company catchphrases and owned terms into local equivalents. An inadequately tested rollout at odds with global brand consistency will likely be abandoned.  

Customers who have some familiarity with your brand and look forward to a localized user experience will question how much your company values their loyalty when met with subpar brand UX in a new location, device, or language. 

Localize it or lose it (customer trust)

Brand loyalty is worth a hefty premium because it creates a psychological moat around your products even when competitors offer more value. The longevity of any business is inextricably tied to the strength and quality of global brand continuity. That’s why established brands all want the same thing: to be perceived in the best light wherever customers are. 

A product with a great local footprint must also be great abroad. Good enough just doesn’t cut it anymore. Deploying globally is about more than ensuring functionality in a new location. To achieve a successful global expansion, various localization tests are essential: 

• linguistic testing to ensure that translations are accurate and consistent
• cultural testing to ensure that software is sensitive to local cultural norms and preferences
• functional testing to confirm that software works correctly in the local environment.

Automating your localization testing with an external, distributed testing team gives your brand the necessary failsafe to maintain brand integrity and protect itself from public embarrassment. It also gives your engineering and product teams peace of mind, so they can focus on creating value instead of scrambling to fix unexpected post-launch problems.

Testlio provides a global network of software testing experts whose depth of expertise and cultural insights have helped many of the world’s most well-known brands successfully expand. Talk to us.