A German localisation guide for adult shops: the order of work, the legal texts and the checks before launch

1Work in a fixed order

1. Foundations: domain or folder, hreflang, currency, VAT display, delivery options.
2. Legal texts: the German pages a shop needs before it can sell.
3. Selling pages: checkout, top categories, best-selling products.
4. Everything else: guides, the wider catalogue, emails.

2The German legal pages

A typical set for a German online shop; have the texts drafted or checked by a German legal specialist.

3The button and the checkout

German law (§ 312j BGB) makes the wording of the last button decisive: "zahlungspflichtig bestellen" or an equally plain label, or the order does not bind the buyer. Check every step of the checkout in German as a buyer would, including error messages, payment names and the confirmation email.

4Write a one-page style guide

• Address: Sie or du, and where exceptions apply.
• Numbers: decimal commas, euro sign after the amount, dates as day, month, year.
• Terms: which English words stay English, and the German forms of your categories.
• Tone: discreet, clear and never explicit on public pages.

5Check before launch

Before going live, have a native speaker place a test order, read every public page on a phone, click the Impressum from several pages and confirm that nothing explicit is reachable outside the closed user group. The service behind this guide is German localisation; the intent side is in our note on English versus German search.

6Payment methods Germans expect

7Delivery the German way

German buyers know their carriers and expect choices. Delivery to a Packstation or parcel shop is popular for discretion, and some buyers prefer it to home delivery. State the carriers, delivery times and costs before checkout, including to Austria if you ship there, and describe the outer packaging and sender name. These details are among the most searched by German buyers of adult products.

8Prices under the PAngV

German price rules require gross prices including VAT, and for some products a unit price, such as per 100 millilitres for lubricants. When showing a reduction, the comparison must refer to the lowest price of the previous 30 days. Build these into product templates, so every German product page gets them automatically rather than by hand.

9Consent and cookies under the TDDDG

The consent banner must be in German, offer a refusal as easy as acceptance, and actually stop non-essential tags until consent is given. Banners copied from other markets often fail the last point. Test the German site with a fresh browser and check which tags fire before any choice is made.

10German-specific mistakes

• A final button reading "Jetzt kaufen" or "Weiter" instead of wording that makes the payment obligation clear.
• A withdrawal notice without the model withdrawal form.
• Legal pages citing the old Telemediengesetz.
• Du and Sie mixed across pages.
• Reductions shown against prices never charged in the previous 30 days.

11A UK shop localising for Germany

Picture this. A UK shop launches a German version with a /de/ folder. It hires a German lawyer for the legal pages, a native writer for product pages and guides, and changes its checkout wording and payment options. A German speaker places a test order, which catches an English confirmation email and a missing unit price on lubricants. Both are fixed before launch. The first months bring fewer complaints than the team feared, because the details German buyers check were right from the start. Our note on German hreflang covers the technical set-up.

12Order confirmation and emails

German law expects the contract terms and withdrawal information to reach the customer in a durable form, usually by email after the order. Make sure the German order confirmation includes them, that subject lines are discreet, and that every transactional email, from dispatch to returns, exists in German. A German checkout followed by an English confirmation undoes much of the trust the localisation built.

13Support and help pages in German

Once a German version launches, German questions arrive. Publish German help pages for the questions asked most: delivery times, payment options, returns of opened products, discretion and data protection. Answer support emails in German, in the same tone as the site. Help pages often rank for exactly the questions that hold buyers back, and they reduce the load on support.

14After launch: the first ninety days

1. Weeks 1 to 4: watch German orders, support questions and any checkout errors daily.
2. Weeks 5 to 8: compare German conversion with the original market and fix the largest gaps.
3. Weeks 9 to 12: review German queries in Search Console and plan the second phase of pages.

The research method is in German keyword research.

15Glossary and style guide in practice

Keep the German glossary and the one-page style guide in one shared document that every writer, translator and developer can open. Update it whenever a decision is made, such as choosing "Toy" over "Spielzeug" for a category, or "du" for the whole site. New pages then follow the same decisions without discussion, and the German version stays consistent as it grows. Review the document once a quarter with whoever owns the German site.

16Owning the German version

A localised site needs one person responsible for it: approving new German pages, noticing when the original changes and making sure German follows within days. Without that owner, German pages fall behind, prices and policies drift, and German customers are the first to notice. Content standards are set out in our German writing note, and local work in Berlin local SEO.

17Returns of opened products

German withdrawal rights have an exception for sealed goods that are unsuitable for return for health or hygiene reasons once unsealed, which applies to many intimate products. State clearly in German, before purchase, which products are covered by the exception and which can be returned unopened, and remember that faulty goods are always covered. A clear page prevents disputes and answers a question German buyers search before ordering.

18In short

Foundations first, then the checkout and legal pages, then products and guides, each reviewed by a native speaker on the live site. Treat the German version as a shop in its own right, with an owner, a glossary and a quarterly review, rather than as a translation of somewhere else.

19Sources

• Search Central (Google)

Primary publishers for this guide's facts, linked for checking.

?Questions