The Power of DX: How Localazy has increased customer satisfaction?

More and more companies are realizing the importance of focusing on a quality Developer Experience (DX). 

The goal of DX, like UX, is to make your product as simple for users to use as possible. In other words, developers are users too! And especially if you have a digital product, you should focus on making them comfortable; otherwise, they'll flee to your competitors. 

Quality DX also reflects on the internal functioning of the company, where, if done correctly, it can significantly streamline development productivity, saving development costs, and, since developers like to work in such an environment, reduce turnover. 

We have reached out to companies that continue to push forward and are actively engaged in their DX. We interviewed them to discover what benefits they’re seeing and how they’re making it work.

First up is Localazy.

Localazy is a translation management system focused on automation and clear design. They effortlessly make your software, content, and apps multilingual using AI and professional translators

Localazy's view of the developer experience

We asked Localazy the following questions:

1. How do you define “good Developer Experience”, and what specific elements do you prioritize to achieve it in your company?

At Localazy, we define a good DX as the ease and efficiency with which developers can integrate our localization services into their projects. A good DX means that developers can quickly understand our platform and tools, implement them with minimal friction, receive support when needed, and eventually forget about it thanks to automation.

To achieve this, we strive to develop tools that are intuitive and easy to start with, but sophisticated enough to handle a variety of really complex localization workflows.

2. Can you walk us through the key steps or strategies your team employs to make your platform or service intuitive and accessible for external developers/ tech. customers?

Unlike other tools on the market, Localazy started as a developer-oriented localization platform. Our founding team consisted of developers, which gave us a significant advantage in understanding the localization pain points from a developer’s perspective. This deep-rooted experience ensures that the developer persona remains at the center of our focus until now.

We offer SDKs, APIs, and other developer-friendly features like pre-built GitHub Actions. However, the heart of our service is our CLI, which is the most loved and widely used tool among our users. The CLI allows developers to work with Localazy in their favorite environment and seamlessly integrate it into their team’s workflow, such as PR CI/CD pipelines and testing and enabling them to work as usual with minimal changes.

To make these tools more intuitive and easier to use, our primary strategy is maintaining close contact with the actual developers who use them. We engage with them through interviews, support channels, and even sales calls before they start using the product. Additionally, we conduct technical demos to help them design their entire localization process and gather even more feedback, which is not often seen in companies of our size.

3. Have you ever personally encountered a situation where you decided against using a particular service due to poor Developer Experience? If so, what were the specific pain points that influenced your decision?

Yes, throughout our journey at Localazy, we’ve frequently faced decisions where we had to choose for or against certain services. As we grow, our needs become more complex, and we’re particularly mindful of how well a tool can integrate into our existing stack.

At Localazy, we’re all tinkerers who prefer not to spend time on tasks that can be automated. We tend to select tools that allow for customization and, especially, open access via APIs. This approach enables us to quickly build processes on top of our tools, ensuring they integrate seamlessly and don’t become isolated within our ecosystem.

We’ve decided against using particular services when they lacked customization options or didn’t offer open APIs. A significant pain point is when a tool would lock us in without the possibility of migrating away in the future or wouldn’t allow integration with our workflows. In such cases, we had to look for alternative solutions that better met our requirements.

4. How do you approach Developer Experience within your own development teams? What processes or tools do you use to ensure that internal development workflows are streamlined and efficient?

At Localazy, we put a strong focus on Developer Experience within our teams by creating an environment that values context, collaboration, and efficiency. We believe that for developers to do their jobs well, they need as much context as possible to think about systems as a whole, not just isolated tasks. To achieve this, we use Fibery to manage our development efforts – in fact, our entire company operates within Fibery. This platform gives everyone access to our goals, metrics, initiatives, customer feedback, bug reports, and more.

When working on a specific task, the relevant context is always linked and discussed. Tasks can be assigned to one person, either in progress or for code review. This, combined with Fibery’s notification and comment systems, allows for smooth asynchronous work. Developers are fully informed and engaged, improving collaboration and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

We break down work into achievable, iterative steps that make sense within the larger system. This approach allows us to make progress incrementally while keeping the big picture in mind. At Localazy, we aim to use the latest developer tools and dependencies because it saves us time in the long run. For example, having shorter build times can greatly reduce frustration over time, allowing our team to work and collaborate more efficiently.

Automation is a key part of our workflows. We use code linting, unit testing, and E2E testing to maintain code quality and catch issues early in the development process. Our code is divided into multiple repositories with reusable components, promoting modularity and reusability and keeping the PRs small. We use GitHub and GitHub Actions to automate our entire CI/CD pipeline, which lets us iterate quickly and deliver updates continuously. By automating tests and pull request checks, we improve the quality of the code we develop while reducing manual work.

In GitHub Actions, we run workflows on dedicated servers to ensure fast runtimes, so we don’t have to wait long before merging code. The deployment process is streamlined: by approving and merging an automatically created pull request that includes all the changes and a brief changelog, we simplify releases. All deployments are automated using Docker containers.

This approach allows our developers to focus solely on coding, limiting the extra cognitive load they need to do their work effectively. By reducing distractions and automating repetitive tasks, we enhance productivity and maintain a high level of satisfaction in our team.

5. In the spirit of continuous improvement, are there areas in your Developer Experience that you’ve identified as needing enhancement? How are you planning to address these challenges?

At Localazy, we live by four main product principles: OPEN, TRANSPARENT, INTUITIVE, and AUTOMATED. These principles guide us in all aspects of our product development, including our DX. While we’ve made significant steps towards this vision, we recognize that there are areas in our DX that need enhancement, and we’re actively working to address these challenges.

First, we’re working on a new developer portal that will serve as a hub for all developer resources, separate from our user documentation. This portal will include examples, starter templates, guides, and more, making it easier for developers to find the information they need. You can get a sneak peek here: https://developer.localazy.com/.

Next, we’re working on opening Localazy to all developers. This involves improving our API and its documentation, as well as creating a new integration marketplace. This marketplace won’t just feature our official integrations, it will also allow anyone to develop and share their own integrations with Localazy. We’ve already built a satisfactory level of abstraction for our internal use, and we plan to publish this for everyone, along with straightforward steps and an example repository.

Finally, we plan to continuously enhance our automation capabilities and develop tools and plugins that will save developers even more time in the future. We aim to automate workflows and reduce manual effort, allowing developers to concentrate on building great products.

Focusing on these areas, we believe that we will uphold to our core principles and provide an unmatched developer experience in the market.

6. What tangible benefits has your company seen as a result of prioritizing good Developer Experience? Can you share any specific examples or outcomes?

One of the main benefits that have helped us differentiate Localazy in the market is our CLI, which I mentioned earlier. Developers are often the ones who come up with automation ideas and are skilled at identifying areas for improvement and reducing waste. We find that this bottom-up approach works exceptionally well as an organic product adoption technique.

This is confirmed by the data we observe. For example, developers who try our CLI on their first visit have a whopping 62% higher chance of returning and continuing to explore the platform. Therefore, we don’t present ourselves merely as a simple translation tool; instead, we showcase this integration option right away when they sign up. By engaging developers from the outset and prioritizing their experience, we’ve increased user retention and built a more active and committed user base.

This way, we haven't only attracted more developers, but we're also building a community that actively contributes to the improvement of our platform. This approach has led to higher activation rates, increased customer satisfaction, and great feedback.

Conclusion

Localazy is a wonderful example of how investing in developer experience pays off. It makes their product simple to use for developers, allowing Localazy to build a loyal community of users around them who have no need to flee to the competition. Localazy’s well-set internal processes make their development more efficient and developers more satisfied. 

At Localazy, they are always looking to push themselves further, which is why they also conduct our DX Audit to catch all the little quirks that developers may encounter in their product journey.