When your website keeps growing, it will inevitably reach a wider audience be it through accidental clicks, external links or a precise Google search. The thing is you can accelerate this process further and reach out to potential customers instead of waiting for them to find you. Your website might be already sufficiently optimized for search engines, but still lack one important thing — a multilingual support.
If you want people from all parts of the world to see your website and understand what your deal is, you can’t go without introducing at least a couple new languages. But the more — the better.
In this article we’ll dive into the bread and butter of making your website multilingual:
- What is a Multi-Language Website
- Multilingual Websites Advantages Over Monolingual Websites
- Why Your Website Starts Needing Multiple Languages Supported
- Common Mistakes in Website Content Translation
- How to Make Your Website Multilingual
What is a Multi-Language Website
It is better to start with a clear and simple definition since the name without context might be a little confusing.
A ‘multi-language’ (or ‘multilingual’) website is not a website about languages, it’s a website that supports more than language in its settings. It either adapts for a user’s language preferences automatically, changing the content of a page into a preferred tongue, or a user themselves changes a language of a website through settings.
Multilingual Websites Advantages Over Monolingual Websites
While a monolingual website is probably enough for a small local business that doesn’t plan on going global, for e-commerce multiple language support is practically a must.
But even if your company is small, it doesn’t mean that its website shouldn’t implement different languages. Dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of languages are spoken in big countries such as the United States, Brazil, India and Russia. By adding more languages to your website you still make it more accessible for different people from your own country.
Why Your Website Needs Multiple Languages Support
By adding more popular languages to your website you will:
- Drastically improve your website’s SEO. Your website instantly becomes more easily searchable.
- Make UX (user experience) fuller and better. Your existing and also potential clients will have a better time using your website.
- Have a more loyal and trusting audience. Having a lot of languages supported shows your customers that you care about them. A good language support helps users to connect more to your website.
- Expand your audience. More languages equals more potential customers and revenue.
- Get advantage over your competition. If your competitor’s language support is worse or nonexistent, users will choose you instead every single time.
Common Mistakes
Translating an entire website into different languages is already overwhelming, but it’s helpful to have a list of commonly made mistakes so you can avoid them.
Machine translation
Of course, no one expects a website owner to be fluent in ten languages, but fully relying on auto translation or AI isn’t the best idea. Both can be one of your tools and will be a decent starting point.
However, machine translation will often miss important points and context. Especially when a language is very distant from your native one, consult with real-life human professionals.
Pro-tip: your textual content should be short and sweet to begin with. The simpler your writing is, the easier it is to translate into a foreign language without losing accuracy.
Lack of the audience research
It is critical to understand for whom you translate your website.
Firstly, it means that you have to do a lot of conversions: currency, date writing style and so on. People in Europe, the USA and Asia all write down dates differently. In Europe, a common model will be DD. MM. YYYY, in the USA the same date will be written as MM. DD. YYYY, and in Japan — YYYY. MM. DD.
Secondly, it never hurts to check whether your website’s design, its color and slogans will be understood as intended. You might accidentally offend a whole group of people without even knowing it.
Not adapting your content according to the audience’s culture may cost you losing it entirely, so proceed with caution.
Poorly optimized architecture
If your website has different language versions, then everything in them must be translated accordingly. The text itself, buttons and other interactive objects have to be changed and adapted. Otherwise users will feel confused and lost.
Automatic geolocation
Not only might automatic geolocation be incorrect, especially in the age of VPN services becoming more and more common, but it also confuses search engines and hurts your traffic.
Forgetting about SEO
Your translated content must be just as optimized as the original. If you don’t optimize keywords, titles and descriptions for search engines, all the work that you put into translating your website will go to waste. No one’s going to actually see it.
How to Make a Multilingual Website With Site.pro
To make your website multilingual you firstly need to build a website to begin with. One of the best options which is also the fastest — a good website builder. They can be quite expensive, but Site.pro’s minimal plan starts with only $1.2 a month, way below the average market price.
The minimal plan includes:
- Infinite amount of websites
- Custom domain and a discount to all domains
- SEO
- Free mailbox
- More than 60 available templates
- And most importantly — multiple language support
Site.pro supports website import from most of the other platforms. It also provides a free AI website builder function to help you out with the design when you run out of ideas and need inspiration.
Now let’s learn how to make your website multilingual. Note that you’ll have to build a website in one language first. Your default language (for example, English) will have a star icon next to it.
- Enter the website builder.
- Drag & drop ‘Languages’ option from the main toolbar.
- Choose language customization and click ‘Add languages’.
- Select the languages you want and click ‘Apply’.
After that click on a flag icon to edit the content according to the chosen language. You’ll have to do all the translation work manually, but there is an AI Chatbot inside the builder. It will help you with translation without you having to exit the website builder.
To add more languages just repeat the procedure. Good luck!
Final Word
Incorporating more languages into your website is an amazing opportunity to enhance your traffic, become more recognizable, trusted and respected by your customers. The work itself might seem tedious, but it’s worth it. Don’t miss out on a chance to broaden your audience!
