The resonant bill "On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" has already entered into force, but many representatives of the Internet business still have questions - who does it concern, how does it work, and what the punishment for failure to comply with the newly introduced law may be. At the same time, the time allotted for the transition period has come to an end, there is no more time to think about "whether it is worth it."
We at Idea Digital Agency have already encountered the implementation of some points of this bill, including our own example. This article has collected and explained all the most important and controversial points that any owner of an online business in Ukraine must take into account.
Why is it necessary to create a Ukrainian-language version of the site
The Ukrainian version of the site is, first of all, an additional source of traffic. Currently, the share of Ukrainian-language traffic in Google is approximately 10-20%, depending on the niche. Since the new law came into force, this value has been gradually and steadily growing. This is because many Ukrainians in the central and eastern regions, where the Russian-speaking population has always prevailed, are consciously switching to Ukrainian and, accordingly, using it in all areas of life, including searching for information on the Internet.
Also, by creating a Ukrainian-language version of your resource, you increase your own reputation and become more loyal to users who speak exclusively Ukrainian. Thus, you can expand the audience of your resource to those areas of the country that were previously inaccessible to you, and it is also possible to organize the delivery of goods or the sale of services in these regions.
The impact of the language law on online sites
The new bill obliges the websites of companies that sell their products or services in Ukraine (Ukrainian or foreign) to create a Ukrainian-language version, which will be downloaded by default for residents of the country both on desktops and mobile devices. It must contain no less content than other language versions of the resource. Client consultations must also be carried out in Ukrainian (except in cases where the client personally asks you to serve him in another language).
All advertising on the Internet (and not only), SMS and email newsletters, and chat bots must be in Ukrainian. The same applies to official pages on social networks.
The bill was adopted back in April 2019. It entered into force in July of the same year. The transition period was 18 months and ended on January 16, 2021. During this time, site owners were required to create a Ukrainian-language version of the resource and completely switch to Ukrainian in advertising and social networks.
This applies to the following resources:
- online stores and online catalogs that sell goods on the Internet or provide the opportunity to place an order;
- sites of companies that offer services with the opportunity to order them online.
By July 16, 2022, other sites must also switch to Ukrainian, including:
- online media;
- sites of government institutions and bodies;
- business pages on social networks;
- information resources;
- personal blogs.
What are the risks of refusing to create a Ukrainian-language version of the site?
Control and fines
Since January 2021, any user has the right to complain about you for violation or non-compliance with the above-described bill. Complaints are considered by the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language—the Ombudsman. It is to him that users should direct their complaints because they cannot complain directly to the court.
If this is the first time a complaint has been made about your resource, you will be subject to an inspection, based on the results of which you will be issued a warning. The punishment will not be immediate: you will be given time to correct your resource—30 days—to bring your resource into compliance with the bill. If nothing changes during this time or the site is complained about again within a year, you will face fines—from 3,800 to 4,600 UAH.
Fines for violations will begin only on July 16, 2022—3 years after the bill enters into force. But it is better not to tempt fate and take care of all the nuances related to the new law right now.
Instructions for switching to the Ukrainian version of the site by default
At the moment, owners of websites that offer goods and services on the territory of Ukraine may encounter two situations: when the resource already has a Ukrainian version of the site and when it does not.
If you already have a Ukrainian version, then first of all, you need to check whether it needs improvement:
- First of all, check the content for untranslated or incorrect fragments. Remember that the volume of the Ukrainian version must correspond to the volume of the Russian or other version that is considered the main one on the site. All meta data (title, description, h1) must also be translated. You can check this using special programs, such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Netpeak Spider. They allow you to parse all pages in Ukrainian and check them.
- Also check that the language switcher in the site header is working correctly. Make sure that the user remains on the selected page when switching languages, and is not redirected to the home page. If you find such an error, fix it.
- Check whether the markup of different language versions corresponds to Google's recommendations.
- Make sure that all links leading to your language versions are contained in Sitemap.xml and are correct.
If the Ukrainian version is not yet, below we will tell you what steps you should take to make it appear as soon as possible.
Material on the topic: How to translate a site into Ukrainian and not lose your position.
Creating a default UA version
Those owners who have not yet translated their site into Ukrainian should hurry up. If you continue to ignore the legislation, this may turn into problem for you in the near future.
On average, developing a new language version from scratch takes about 3 months and includes the work of a web developer, SEO specialist, copywriter, and content manager.
It is necessary to translate all visible elements and blocks of the site:
- menu;
- text part;
- product cards;
- metadata;
- micromarkups and internal optimization elements, such as
Prefer professional translation—this way you will be sure of its quality, and therefore, your reputation in the eyes of Ukrainian-speaking users will only grow. To do this, you can hire a professional translator or content specialist who is fluent in Ukrainian. Of course, this approach is costly from a financial point of view, but it is also more reliable. In addition, if you select and include appropriate semantics in the text, you will be able to attract new traffic to the site after uploading the content.
When using automatic translators and CMS plugins to save money, do not forget to carefully review the translated content before uploading it to avoid unnecessary mistakes. It is unlikely that users will stay on a site with a bad machine translation for a long time: for them, it will mean that the site owner is not interested in Ukrainian-speaking clients at all and simply “closed the hole” in order not to get a penalty.
For Ukrainian-language pages, you need to create appropriate URLs. If the current language version of the site pages looks like this “https: //site.ua/page”, then you need to move these pages to an address like “https: //site.ua/ru/page”, there is no need to set up a redirect. Moreover, such actions can lead to a serious drop in traffic. The best option in such a situation would be to create a separate folder of the type /ua/ or /uk/ and upload localized content to it. Thus, the pages will look like "https: //site.ua/ua/page".
Do not use 301 redirects from RU version pages to UA version pages! This way you close numerous "doors" for users to enter your site.
Implementing the Ukrainian version on the site
The default Ukrainian version should be loaded for those users who visit the site while being on the territory of Ukraine. For this to happen, you need to configure IP redirection. However, it should be understood that under the influence of various circumstances, services are not always able to correctly determine the IP address of each specific visitor. Therefore, it is recommended to set the Ukrainian version of the site by default for everyone who visits it for the first time, regardless of their location. If the user is satisfied with the default language version, he will not change anything. If he switches to another language, his choice will be saved in the cache, and the next time he visits the resource, the selected version of the site will open for him. Be sure to display the language switch in a prominent place, preferably in the header, so that the user can easily find it.
Those pages that you are still working on filling and optimizing must be closed from indexing so as not to harm the site's position in search results. How to do this—to conduct all work on the test service or to close pages via noindex, nofollow—will be chosen by the SEO specialist, based on the specific conditions and features of your resource.
Terms for translation of the site into Ukrainian
As you may notice, the time allotted for the transition period has already passed. But the penalties are still a long way off, so if you're still wondering whether it's worth the trouble, it's time to hurry up and get your site in shape.
If you still decide to translate your content right now, don't forget to take into account the time it will take to fully index it.
How quickly the new version is indexed depends on the size of the resource and the crawling budget allocated. On average, the process takes from 1-2 weeks to 2-3 months. What happens at this time:
- the search bot learns about new pages on your site;
- it scans them and adds them to the index;
- assigns them the appropriate rank in SERM.
You can force crawl your site to speed up the process — use instructions from Google.
Remember that search bots and users can see different versions of your site, so make sure they see all localizations of your resource. To do this, you should check their markup. And also make sure they return a 200 server response code.
There are situations when the site engine simply does not allow you to implement a second language version on it. This often happens with self-written engines. In such a case, improving the functionality can be too expensive and time-consuming. Then the resource owner should think about moving the site to a more advanced platform.
Don't forget about regular updates to all language versions— keeping your content up-to-date will allow you to receive stable traffic and will have a positive impact on your reputation.
When to translate contextual advertising into Ukrainian. Nuances
The Law "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language" also affects the sphere of contextual advertising on the Internet.
One of the provisions of the law came into effect six months after the publication of the document, and concerns advertising: now all e-commerce distributed on the Internet by an e-commerce entity on its own behalf must be in the state language. However, if you study the new bill in more detail, as well as the laws "On Advertising" and "On Electronic Commerce", you can come to an interesting conclusion: the strict requirements are not so strict.
Article 30 of the new bill states that online stores are allowed to provide customer service in the language in which the customer is most comfortable communicating. Based on this, the store has every right to display text advertisements in Russian for a customer who enters a query in the search bar in Russian. At the same time, any graphic advertising must be exclusively in Ukrainian—this point is clearly indicated in the draft law.
A business can run text advertising in Russian if its clients are more comfortable communicating in this language. But graphic advertising should still be launched in Ukrainian, even if you don't have a Ukrainian version of the site yet.
We've put together a small guide for you that will help you quickly navigate when launching different types of campaigns:
- Video and banner advertising — exclusively in Ukrainian.
- Search advertising:
- if the query is in Ukrainian — the ad is also in Ukrainian;
- If the query is in any other language — the ad is in the corresponding language or Russian;
- If the query is Article and the language cannot be determined — the ad is in Ukrainian.
- Remarketing — can be in Ukrainian or in the language that is installed on the site.
How to launch ads in Ukrainian
Recent statistical studies show how important it is to take into account the needs of Ukrainian-speaking users.
Conversion rates increase significantly in cases where users with Ukrainian installed in their browser are shown ads in Ukrainian, especially if they entered a query in that language into the search bar.
In situations where Russian-speaking users saw Ukrainian ads, no serious drops were observed in conversions. But in reverse situations, when Ukrainian-speaking users came across advertisements in Russian, a drop in conversions was noted.
In many regions that are considered Russian-speaking, a trend towards the state language has emerged. However, the share of ads in Russian is still quite high (60-70%). This can be seen in a real-life example.
Serpstat statistics clearly demonstrate the difference between the same query in Russian and Ukrainian.
If your site already has a Ukrainian version, we recommend creating and launching separate Ukrainian-language campaigns. Duplicate them in the regions you are moving to.
If you haven't yet collected the necessary amount of semantics in Ukrainian, start small—let there be one Ukrainian-language ad for every three Russian-language ads.
Testing Ukrainian/Ru ads on Facebook
As can be seen from the bill, all registered accounts that first encounter your company in Facebook ads must see it in Ukrainian.
However, the principle of choice also applies to retargeting: if some of your users use Russian on the social network, then you can show them ads. In Russian.
Which Facebook ads will work better in your case—Russian or Ukrainian—is difficult to answer unequivocally. It all depends on a combination of factors that can be completely different for different niches and different companies.
Test—so you can find out for sure which ads will bring more profit.
Let's look at how it works in practice. One large clothing retailer tested different language versions of Facebook ads. The results were interesting: Russian-language ads provided a larger radius of action, but Ukrainian-language ads provided more conversions, and the average purchase check was also higher. Taking into account the results obtained, the company completely switched to Ukrainian in its advertisements.
SMS and email newsletters—when and how to translate into Ukrainian
Sending letters by email, as well as SMS or Viber messages, fall under the concept of “e-commerce” and, according to the law, since January 2021, businesses are required to compose such messages in Ukrainian. But if the client asks to switch to Russian, you can do so; it will not be a violation.
To avoid confusion, we recommend sending letters to new clients in Ukrainian by default. Then you will be able to segment the audience by language preferences: someone will want to continue the discussion in Ukrainian, someone will want to switch to Russian.
It is also advisable to translate all of the company's social networks into Ukrainian. Moreover, not only publications, but communication with clients in comments, Direct, and personal messages. Here you also have the right to switch to Russian or another language, for example, English, at the client's personal request.
Conclusion
Although at first glance the new bill complicates the usual way of life of online stores and other sites, in reality, everything is not so scary. Yes, translating a resource is a huge job for a whole team of specialists. But on the other hand, many sites have long had a Ukrainian-language version, and now they only need to set it as the main one and fix any errors, if any.
With contextual advertising, everything is also much more loyal than it might seem at first glance. You have the right to display text advertising in Russian to users who use Russian-language queries. But you shouldn't forget about Ukrainian-speaking residents of Ukraine either - collect semantics in Ukrainian, and create relevant ads to attract new traffic and interested customers.
Many people are afraid of a complete transition to the state language, arguing this with traffic losses. But numerous examples of major players in the market demonstrate: that such a transition, when done correctly, allows businesses to increase reach and sales.
Idea Digital Agency helps businesses switch to Ukrainian correctly! By ordering SEO optimization of the site or contextual advertising setup from us, you can be sure that you will not receive fines for violating the language law. If you want to get a consultation or analytics for your website, fill out the online form or contact us in another way convenient for you (by phone, email, social networks).
