#620 - Amazon Listing Translation Strategies
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Today we've got Yana back on the show. We're recording live from Milan, Italy, and she's going to talk about a wide variety of subjects such as preparing your listing for Amazon AI, translating your listing, other marketplaces, and much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

And speaking of the e-commerce world, I am on the other side of the world right now. I'm in Milan, Italy, and we are at the Helium 10 Elite and Avosk Workshop. And one of the speakers for today is somebody who is no stranger to the show, Yana. Yana, welcome back. Thank you so much. Now, this is the first time we've seen Yana because she's been creating life out there. How's that going for you? It's

It's a struggle, but it's something that I'm really grateful for, honestly. I got an early start. We were just talking about how my kids are in their 20s already. But then again, there's advantages of waiting. You and Lazar got to pretty much go wherever you or whenever you want. You see now that it's a little bit different. You can't just go up and, hey, let's go to Ibiza today. Yeah, well, I mean, I could go to Ibiza, but I have to be home by 9 p.m.,

So that's the full difference. So we're not here to talk about parenting. We're here to talk about what Yann is an expert at, and that's mainly translations and things. And I think one thing that's been on the mind of many people is, wait a minute, with AI, do I even need professional translators anymore? I could just go ahead and click a button, and now I can have a perfectly optimized listing thanks to ChatGPT or thanks to AI. Now, can you tell us, is that a true statement?

Well, honestly, Bradley, I use AI on daily basis and I think it has changed our lives and made our lives simpler in some ways. But I would disagree with the part where you said to get your listings optimized. I would say it's great to do a summary of your reviews and maybe to help you understand how a product works, maybe to describe what you see on the picture if the image is blurry and you can't tell.

But I would stay away from AI when it comes to optimization, keywords, and most importantly, localization. Because AI is still, it's getting better, definitely. But I still, we are years away from this being a fantastic tool that will replace human brain and human touch and human understanding of context.

Yeah, so you actually had some examples of what the drawbacks are. Because yeah, maybe if you have zero budget and you want to have something better than just the Amazon auto-translate, sure, maybe AI is going to put you on the right track. But what's an example of money you're leaving on the table if you just 100% rely on AI for translation? Yeah, I would agree. I would say that you can get it translated. It will be probably mediocre at best. A lot of things will be

maybe translated very confusingly will be poorly translated, but you know, if you're on tight budget, yeah, sure. Go ahead and, you know, see how that works because probably it will not be as efficient as something else. But since we're here in Italy, I have a really good example. Uh,

And this is a pasta machine, whatever clients were selling. So she was selling this in the States and then she was branding is as pasta machine, like in Bella Italia. Now, like for an American, like you would probably think that, wow, this is something very authentic, something that will make me help make great pasta at home. But what if like you want to sell this product in Italy? So what if you tell Italian, Hey,

buy this product because it's like in Bella Italia and you being an Italian would be like, what do you mean Bella Italia? I don't understand. We're already in Italia and it is Bella, but I mean, I don't get it. So like using AI, I tried to play around a little bit with this example. And so the first thing I wrote out really nice prompt and I said, can you make it sound more localized so that Italians want to buy this machine because it's really top quality and will make amazing pasta.

So the AI came up with make pasta in a traditional way, which is better. It's not a literal translation, but it's still so far away from like what is like when you say Bella Italia in English and to an American, it doesn't send the same message and it doesn't have the same warmth as like what you would get is, for instance, if you said pasta.

make pasta like your nonna or like your grandma used to make so when you say nonna to an italian it automatically triggers that childhood memories great pasta warmth it sells emotions and this is what will sell us your product and it will make it more closer to your local audience and italians will be like well let me try this because i really want to make you know like pasta like my grandma used to make because this is probably one of the best memories i've had of my grandma

And then they will buy this product. But then AI will not come up with this because AI is not doesn't have this lacks human touch. Literally, like that translation is OK. It's decent, but it lacks that something that will connect you with the target audience and sell your product and convey the same message you'll have back in your home marketplace.

Yeah. So that's one good example. And almost in any language, there's going to be similar things like that, even in English. So maybe somebody who is an Italian person trying to make an American listing might try to translate some words that just like American or English or American slang that you just can't always just translate from an AI. I mean, definitely, I think AI is better than Google Translate. That's one of the worst things that you could do for

for your listing, but it still has a little ways to go. Now, something interesting we've been seeing lately from Amazon, something that Amazon sellers have been asking for for a while is the ability to localize your images easier. You know, in the past, sometimes, hey, you have your US ASIN and then you're using the same ASIN in Italy or Spain or wherever, and it would pull in those images and then you try and rewrite the image. And then now all of a sudden your Spanish infographic is showing in US, but now they have this kind of like cool image

manager where you can make the images for each marketplace. What are some best practices for how you can quote unquote localize the images? It's not just about the words. Obviously, that's a no brainer. You know, don't have Japanese writing in your Amazon USA listing, but you

like even some lifestyle images, like would you suggest changing like base to make it more look like, you know, you don't want, you know, like maybe to have Jap Asian looking models for Japan market or things like that. Or what can you talk about localization of images?

So this is a really good question, but unfortunately, maybe 1% of the brands would actually do that. 90% of the brands would just change the text on images, like the images will stay the same, but they will just translate it into different languages, which is fine. It is also one step forward compared to how it used to be.

But what is really important is, it depends on the category that you're selling. For instance, if you're selling doorknobs or if you're selling anything that has to do with anything you can find in your bathroom, maybe like a shower organizer or a shower curtain or anything like it, you have to keep in mind that bathrooms in Europe are quite different than bathrooms in the States.

And all the brands selling anything like that, like from the States to Europe, they leave the American doorknobs, they leave the American shower heads, which is fixed to the ceiling. In Europe, we have like this completely different thing. And also this is something that really catches like my attention every single time because like they then...

These customers will say, well, maybe this works in the States, but it doesn't fit really well into my shower or cabin. I don't have it. I also have a really big bath, which you don't get in the States. And there are a lot of things that are very, very different. Also, for instance, in Europe, I want to have a bidet.

And my bathroom, which is quite usual to have in your home, was in the States. I have never seen a bidet except the international chain of hotels. My house has one. From living in Japan, I was like, I need a bidet. So I custom imported one and I'm using one in my house. Well, you're one of the 1,000 people. I probably have that smart toilet as well, which is my favorite thing.

Yeah, so this is like something that brands don't really pay attention to. So for all the other things I think you can get away with, for instance, if you're selling something like a, I don't know, like an office supplement, sports, outdoors, all of that, maybe yes, maybe switch with like different models. But I would say that for most of the cases you can keep the same models. But when you're selling home appliance or anything that has to do with something which is in your home,

Keep in mind that homes are very different and people will not be able to relate with this product, understand where to put it and how it works because they'll have different things in their home. And then in these cases, I would recommend changing the images because I think that this would bring you so much more and this might be a deal breaker for your product.

Good point. Good point. Now, going back to your topic of listings and things like that. Now, I'm going to miss, I'm not going to be able to see your presentation this afternoon because I'm going to record another podcast and we're not going to go over your whole thing here, but can you give some of the main points of what you're going to talk about this afternoon? Right. So I'm going to try to answer the question, like where to sell your product next. So a lot of people ask me this. So I decided to dig a little bit deeper into this topic and try to just

just do like a short summary of like what you should pay attention to. For instance, like you should check like how much money is this product making on your marketplace? Then I would compare the profit that, for instance, my competitor is making my home market versus what are they making on the new marketplace. So this is really important. So not only the sales matter, but also profit. If they're making less profit than they're making in your home marketplace and selling more, then maybe you should think again of like,

if you want to do it or not. And then of course, you want to know if you can beat them on the content level, using keywords, using optimization, using a bunch of different things, strategies. This is really important because like if you have 10, 15 different top competitors, from my experience and from all the analysis I've done, you can land in top three, four, even in the top best selling categories on the content level. So that for me alone is worth going there because you can organically be indexed very easily because a lot of brands that come from

the States that sell in Europe, they don't really care about their content because their team does not understand it. So somehow they think it's irrelevant when it isn't. I mean, if it's relevant in English, why it is not relevant in another language, right? So if you ask me, like content is really easy to get positioned like very well in Europe. And then of course, very important, which a lot of people don't understand the importance of is actually your audience and then asking your audience, will they buy your product?

For instance, we had Pickful also build our international polls for us. And so you would want to like test out, let's say like you want to go to Spain. You think it's a great product. All the numbers add up. It's fantastic. But will your buyers buy? Will they be excited about it? So you ask, let's say 100, 150 people like you can like target them like, you know, women age 40 to 50, you

um amazon prime whatever you know like um high income and then you ask them like would you or somebody you know buy this product yes or no because we had a situation where we had one of the clients wanting to sell something in germany and everything added up nicely but the product was just not selling so i went to my german team and asked them like would you buy this product it was some sort of like a mr and mrs thing like a cup with that and then

I have 12 German team members and every single one of them said, no, we're never, never buy this product. And then it went like, why? And they were like, because yeah, and it's like such a, not a German product to buy. It's like, so not something that we would wanna have in our kitchen. And I was like, wow, this is insane. So I went back to the client and I'm like, well, I'm sorry. I think the audience hates this product. Like you may need to come up with something different or maybe try another country. So this is something really important. You know, the Vox Populi, it's very, really important.

All the other parameters are, but this also adds to like to a really big important part, whether you should expand to this country or not. Where are you seeing a lot of people from us and then conversely from Europe, uh, where are they expanding to? Like, like historically it's always been vice versa. All right. If I'm in us, you know, obviously if I was doing Canada and Mexico already, but then now I go to Europe, uh, if I'm in Europe,

I'm already either already selling in US or that's the next one. Is that still the case or are you seeing more people go to newer places like maybe Japan or Middle East or other places? Right. Well, when we're talking about US brand, it's always going to be first Mexico or Canada because of course, geographically, it makes no sense. Then it's Europe. And then we've seen people try to go to UAE. I think people are very interested in the marketplace. They don't know what to expect, but they're like, hmm.

Let me try because usually like you would not need translations or any, like, it's not a big of a deal to go to UAE. You can keep your lessons in English, especially if you're targeting expats, that's really important. Cause then they don't do like, um, Arabic keyword research. And then some of the brands they're brave enough. They go to Japan.

Uh, we've seen a lot of crazy products be really successful in Japan, but not all brands are ready for it because of the alphabet and unknown universe and everything. They're, you know, they're really, really afraid of that, but we've seen brands do Japan, especially in the last year, we've seen the increase in Japan and a little bit of like showing interest for the UAE. I think Saudi Arabia is going to be also really interesting. We've talked about this earlier. Uh,

And yeah, but I would say still Europe, number one. And then more than like, if I compare it to like three years ago, definitely more Japan and more UAE. But still, I would say that they want to go to Europe a lot. And I'm not sure if any of them like from the States would be interested in Australia, honestly. I think Australia has grown bigger, but because of the Australian sellers, not because of the brands that actually want to expand there.

Are a lot of your US customers expanding to both Walmart and TikTok shop or do you see more going to one or the other? Yes, I would say Walmart definitely, especially in the last year, year and a half. And then TikTok shop, a lot of people want to, but they don't know how it works, honestly. And then this is, I get a lot of questions like we've heard amazing things about TikTok.

And they've never sell with like influencers, UGC, they haven't used it a lot. So they're kind of really afraid to test the waters. But I know that the ones that have already sold on TikTok shop had amazing results and it's like completely different universe. And of course you don't know how long it's going to last. So I'd say like, you know, hop on that train and just, you know, do it. It's really, it's really, yeah, I think it's going to be a good ROI really.

Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked perhaps on their Amazon listing or maybe somebody changed their main image or Amazon changed their shipping dimensions so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts.

All right, now switching gears a little bit, something that I was talking about in my presentation was for me, you know, I'm not doing too much differently nowadays, even though there's new AI things like Rufus, but there's a lot of people who maybe weren't doing best practices for listing. But now those people are going to be even farther behind because of what Rufus is. And so what are you like you as a company when you're making a listing for somebody?

I believe you probably have in mind things like Rufus, right? Even when you're making the listing, what are those things that you guys have in mind and how are you doing things to make sure that somebody's listing is ready for Amazon's AI things?

Right. That's also a really good question. Uh, because, um, as you said, a lot of things that you were doing the right way, maybe six, seven years ago, date are still relevant to some of them. So we were also, whenever we're doing a listing, we always pay attention to context and how it sounds to target audience.

So it's not only like when you have your bullets, it's not only about your key features, how this product and that product. It's also like how you would like talk to the customer. So let's pretend that you have a customer on your page and then you have like this. Hello. How we can help you like chat box saying, hey, so what do you want to know about this product? And then maybe let's say this this customer wants to buy something for their daughter, let's say a diaper bag.

And then, you know, like maybe ask, like, do you travel a lot? Oh, you may be traveling a lot. So maybe put this into bullet or, you know, you can go to your reviews and like see what people are talking about, the situations where they use these product locations, where they use this product, because this will make your bullet sound more real. And like, as if someone wrote the bullet, who was your customer, I would feel

think from a customer standard, customer point of view, write things as if you were using this product, but, and get ideas from the reviews and actually like you are talking to a real person. I say, I think this is like a really important. So not, not just like random, uh,

sentences like buy a product because this, this, this and this because it sounds like you're reading a manual. So you're not buying things from like a manual, buying from a real person that loves and enjoys your product. So I would have this mindset with writing listings and of course not just using keywords in the title

which is really important. So keyword stuffing has all been dead for a long time. But even now, like today, I don't see a title that reads nicely, that's also filled with just random words, maybe random phrases, but definitely not sentences. And this can hurt a lot the algorithm and actually the power of AI to recognize what your product is about and to offer it to customers because it will not understand the true value of what

your product is bringing and solutions it's offering. So I think it's really important to today sit down and optimize your listings as if you were a customer. You know, I think that is really important to make it more human. I think that is the actual approach you should take. What else is new in your world as far as things, you know, like one thing I mentioned also is that

One of the constants in Amazon is change. Things are, you know, rules are changing. Algorithms are changing. Best practice changing. You know, fees might change the way you have to do things. Things are always changing in Amazon. It's never a dull moment. So in the last couple of years, since maybe the last time you've been on this podcast, what are some other things that you're having to do differently for clients or that you've had to adapt due to something that maybe changed on Amazon?

Well, definitely you always have to keep up with the forbidden words and we do a lot of supplements. So that's always a very big challenge. Every supplement is different. Every country is different. So more than ever, you have to really pay attention to that. It's really important. Now, when you say bio, for instance, like in Germany, it does not have to mean that it is 100% organic.

Earlier it was organic, but now it doesn't have to mean. It means that you have a certificate, but it doesn't mean that it's an organic product. So you can't say and use the word organic actually to make this be like a bio product or vice versa. Now it's really like fine print what you should read really, really carefully.

because I think it's getting more refined of what is allowed and what is not. A couple of years ago, it was like, okay, you can't have a health claim. Sure, let's just, you know, just figure it out. Let's just, you know, come up with a different sentence. But now, you're going to have to use it as a health claim, but you have to be really refined about it because you have to have it in a listing. So I would say that even on European marketplaces, there are

Lighting years behind US market, it is getting more refined and more difficult to get away with things that you could use like three years ago. When it comes to keyword research, it's now pretty much the same as like, if you use long tail keywords as you've used for the last six years,

you'll be good. Helium 10 now covers all of the international marketplaces, which is amazing. It's always the best choice for all of the search volumes, relevancy, and all of that. And I would also just add that when you choose a keyword, do you want to use in your listing? You shouldn't only pay attention to the search volume because a lot of sellers would be like, oh, okay, 75%.

70,000 search volumes, like this is amazing, but it's not because the relevancy is what matters. So you need to combine those two because sometimes like the top on the top list of the search volume keyword is not going to be best to describe what your product actually is. And now more than ever, talking about the AI, it's really important to use relevant keywords

and related keywords to your product because then the AI will better understand what your product is about and how your customer is typing to get to this product. Maybe sometimes you will think, well, maybe this is too broad, but then type it into Amazon and see

what is going to be in that search result. Maybe this is where your product should be and this is why you should think of putting it into your listing. So I think now you should use more of your strategy and brain power to put it in your listings than before when it was like a no-brainer being like, oh, okay, this doesn't describe my product, next. Now, maybe this is something, it's a related search term that people use in order to get to your product because it's more broad, but it's still not, let's say if you're selling 5G

fitness, like yoga mat. Maybe you're not gonna put like sports equipment. Maybe this is too broad search for you, but maybe something more narrow, but even like a little bit broader than what you thought put in a listing will help AI connect the dots and like to put it all together. It's also, I love SEO. It's like my bread and butter. And I know a lot of like Google SEO. So when you also have a Google and you have like that knowledge panel,

of your company on Google. And then on your about company page, or if you have like your own page about me, you should have all of the, let's say LinkedIn, Facebook, everything that helps Google connect the dots and put it in your knowledge panel so that you're relevant for one thing. This is literally what AI on Amazon will do, just like more like a niche because Amazon is a niche like in Google is much broader. And it will help AI or anything that is inside of the search engine connect the dots

and make them realize that your product is relevant for X, Y, Z things. - Are you guys mainly just doing translations or do you also do things from scratch where somebody just comes with a product, they don't have a listing in a certain marketplace and you're creating it from scratch? - Yeah, absolutely. We do copywriting in all the non-English, for our non-English marketplaces.

And we do this from scratch. And this is also the strategy that we have, thinking as a buyer and then putting our thoughts and experience into words and selling it to the target audience with localization. So I would say that we are, I mean, saying that we are a translation agency is very simple. It means just like translating words by word. But we actually translate it into emotions and like, you know, we're translating into the sales actually of the product.

So basically localization is much more different than translation because you need a little bit of copywriting in that as well. Because if you have a sentence like in Bella Italia, if I would translate it, it will be just like the same sentence in Italian with the Bella Italia. But then you might add something or recreate that single sentence to achieve the same effect as you have in English. So it is a little bit of transcreation, as I would say.

Okay. So then when somebody does come with a new project, you know, we've mainly today been talking about listings and maybe some images and titles. What's your strategy as far as A plus content or premium A plus content brand story in the case of making something from scratch or when it's what we're talking about translating, like maybe they've got a brand story, they've got A plus content in one. Are you completely telling them to completely change it in the other marketplaces or what are some strategies for these things you can talk about?

That is a really difficult one we have with our clients because every time when a new client comes, like we send them our onboarding questionnaire, we ask them a couple of questions. So we are 100% sure that we are on the same page with the brand and the brand voice. But you'll be surprised how many brands are really scared of changing anything and localize localizing their A plus contents, brand stories, storefront, anything. They're just like translated, but

please make sure to have all of the important information there. And then you tell them like, yeah, we're gonna have all the important information, but maybe we change the contest a little bit. And they're like, God, no, don't change it. And I'm like, but this will resonate better with the target audience. They're like, well, maybe just like 10%. So brands are actually afraid of,

of localizing, which doesn't mean that their brand is gonna get butchered. It's just gonna get a little bit adapted to a new marketplace. And this is what I suggest to all brands to do. You would be surprised of like the conversions and everything when someone reads something which is closer to them in German, in French, in Italian, versus a big gigantic US brand that speaks to Americans in a salesy, fluffy voice. Like you don't want to sell that type of product

brand in Europe at all so that's really really important very few listen to what I say but a lot of them are really really afraid of doing that this is like you know a true case study but those that do like really have good results and we've had one baby brand selling fleece jackets for babies they had about 60% increase and like visits on their web page because they they they um uh

changed their images and they changed the tone of the voice in their storefront, which was absolutely amazing. And of course, with that followed increase in profit. So don't be afraid to localize your storefronts. Nothing is going to change. The only change we'll see is probably positive change.

For people who want to reach out to you, how can they find you on the interwebs out there? You can find me on LinkedIn. I do a lot of video analysis. I really enjoy just like helping brands scale and just pointing out to you what they could do better. So LinkedIn, definitely number one. And then definitely you can reach out by email at yana at ylt-translations.com.

All right. So a few more questions here. Your favorite Helium 10 tool. I think the new keyword tracker, really. I absolutely love it. And it's so easy. Like it's so straightforward. Like even I think my seven month old baby could use it. It's very easy. And I love how you can like find out new keywords you can be ranked for and track all of the competitors, like in all different marketplaces. That is really, really important for us as from what we do. So I would say that that is like the, my, my probably latest favorite update.

And then something that maybe we don't have that you're having to get from somewhere else or some new feature that nobody has. And you've always thought, oh man, this would make my life so much easier. If I were to, to let you be in charge of the helium 10 product team, what would be your first job for them to make some new tool or some new feature?

Yeah, well, first of all, I really have to say big thank you to Helium 10 because they've always listened to what I said. All of the suggestions, like for instance, when you do a keyword research, usually it was to put number two as a default for the keywords. And then I went to Boyan, who was then a CEO, and then I told him, look, you need to change this to number one and two because of the big compound words in German that do not come up in the lists. So that was amazing. So I don't have anything like that.

like as amazing as that suggestion was, but I'm really happy to see that all international marketplaces are available in Helium 10. And then I would maybe want to see, yeah, like if new marketplaces show up, I would want to like see like all the updates for that as well. And then maybe, maybe like, like, you know how you have an opportunity to explore like an analysis for a product.

I think that may be combined into like one thing. So you have like a better overview of like the statistics with like numbers and lines going up, because I think sometimes it's kind of visually difficult to, um, to, to, to visualize how everything is working together. When you want to scale to a new marketplace, you do have all these amazing numbers, but I think that visual graphics would do amazingly well because a lot of people get lost in these numbers. And then once you have something visually, uh,

presented for you, you're like, wow, this is actually going to work.

versus, wow, 1,000 numbers, 3,000 Excel sheets, like I don't even know what I'm doing. So this will stimulate people into wanting to expand more by having it visually clear for them that this is going top sales, competitors, falling, all of that, just like in visually pleasing display screen. I'm a very visual type, so this for me is really important, for instance. Awesome, awesome, all right. What's your last 30-second tip or 60-second strategy you have for the audience? Could be about...

Parenting, it could be about travel. It could be about Amazon. It could be about anything. Oh, I have a tip about travel for all the US citizens out there. So when you travel to Europe, and I know that this year and last year has been an insane number of US Americans, I think only because like Taylor Swift's concerts, like people going to Europe and Paris, I remember that. So like when you buy,

especially luxury goods, they're very expensive. You can get tax free at the airports. I know a lot of people don't know about this, but if you buy, let's say something that costs 1000 euros, you get in Italy, 12% back cash back. So if you buy that, you get a receipt and then you take it to the airport. And then before you hop on a plane, you show the item you bought. So don't put it in your checked in bag. You have to show it. And then on spot, you will get cash back that there can be a lot of money sometimes.

Awesome. Awesome. All right. A cool travel tip. I just recently did something like that. I think I was in Japan or Korea and even a couple of services. I had paid tax, but then there was like a machine in Korea and I was able to get it back. I was surprised because a lot of people that really do travel a lot, they didn't know about this. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to say it. Maybe some of you know, but I'm sure a lot of you don't. So I think free money. Why not?

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Yana, it's good to connect with you again. I look forward to, again, seeing you at conferences like we always used to in the past and wish you the most of success. Thank you so much for having me. Always a pleasure to catch up.