As global brands increasingly leverage generative AI and automated tools to scale multilingual digital touchpoints, new data suggests that technical translation alone is failing to satisfy online buyers.
According to the 2026 Website Localization Report from digital experience platform provider Liferay, failing to deliver culturally nuanced digital experiences is having a direct impact on conversion rates and brand trust. Conducted in September 2026 via Pollfish, the study evaluated the perspectives of 800 U.S. adults who had used a non-English website, app, or digital service in the prior 12 months.
The study underscored a growing divide between simple linguistic translation and comprehensive user journey localization, highlighting the following key findings:
Poor localization is costing sales. 56% of multilingual customers have decided not to buy from a company because its website or app felt poorly adapted to their language.
Good translations can still hide a bad experience. 54% of customers who rate brands’ non-English translations as good or excellent have still walked away from a purchase over poor localization.
Most translated websites still don’t feel truly local. Only 23% say non-English websites usually feel like they were written for them.
Customers think they can spot machine translation. 82% are confident they can tell when content was machine-translated rather than written or reviewed by a fluent speaker.
Localization problems are nearly universal. 90% have noticed at least one localization problem on a website or app.
Better localization can win business. 48% have chosen one company over a competitor because its website or app felt better adapted to their language and culture.
Customers associate better localization with human review. Only 20% credit AI alone for strong localization, while 43% credit human involvement.
Addressing the gap between linguistic accuracy and user sentiment, Bryan Cheung, co-founder and CMO at Liferay, said:
Bryan Cheung, co-founder and CMO at Liferay
“You can translate every page and technically have everything working, but that doesn’t mean the experience feels natural to the person using it. That’s where a lot of companies can underestimate the difference between translation and localization. Translation gets the content into another language. Localization is what makes it feel natural to the people using it.”
For customer service leaders, the findings serve as a reality check against over-relying on fully autonomous AI translation pipelines. While enterprise platforms have made multilingual content generation cheaper and faster than ever, treating localization as a purely transactional text conversion risks eroding customer trust at the point of sale.
Customer journeys require cultural intelligence—spanning tone, local design expectations, and contextual relevance—rather than verbatim language parity. Brands that integrate native human review and culturally aware journey orchestration alongside automated engines will be far better positioned to protect conversion rates and secure long-term loyalty across diverse customer segments.
