Having a multilingual eCommerce website has become necessary for businesses to expand their brand reach across borders. However, these websites are more complex in nature and hence, a more critical process is required to ensure success. This blog will discuss a structured process that you can follow and also make sure to hire a reliable eCommerce web development company that can develop a custom-made website aligning with your brand image.

7 Quick Steps to Build a Multilingual eCommerce Website

Building a multilingual website involves several steps, from planning and design to implementation and final launch. Here are the key steps to build a multilingual website:

1. Planning and Strategy
Identify the languages you want to support based on your target audience. Decide which content needs to be translated and ensure cultural relevance. Also, make a plan for multilingual SEO to ensure your website ranks well in search engines for different languages.

2. Choose an eCommerce Development Platform
The next step is to choose the ideal multilingual eCommerce platform for your website development. Some of the popular ones are Shopify and BigCommerce, which provide built-in tools, plugins, and APIs to add multilingual functionality to your eCommerce website. For this, you can get assistance from a professional eCommerce development company to develop a custom-made website for your business.

3. Integrate Plugins, Translation Tools, and Begin Development
Now, the website development process can be started. The development team will begin the development code and integrate translation tools, such as location-based automatic language detectors, multiple currency support, and localization APIs, to ensure that date formats, currencies, and other locale-specific elements are properly displayed. They will also integrate a CMS within the website’s backend for seamless content optimization for multiple languages from a single dashboard.

4. Optimize for SEO
Optimize each language version of your website for search engines. This includes using hreflang tags, translating meta tags, and localizing keywords. Also set up analytics dashboard with the help of SEO Analytics tools to track website’s SEO performance in different languages.

5. Testing and QA
Once the website development and SEO are in place, the testing phase will follow. The QA team of your hired eCommerce web development company will conduct the following tests:

Functionality Testing - The QA team will test all website functionalities in each language to ensure everything works correctly.
Browser and Device Testing - Ensure the website performs well across different browsers and devices, including mobile, tablets, and desktops.

Lastly, to test the content in multiple languages, it’s best to hire a translator instead of relying on tools that might be prone to errors. The translator will review the translated content thoroughly for accuracy and cultural relevance.

6. Website Launch
Once the website passes the testing phase, it will be ready for the final launch. Some final checks will be made to ensure everything is in place, and then it will be launched in the market for your customers to access and start shopping for their favorite products.

7. Maintenance and Updates
Like any other website, a multilingual eCommerce website also requires continuous updates and maintenance. Hence, incorporate regular updates for content in all supported languages and features, and check for errors and fix them for optimal functionality. Also, use analytics tools to monitor the performance of each language version and make adjustments as needed.

Also read Importance of eCommerce Website for Your Online Business

Conclusion

Building a multilingual eCommerce website is a critical process as such websites are more complex in nature considering they will be covering content in more than one language. Hence, follow the steps shared above for streamlining development process and ensuring success of your website in the global markets. Moreover, hire a reliable firm offering eCommerce web development services to handle the website development and integration part.