Tricks for creating a multilingual e-commerce website (and living to tell the tale)

If you are working to turn your online store into a multilingual e-commerce website that allows you to reach an even larger audience, you undoubtedly know by now that it's no easy feat. Combining the best technological solution with a mastery of the languages to be used on the website is overwhelming for most people running a business. They simply do not have enough knowledge to make this work at a professional level. However, by employing the services of expert companies in these fields, you can establish a truly effective e-commerce website in all the languages you need.

 

Tricks for a quality multilingual e-commerce website

Creating a multilingual online store is not just about correctly translating the texts; there are basic guidelines that make the descriptions really effective, both for achieving good positioning and effective communication with users.

 

TECHNICAL DIFFERENCES

It is important to keep in mind that the two largest online business platforms, PrestaShop and WooCommerce, have different characteristics when it comes to creating a multilingual e-commerce website.

 

PrestaShop allows you to activate different languages or install others using the Languages option. On the other hand, WooCommerce offers you several options to achieve the same goal: creating subdomains or domains by language, as well as activating the different languages through folders.

 

After considering these specifications, the next step along the way is to translate the web pages and the category and product texts.

 

PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION

Are you looking for good positioning for all the languages of your e-commerce website, or do you want people from all over the be able to understand the information you're presenting? In both situations, your priority should be ensuring the texts on your website are translated by a professional or using a specialized plug-in for e-commerce websites (plus revision by a professional). This must also include the essential meta titles and descriptions for effective SEO.

 

To ensure your multilingual e-commerce website is a resounding success, avoid copying a text directly from a machine translator, as Google might consider this to be duplicated content.

 

The texts you publish in other languages on your e-commerce website need to be translated naturally into the target language, avoiding literal translations. It goes without saying that this cannot be done by just anyone who speaks a language correctly. In other words, however well you may speak English, you won’t be able to do a professional translation like a specialist from an expert company, such as Linguaserve, can do.

 

In short, to enjoy all the advantages that reaching people in other international markets represents for your business, you need a quality multilingual e-commerce website. You will only accomplish this feat if you employ the services of specialist translation professionals who use the proper tools. They will know how to approach all of your texts, taking into account the necessary specifications to connect with users and sound SEO practices.