56% of Multilingual Consumers Have Walked Away From a Purchase Over Poor Website Localization, Liferay Survey Finds
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AI and automated translation have made it easier than ever for brands to deliver websites, product information and digital experiences in multiple languages. But as translation becomes easier to scale, brands face more pressure to maintain quality and local relevance across every market. Liferay, a leading provider of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), released new research examining where multilingual digital experiences are falling short and what consumers notice when localization misses the mark.
The Liferay 2026 Website Localization Report, conducted in September 2026 via the third-party platform Pollfish, surveyed 800 U.S. adults who had used a website, app or digital service in a language other than English in the past 12 months. The report examines how multilingual consumers experience translated and localized digital content, which mistakes they notice and how those mistakes affect trust, purchase decisions and brand loyalty.
Key findings include:
- Poor localization is costing sales. 56% of multilingual consumers 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 consumers 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.
- Consumers 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.
- Consumers associate better localization with human review. Only 20% credit AI alone for strong localization, while 43% credit human involvement.
“You can translate every page and technically have everything working, but that doesn’t mean the experience feels natural to the person using it,” said Bryan Cheung, co-founder and CMO at Liferay. “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.”
The findings show that consumers notice when a translated experience doesn’t feel natural. As brands expand multilingual content, getting the wording, tone and cultural context right can make the difference between a site that simply does the job and one that feels made for the people using it.
Visit the Liferay 2026 Website Localization Report on Liferay’s website for the complete survey results and additional insights.
About Liferay
Liferay helps organizations build for the future by enabling them to create, manage, and scale powerful solutions on the world's most-flexible Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Trusted globally by over a thousand companies spanning multiple industries, Liferay's open-source DXP facilitates the development of marketing and commerce websites, customer portals, intranets, and more. Learn how we can use technology to change the world together at liferay.com.
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