If you currently run an online shop, take a moment to check your analytics. Where do most of your customers come from? The majority of your customers probably hail from the country you do business in, but chances are you get some decent numbers for other random countries. Chances are those people also speak your language, allowing them to navigate through your website and buy an item they find appealing.
But what about people in those same countries who aren't familiar with your language? They can't understand your website. Now that's a problem because it's clear that this hypothetical foreign country shows potential.
For example, let's say you run a business in the United States. It's an online shop that sells women's hiking gear. These are high-end products known for their toughness and sweat wicking ability. You notice that several people in Germany are buying your products. It makes sense. German people are outdoorsy and many of them speak English. The only problem is that a significant portion of Germans don't know much English. Imagine how many more German customers you could get if your content was displayed in their language?
You have a few solutions for this dilemma:
- Build completely separate websites designated for different countries.
- Install a translation app or plugin that translates content manually or automatically.
The second solution obviously sounds the most appealing, since you'd rather save time to spend on your business rather than maintaining and deploying 2 separated websites. Solution like Weglot allows you to have both manual and automatic translations without requiring any technical knowledge. Meaning, you can expand to become an international business overnight.
In this Weglot review we'll cover all of the ins and outs of the popular translation tool and show you whether or not it's the right translator for you.
How Weglot Works and the Features That Come With
Weglot is an app dedicated to simplifying translations.
You get all of the accuracy of manual translations, through an app that syncs with your visual editor or website builder.
Because Weglot believes that setting up a multi-lingual website should be easy, the app is easy to install, and compatible with virtually all website and CMS technologies. You can get the full system up and running in five minutes or less.
Weglot offers a Shopify App, WordPress plugin, and BigCommerce app. Therefore, you don't have to mess around with any code with those platforms. You install the app or plugin and configure the settings to start translating. Each of these apps has incredible ratings and reviews, so you're in good hands.
The all-in-one Weglot platform makes it easy for you to manage all of your translation options in one place. This means that you don’t have to jump between multiple tools. Features include:
- A quick and easy installation process that takes less than five minutes. There’s no need to worry about complex coding. Your language switcher can be up and running in no time.
- Automatic content detection: If you don’t need direct human translation, you can set Weglot to automatically detect all content on your website and translate it automatically.
- Team collaboration tools: To keep your team running smoothly on the back end, you can invite team members and other professionals to collaborate within Weglot.
- Multiple languages: Choose your new languages from a list of more than 100 options. You can also review and edit all translated content before it goes live on your Shopify, WordPress, or WooCommerce website.
- Excellent front-end experience: Choose between automatic and human translation to ensure that you give your customers the best experience. Automatic translation comes from some of the best machine learning tools on the web, including Microsoft and Google.
- In-context editor: You can use the Weglot in-context editor to translate content with context in mind. The visual editor ensures that you know what your website is going to look like.
- Access to professionals: The translation services from Weglot aren’t all automated. You can also unlock support from the Weglot support team too.
- Visitor automatic redirection. If you really want to get the most out of your WordPress translation plugin, use it to automatically serve the right pages to your audience depending on their preferred language.
- Localized experiences for all customers: You can customize every part of the customer journey to your audience. This includes translating email confirmations, landing pages and more.
Weglot is SEO friendly and optimized, following Google best practices guidelines for multilingual SEO:
- The content is translated on the server side, allowing Google and other search engines to see and index the translated versions,unlike JavaScript solutions that only translate on the client side.
- Automatically creates an optimized multilingual architecture with sub-folders (« /fr or /es » for French and Spanish versions for example). According to Google, you need to have a dedicated URL for each version of your page. Using sub-folders allows you to have one URL for each language.
- Automatically adding href lang tag in the HTML code to help Google be aware that other versions of the page are available and need to be crawled and indexed.
- SEO tags translated.
Weglot Pricing
With Weglot you receive the option to sign up for a free plan. They also have a 10-day free trial if you'd like to get a taste of the premium plans.
The free version of the Weglot translation plugin is a great way to get a taste of the software when you’re not sure if it’s right for you. However, like most free services, there are some limitations to what you can do. This professional translation tool only allows you to translate one language. Plus, you only have 2000 words to work with.
Once you run out of words on your plan, you need to upgrade to a paid service. Of course, if all you want to do is translate a landing page or a single product page, then Welgot’s free version should be fine for you. If you want to test one of the premium plans out and see what works for you, they all come with a 10-day free trial.
The great thing about Weglot pricing is that it’s simple. The amount you spend will depend on how many different languages you want to translate, and how many words there are in your project. For instance, if you want to translate one language on your WordPress website, you can start with the “Starter” package for 99 euros per year. This covers up to 10,000 words.
The available packages include:
- Starter: 99 euros per year for 10,000 words and 1 language translation option
- Business: 190 euros per year for 3 translated languages, and up to 50,000 words
- Pro: 490 euros per year for up to 200,000 words, and 5 translated languages.
- Advanced: 1,990 euros per year for up to 1 million words, and 10 translated languages
- Enterprise: Starting at 4,990 euros for a custom number of languages and words
The enterprise package is the most expensive option from Weglot today. There used to be a package available called “Corporate” but this has been removed in recent years.
Notably, another change to the Weglot app is that it now offers fees on a yearly basis, instead of a monthly recurring expense.
One good feature of Weglot from a pricing perspective is that it allows you to estimate how many words you need for your multilingual site. The Weglot.com website comes with a word count estimation tool. If you go over your limit because your WordPress site has more words than you expected, you get a notification before your plan is upgraded.
Another bonus of Weglot, besides its simple pricing and ease of use, is that you don’t pay the full price for the next plan when you upgrade. Because you already paid for the smaller plan, you just pay the remaining difference between that and the new package. That means that upgrading might not be as expensive as you think.
Weglot Review: How's the Customer Support?
Weglot customer support used to differ depending on what account subscription you paid for. These days, you can search through the knowledge base, or access support from the help center whenever you choose. However, you still need to have a higher-tier package if you want to access full team help.
With access to everything from human to machine translation, Weglot makes translation easy, so you shouldn’t need too much support. There’s very little coding knowledge or CSS experience required either. However, it’s worth being aware of what kind of support you’ll have available, just in case.
Starter, Business, and Pro versions of Weglot, as well as the Advanced option, all offer email support. If you choose the Enterprise package, then you get primary email support. This means that the responses to your questions will be faster.
The good news is that the primary support options should help to solve most of your problems.
The main support is provided through an email form and a knowledge base. Therefore, you can send in an email, but the response time depends on how much you're paying for a plan.
Most users will go to the knowledge base before contacting Weglot since it has a wide range of topics for things like Shopify, WordPress, pricing and translation management. It also has a search bar for punching in keywords.
Overall, the customer support from Weglot looks pretty solid, and it's complemented by social media pages and a content-rich blog.
Who Should Consider Weglot as Their eCommerce Translation Tool?
First of all, Weglot isn't only reserved for online stores. Not all regular business websites are focused on local markets, and Weglot integrates fine with all types of sites. In addition, some local stores might even find that their surrounding population includes a wide range of languages. If you have a Spanish neighborhood near your business, it'll hurt your margins if you neglect it.
But this is an ecommerce website, so that's who we're going to primarily focus on. Which stores should consider Weglot?
All of them.
A small online startup is bound to get some interesting leads from other countries, even with basic Facebook and Google Ads. The mid-sized and larger online stores benefit the most, and all industries should consider catering to the entire world. Even charities with donation plugins get visitors from all over the globe.
Remember, you can also use Weglot on more than one website if you have the Pro plan or above. This means that you can spread your new plugin’s functionality across multiple sites. If you want to make sure you don’t go over your package allowance, check your account. You’ll also be able to use your account to see how many people are viewing your translated content.
In short, you're leaving money on the table if you forget about the Weglot translator.
So, give Weglot a try to see if you can get more customers from far off lands. It has a free plan, so you have nothing to lose.
Also, let us know in the comments what you think of this Weglot review and the Weglot tool once you try it.
hello
is it possible not to display the current language and only the one i can choose?
thanks
As far as I know, this is possible.
Hi Joe,
With the Weglot Translator, do you know what languages are available? And how accurate is the translation (hoping that it’s nothing like Google Translate)?
Great article, many thanks!
Nick
Hello Nick,
Here is a list with all available languages. If you’re not completely happy with the translation you have the option to manually translate your content as well.
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Bogdan – Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com