How to Localize the Customer Journey Step by Step

The problem: language cliffs

Most localization starts at the top of the funnel: a translated homepage, a localized ad campaign, a dubbed explainer video. Those are visible and easy to approve. The trouble begins a few clicks later. A customer who found you in their language reaches a pricing page in English, a checkout that shows the wrong currency, a welcome email in English and a help center that has never heard of their language.

Each of those moments is a language cliff: the point where the experience drops back into the source language. Customers who were comfortable reading marketing in a second language may still abandon at checkout or contact support confused. The aim of journey localization is to find every cliff and either remove it or warn customers before they reach it.

Choosing which languages to serve is a separate decision, covered in which languages to translate videos into. This article assumes you have chosen a language and need to make the path through your business work in it.

Map the stages and touchpoints

Write down every touchpoint at each stage. Include things that are not usually thought of as content, because customers experience them as part of the same conversation.

Discovery: Ads, social posts, search results, video, review sites, partner pages
Evaluation: Product and pricing pages, demos, comparison pages, case studies, sales calls, free trial sign-up
Purchase: Checkout, payment methods, currency, tax display, order confirmation, contracts, invoices
Onboarding: Product interface, welcome and setup emails, onboarding videos, first-use tips
Support: Help center, support tickets, chat, status pages, billing questions, renewal and cancellation

Different teams usually own each stage: marketing, sales, finance, product and support. That is why cliffs appear: each team localizes its own part on its own schedule, and nobody owns the joins.

Walk the journey in the target language

The quickest audit is to become the customer. Set your browser to the target language, start from a translated ad or search result, and go as far as you can: sign up, buy, receive emails, open the product, look for help. Record every touchpoint with three columns:

Language: fully localized, partly localized or source language only.
Warning: whether the customer is told in advance that this step is in another language.
Risk: what happens if the customer misunderstands here (abandoned cart, wrong purchase, support ticket, churn).

Ideally, ask a fluent colleague to do the walk with you, because they will notice wrong terms and odd phrasing that you cannot. Repeat the walk for each language, since cliffs often differ by market.

Localize in journey order

Fix touchpoints in the order a customer meets them, starting from the first cliff after discovery. A typical order:

Evaluation pages that discovery content points to: product, pricing, and the pages your ads and videos link to.
Sign-up and purchase steps: forms, error messages, payment methods, currency and tax display, order confirmation.
Transactional emails: welcome, receipt, password reset, payment failure. These go to every customer automatically.
Onboarding: the first screens of the product and the most-used onboarding videos or guides.
Support: the help articles behind the most common questions from that market, and a clear statement of which languages support answers in.
Further discovery content, now that the path behind it is continuous.

The counterintuitive part is the last item. Spending more on ads or videos before the journey behind them works sends more customers over the same cliffs.

What each stage needs in practice

Discovery content should promise only what the journey can deliver. If support is English-only, a dubbed video should not imply otherwise. Translated video descriptions and landing pages need the same care as the video itself.

Evaluation is where customers compare details. Prices, plan names and feature lists must match what they will see later. Demo videos help here, but a translated narration over an English interface needs a note explaining the mismatch. Sales calls are part of evaluation too; if your sales team cannot speak the language, say so and offer a translated recording or written follow-up. The article on sales video translation covers sales material specifically.

Purchase steps carry the most risk. Currency, tax, payment methods and legal terms often have local requirements, which vary by country and change, so check them with finance and legal advisers rather than translating terms literally.

Onboarding decides whether a new customer stays. Translated onboarding emails and a few short videos covering first tasks often matter more than a large translated blog.

Support is where unfinished localization is most visible. A help center with ten well-chosen translated articles and a clear "we answer in English and Spanish" statement is better than none. The article on support videos in multiple languages covers how to pick and maintain that content.

Where you cannot translate yet, signpost

Some steps will stay in the source language for a while, perhaps the product interface, contracts or live support. That is acceptable when customers are warned before they arrive.

Label links that lead to source-language content, for example "Help center (English)".
Say on the pricing page which languages support covers.
State in onboarding emails which parts of the product are not yet translated.
Offer translated subtitles or transcripts for source-language videos as a bridge.

A clear warning turns a cliff into a step the customer can plan for.

Hypothetical example: an online shop entering Brazil

A small company selling sewing patterns online starts running Brazilian Portuguese social ads with a dubbed product video. A journey walk shows the landing page is translated, but the shop prices are only in US dollars, the checkout is in English, and the order confirmation and download emails are English-only. Support tickets from Brazil mostly ask how to download the purchased files. The team pauses ad spend, translates the checkout and both emails, adds a local-currency price estimate where its shop platform allows it, and dubs its three-minute download tutorial into Brazilian Portuguese. Ads restart once the walk shows a continuous path from ad to first download.

Video at each stage

Video appears at every stage, and each use has different requirements:

Discovery videos benefit from a translated voice and localized thumbnails, because viewers decide in seconds; the page on translating marketing videos covers this use.
Evaluation videos such as demos need accurate terms and prices; translated subtitles may be enough for technical buyers.
Onboarding videos are watched while doing something, so a dubbed voice often helps more than subtitles.
Support videos must match the current product; keep them few and current.

Treat each video as a touchpoint in the journey map, with the same language and warning columns as every other step.

Mistakes and trade-offs

Localizing discovery first and fastest, then sending more people over the same cliffs.
Translating marketing pages while transactional emails stay in the source language.
Translating prices or legal terms literally instead of checking local requirements.
Letting each team localize its own stage without anyone owning the joins.
Hiding source-language steps instead of signposting them.
Doing the journey walk once; cliffs reappear as each team ships new pages, emails and videos.

The core trade-off is reach against continuity. A broad but broken journey in five languages reaches more people at the top and loses many of them; a continuous journey in one language reaches fewer but keeps them. Which matters more depends on whether you are testing demand or serving customers you already have.

Where mydubly fits along the journey

mydubly covers the video and audio touchpoints. It takes a recorded file from your device and produces transcripts and subtitles, optionally translated, or a dubbed version with a translated voice track, in 21 languages including Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish voice options. The video translator page shows how a single video is processed, and the video localization page covers wider workflows.

It does not translate web pages, checkout flows, emails, product interfaces or on-screen text, so most of the journey needs other tools and people. Cost per video is small: dubbing a three-minute onboarding video costs 150 credits (15¢) per language, and subtitles for the same video cost 5 credits (0.5¢) because of the five-credit minimum. A dubbed job also gives transcripts in both languages, which can become a translated help article for the support stage; turning videos into help center articles explains that step.

Next step: one journey walk this week

Pick your most important non-source language, set your browser to it, and walk from a translated ad or search result to a first successful use of the product. List every cliff, rank them by risk, and fix the first one before creating any new discovery content. Repeat the walk each quarter or after any major release.

Frequently asked questions

Which part of the customer journey should be localized first?

Start with the pages your translated discovery content leads to, then the sign-up and purchase steps, then transactional emails. Work forward in the order customers meet each touchpoint. Spending on discovery before the path behind it works only sends more customers into untranslated steps.

What is a language cliff?

It is a point in the customer journey where the experience suddenly switches back to the source language, such as an English checkout after a translated landing page. Cliffs often cause abandoned purchases and support tickets. Finding them is the main purpose of a journey walk.

Is it acceptable to keep some steps in English?

Yes, if customers are warned before they reach them. Labels such as 'Help center (English)' and a clear statement of which languages support covers let customers plan. Silent switches are what cause frustration.

Who should own customer journey localization?

One person or team should own the joins between stages, even though marketing, sales, finance, product and support each localize their own touchpoints. Without that owner, each team localizes on its own schedule and cliffs appear between them.

Do transactional emails really matter that much?

Yes. Welcome, receipt, password reset and payment failure emails go to every customer automatically, often at moments of uncertainty. They are few in number and rarely change, so translating them is usually cheap compared with the confusion they prevent.

How often should the journey walk be repeated?

Quarterly is a sensible default, plus after any major release, redesign or pricing change. Each team ships new pages, emails and videos independently, so cliffs reappear even after the journey was continuous.