The original checklist was just that: a checklist of things I gave to a client and had at the ready to help other companies that were considering going international.

We often see American tech companies that don't know where to start the process of internationalization or localization. Internationalization is more technical and involves denoting currencies and taking addresses in flexible ways based on locations.

Localization is about creating a product that feels tailored to each location.

While it will depend on the individual company, I've seen these projects be most successful when they are owned by the product team. Product usually already has strong ties to engineering and can partner cross functionally with other teams to do the work that is needed to expand globally. I have seen some companies do it under growth, but that usually happens when the growth team is already staffed with engineering or has dedicated time on the roadmap to do the work.

Having a clear scope and requirements upfront can keep you on schedule. Outside of product and software, big players will be finance and legal, because you’ll need to know how to operate in the country, what taxation looks like, and the regulations around banking. The requirements will vary based on location, but keep in mind that some countries will require you to have a local office in order to have a bank account that works in their currency, or support people within that country. The requirements can be diverse and time consuming, so you will need to have this planned out.

When working in house or with clients I always emphasize the importance of creating a “global first mindset” throughout the organization to prevent a “tech debt”. I see this mistake happen when an individual team is working on internationalization, while another team is building traditional features. If the building team is not considering that in the future the website will need to work for international customers, or the marketing on the homepage will need to be relevant to an international market, then we set ourselves up for problems in the future.

When it comes to using AI for translation, I think it's a quality and time tradeoff. Obviously, AI is very fast, usually affordable, and recently has been growing. A translation company, or hiring an in-house translator will probably not beat the technology in those aspects. If you have an employee who can double check grammar and make sure that everything sounds okay, it could be fine to use AI. However, your bar for quality is probably going to be lower.


That is why I suggest hiring translators for things like your homepage with marketing messaging because it can be so subjective. I have seen things go poorly very quickly without translators.

Kristina Gibson

I initially built this checklist for a client looking for expertise on their international strategy. After realizing many other companies had similar questions, I refined and shared it more broadly.

This is an example global expansion checklist as provided to client 

in 2015. While most content has been updated to 2023, some may need to be refreshed.

This checklist was built initially for a client looking for expertise on their international strategy. After realizing many other companies had similar questions, it was refined and shared more broadly. The checklist helps to discover parts of the company and product that need work for a company to expand into other countries.

A general guideline of foundational internationalization items.

This checklist can be useful throughout your expansion, but typically is best used in the beginning to determine an initial list of items to update. From there, your teams can use your current product development or business processes to track (like a product spec to update a landing page for expansion, a JIRA ticket in a sprint)

Items that need to be modified from an engineering standpoint

, if done properly, this will allow you to expand more easily into markets. It is the technical work to handle local specific needs, and in the future localization and translation. This list is an example of the places where changes may be needed. In a lot of cases, going through each piece of the product experience will help to identify requirements.

The benefit of this list is it will also help prompt you to think of other changes in your product or business. For example, when looking through your help center you might realize you have a dedicated phone number that is a 1-800 format and operates only in US hours. Or, you might see how you automatically add sales tax specific to a state. This will help broaden the scope of the work to be done to make your expansion successful.

Number format: “##,###  where commas can be replaced with spaces or periods.

Currency number format “1,225.00 vs 1.225,00 vs 1 225,00

Depending on your target markets, you may need to expand payments that you support. This will vary depending on your current payment set-up. For example, if you are a ecommerce company in the US who sells currently only to Canada and US, if you want to expand to Germany you would need to consider supporting different local forms of payment (such as bank transfers, local debit cards, real-time banking methods, PayPal)

If you are a marketplace product, you will also need to consider the “money out” flow, how do you pay your sellers?

Unicode text, Double byte characters, bi-directional languages

Sizing: Do buttons automatically expand for text swell?

Emails: For templates, copywriting you may want to account for different forms of address/salutation. If an email in the US starts with “Dear Mark” or “Hi Mark”, how formal will you want to be in Germany, Japan, China, etc, countries where they have honorific titles or more formal terms of address

Colors: Do colors mean something else in other countries? For example, in stock markets in China red means up/increase, green means down/decrease

Domain Naming Convention Options include:sub domain, folder, ccTLD, or an HL (host language) parameter URL/hl=fr

How will Language Detection be handled, by IP or use a Language Drop Down menu? What about on mobile?

If you think of your current release, QA, testing, build process. What would happen if you suddenly need to support different versions depending on where a user is located or a preference they have set? This can get complex quickly. And how can you make sure that any translated content is displayed properly and also a quality translation? This is a guideline on questions to ask to determine your approach for managing multiple languages in your product

Pseudolocalization build: this is a way you can test the impact of having a localized version of your product and identify changes needed (like where text breaks, any hard coded content)

Pseudolocalized text with different symbols, accented characters, double byte characters etc and also increase text by 30% to account for text swell. This will help identify issues such as overlapping text, cut off text or buttons that do not auto expand or text that has not been marked for translation.

Will language reviewers be able to review in context?

How will bugs be triaged and prioritized?

Glossary: You’ll need a glossary of common terms that the site (and industry) uses to ensure consistency across translations. This ranges from the company name to more mundane items like the “Get started”, “Request a quote” buttons.

Style Guides: Creating a style guide by language that dictates tone, brand, form of address, etc. Generally in collaboration with marketing. Examples that are usually covered in the style guide:

How will the customer be addressed, what kind of tone (e.g, an enterprise product would be more professional, welcoming, in the U.S. Perhaps in Germany there’s a more formal tone)

What “you” will you use? The formal or informal in Spanish, German, etc.

What will be reviewed internally or by local regions

What will reviewed by your translation vendor or team (if applicable)

What will require in-country sign off before launch

What will be machine translated (if applicable)

Will some text need to be removed/suppressed if it’s not available locally? e.g. 800 number for customers to call. Perhaps first for an international launch you decide to handle only via chat or email rather than set-up a dedicated phone number with language support

Also need to be sure to follow local privacy laws for unsubscribe, opt-in for content, such as GDPR for Europe

Video testimonials, dotsub.com and smartling are two vendors who can help with subtitles

Logo, graphics, screenshots should have an editable text layer (e.g. sometimes icons are a static image that contains text that needs to be updated)

Screenshots - How do you handle screenshots on site, in sales/marketing materials? Do you: Use English only, have localized screenshots, remove screenshots?

Localization is the work that happens on top of an internationalized or global ready product. If you’ve done the work to internationalize when you decide to launch in a new market, you can more easily adapt to change all the settings like currency values and formats (see above list). But, what you can’t easily control is all the local content. Depending on your ambition and product you could consider updating:

Examples: testimonials should match target audience, US families won’t resonate with families elsewhere

Social Media, determine if desire separate twitter, facebook handles

As a PM, partnering with your marketing team can help here. It is helpful to confirm how your current brand and content would perform in your target countries on the roadmap.

Naming - How will you handle your company name in a new market? Is it pronounced easily? Resonate with target markets? What about any product verticals or taglines

If you are serious about expanding and being successful in other countries, it is important to think about how new work will be internationalized from the start. It is also helpful to consider how business practices will change to support new markets and potentially new employees outside of your headquartered country.

Product: PMs take into account the Product Requirements and document features that might need to be adapted locally

Legal: What is the legal process for handling privacy policy and terms and conditions

Marketing: How to train marketing and editorial teams to write international-friendly content, and how will the style guide communicate to the translators what phrases, tone, and forms of address are modified?

Content Review/Customer Service: Will support be provided in other languages, if so which ones?

Business: how to make internal tooling and meeting/processes work for new employees outside local HQ country

Depending on your approach for language translation, you may also have a localization tool from a third party that you use, or perhaps build one in-house.

PMs will need access to translated content, to leverage existing translations (use case: last minute emergency translation), to update text changes (use case: last minute in-country sales change on wording). Potentially, the team will need a glossary manager tool, a change log or history of changes made to strings, and a way to search strings based on date created, date modified or content

: Should you decide to leverage your user community to translate the web site, TED’s Open Translation Project could be a great reference, also Smartling or Transifex.

Tips for Vendor Evaluation in translation:

Vendors are usually evaluated on these 3 characteristics: Quality, Turnaround Time, and Cost. Usually you can achieve 2 while sacrificing a little on the 3rd, it just depends on priorities.

Other factors that are important: vendor responsiveness and location of vendor. E.g. having a vendor based in China will lower cost, provided that you are okay with a vendor in a markedly different time zone

With AI, the translation space is rapidly changing, depending on the text you need translated, machine translations could work well (fast but lower quality).

Localization Checklist by Kristina Gibson

Global expansion notes

Internationalization

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