Home Lending Pal Translated Their Entire App to Every Language in A Week

Introduction

Home Lending Pal is revolutionizing the mortgage industry with its innovative mobile app designed to guide users toward mortgage readiness. As the app aims to empower a diverse demographic, including underserved communities, addressing language barriers became essential to enhance accessibility and user engagement. The primary challenge was to translate the app efficiently without compromising the speed of ongoing development.

Enter Lexicon, a state-of-the-art SaaS solution tailored for seamless and automatic app localization. By implementing Lexicon, Home Lending Pal was able to integrate a robust translation system directly into their React and React Native applications. This approach not only facilitated immediate translation across multiple languages but also aligned perfectly with their goal of inclusive financial empowerment.

In this case study, we will explore how Lexicon transformed Home Lending Pal's application into a multilingual platform, significantly broadening its reach and impact, and thereby, driving higher conversion rates.

Home Lending Pal's Situation

Home Lending Pal's mission is to make mortgage readiness accessible to everyone, particularly underserved communities where English may not be the primary language. This necessitated a solution to make their app multilingual to truly meet the needs of their diverse user base. The app contained approximately 30,000 characters of content, all of which needed translation into multiple languages to ensure inclusivity.

Traditionally, app localization involves manually extracting text, translating it, and managing these translations in separate files. This process is not only labor-intensive but also prone to errors, especially when dealing with complex text formats and nested elements where specific words require emphasis or a particular arrangement. For Home Lending Pal, relying on traditional methods would have entailed significant expenses—potentially thousands of dollars just for initial translations. Moreover, the ongoing maintenance of translations and the adjustment required in developer workflows to manage separate translation files would drastically slow down their development velocity.

Faced with these challenges, Home Lending Pal sought a cost-effective and efficient localization solution that could integrate smoothly with their existing development process without the need for extensive refactoring or recurring maintenance overhead.

Implementing Lexicon

The decision to integrate Lexicon was driven by its promise of seamless, "drop-in" SDK compatibility, which required minimal changes to existing development workflows and no additional overhead. Home Lending Pal found Lexicon's setup remarkably straightforward, with the initial integration taking merely five minutes, allowing them to begin translating parts of their app almost immediately.

Integration Process

The integration process was methodically planned to encompass all components that generated textual content within the app. Home Lending Pal utilized their existing component library, Native Base, to create a standardized version of each text-generating element. They modified their conventional text components to include Lexicon's <TranslatedText/> component, ensuring that every piece of text was automatically considered for translation.

Key Considerations

Several crucial considerations were made during the implementation:

• Contextual Accuracy: Certain text elements, like the word "Top," could be ambiguously translated into multiple meanings depending on the context. Home Lending Pal addressed this by leveraging the built-in context prop to ensure translations were accurate and relevant. In our "Top" example, they provided the context "Top recommendations" to ensure the translation reflected the desired meaning.

• Selective Translation: It was essential to identify elements that should not be translated, such as user-generated inputs. These elements were marked with a disableTranslation prop to prevent unnecessary translations, maintaining the integrity of user data.

Going Live

The entire process, from integration to live deployment of the multilingual features across the app, was completed in under a week. This rapid implementation was pivotal in maintaining development momentum and avoiding any significant delays in their release cycles.

Results and Impact

The implementation of Lexicon significantly enhanced Home Lending Pal's application by making it accessible to a broader audience. This inclusivity directly contributed to an increase in user engagement and conversion rates.

User Engagement

Post-implementation, 30% of users actively used the translation features, with the majority opting for Spanish, followed by French. This substantial usage underscored the demand for multilingual support among Home Lending Pal’s target demographics.

Communication and Conversion Enhancement

Leveraging insights from app usage, Home Lending Pal expanded their multilingual efforts to include email communications, using Customer.io’s language swap feature to target communications in Spanish and French. This strategic alignment led to a 25% increase in conversion rates among users who interacted with these translated communications.

Growth in Active Users

The broader linguistic accessibility facilitated a 46% increase in monthly active users who speak languages other than English. This growth was accompanied by enhanced user satisfaction and more positive feedback across various user segments.

Cost Efficiency and Development Continuity

Home Lending Pal achieved significant cost savings by minimizing the expenses typically associated with traditional translation methods. The initial integration also set a precedent for minimal ongoing developer overhead, ensuring that future updates and new features could be managed with the same efficiency.

Streamlining Long-Term Development

The integration of Lexicon not only resolved immediate localization challenges but also established a sustainable framework for future development at Home Lending Pal. This framework allowed the company to return to "business as usual" quickly after the initial setup, without the typical disruptions associated with traditional localization methods.

Continuous Development Flow

With Lexicon, developers at Home Lending Pal avoided facing delays waiting for translations when adding new features. Unlike traditional methods that require managing translations in separate files and integrating them back into the app, Lexicon allows developers to write content directly within their components as if they were only writing for their native language. This integration significantly simplifies the development process by maintaining a continuous flow, eliminating the bottlenecks typically associated with adding new languages.

Minimal Ongoing Overhead

Post-integration, the only additional task is occasionally providing context for specific words that might have multiple meanings, like the previously mentioned "Top" example. This minor overhead is inconsequential compared to the typical ongoing maintenance required with other localization solutions.

Development Efficiency

The efficiency gained through Lexicon's streamlined process not only speeds up time-to-market for new features but also reduces the cognitive load on developers. They can focus more on feature development rather than on the complexities of managing multilingual content, fostering a more productive and innovative work environment.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

Throughout the implementation of Lexicon, Home Lending Pal garnered valuable insights and established effective practices for app localization. These learnings not only smoothed their initial transition but also set the stage for ongoing success.

Challenges and Solutions

One significant challenge encountered was the limitation imposed by certain components in their Native Base library, which did not allow direct text wrapping in elements such as buttons. To overcome this, Home Lending Pal leveraged the useTranslation() hook provided by Lexicon. This approach allowed them to translate text before it was passed to the component, effectively bypassing the limitation without adding substantial complexity to their codebase.

Effective Localization Strategy

The strategy of identifying text-generating components early in the development process and ensuring they were compatible with Lexicon proved to be highly effective. This proactive approach minimized disruptions and maximized the efficiency of the localization process.

Utilization of Lexicon's Dashboard

Another best practice was the use of Lexicon's translation dashboard, which facilitated easy monitoring of language usage and preferences across their user base. This tool enabled Home Lending Pal to quickly identify which languages were most in demand, guiding their decisions for further localization outside the app, such as in email communications.

Best Practices for App Localization with Lexicon

1. Identify and Prepare Text Components: Early identification and preparation of text components ensure seamless integration of the localization process.

2. Provide Context Where Necessary: Providing context for ambiguous terms or phrases ensures accurate and relevant translations.

3. Leverage Tools for Monitoring and Adjusting: Utilizing Lexicon’s tools to monitor user interaction and language preferences can significantly enhance targeted communication strategies.

Conclusion

The integration of Lexicon into Home Lending Pal's mobile application has had a transformative impact on their ability to serve underserved communities. By seamlessly translating the app into multiple languages, Lexicon has not only broadened the reach of Home Lending Pal but also significantly enhanced user engagement and conversion rates.

Kyle Walsh, CTO of Home Lending Pal, highlighted the transformative impact of Lexicon: "I had been dreading translating our application because of the overhead I knew it would add to our development process. However, Lexicon made the process a breeze and it hasn't reduced our velocity at all."

Summary of Impact

• Increased Accessibility: Lexicon's automatic translation features have made mortgage readiness tools accessible to a wider audience, particularly in non-English speaking communities.

• Enhanced User Engagement: The ease of using the app in various languages has led to a substantial increase in active users and improved the overall user experience.

• Boosted Conversion Rates: With more users able to understand and interact with the app in their preferred language, Home Lending Pal has seen notable growth in conversion rates.

Future Plans

Moving forward, Home Lending Pal plans to continue monitoring the performance of Lexicon to identify any new dominant languages among their users. This will allow them to expand their multilingual offerings, not only within the app but also in their broader marketing and communication strategies.

What About You?

For organizations looking to enhance their app’s accessibility and connect with a diverse user base, Lexicon offers a robust solution that simplifies localization without disrupting development workflows. Try Lexicon free to explore how it can transform your applications and help you achieve a global reach.