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Guest Contributor
Guest
The journey to international markets typically involves technical hurdles and hefty price tags. Without additional tools, website translation means wrestling with complex code, hiring specialized developers, and maintaining separate sites for each language.
This process is undergoing rapid change thanks to innovative solutions that democratize how businesses of all sizes attain a global reach.
Enter Weglot, a translation solution that turns the traditional website localization model on its head. It eliminates the need for technical expertise and significant upfront investment and helps businesses tap into international markets with unprecedented ease.
The typical approach to website translation is often a developer’s domain. It requires deep technical knowledge of your chosen Content Management System (CMS), an understanding of language files (such as .po files), and expertise in maintaining multiple versions of the same website.
This complexity means many smaller businesses without the budget are effectively locked out of international markets.
Weglot’s approach is fundamentally different. Rather than requiring you to modify your website’s code or create separate instances for each language, it integrates directly with your existing CMS through a simple plugin or code snippet.
The installation takes under 5 minutes, and the platform will detect and translate all of your website’s content without the need for your manual input. This includes text, images, and even metadata.
Consider the case of respond.io, a customer conversation management platform that serves over 10,000 companies across 86 countries.
The respond.io website.
With clients including Klook and British Airways, faced a common challenge: how to effectively reach and serve a rapidly growing international customer base where many users didn’t speak English as their first language.
Using Weglot, they were able to launch their website in 15 different languages in a matter of days rather than months. The process—which traditionally requires extensive technical resources and ongoing maintenance—became streamlined and efficient.
The result was impressive growth in international reach, with some language versions seeing more than double the traffic within just one year. As Project Lead Polina Usynina notes:
“…Weglot did all of that for us with minimal effort on our part…”
What made the transformation particularly notable was the ease of implementation. Through Weglot’s Visual Editor, the respond.io team could review translations in real-time and make immediate changes without touching a line of code.
This enabled them to maintain their brand voice across every language while keeping costs and technical complexity manageable.
The key to Weglot’s accessibility lies in its user-centric interface and automated processes. In fact, this is crucial. The typical process involves altering files and lots of manual labour that happens behind the scenes.
The Weglot Translate language editing interface.
This is the no-code revolution in action, as Weglot handles both the translation and technical aspects of making a website multilingual without the need for a developer. For instance, you can achieve most of your goals within minutes:
Perhaps most importantly, you can start small and expand your language offerings gradually. This way to test new markets won’t require a significant upfront investment but will give you the quality you’d expect from a world-class translation service.
While Weglot’s interface is straightforward, the technology that powers it is sophisticated. The platform uses a combination of machine learning and neural networks to provide an initial layer of machine translation.
For instance, DeepL, Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, are used to translate the content of your site.
You then get access to these translations through your dashboard, where you can edit, manage, create translation rules, exclude pages from translation, and more, so you can refine the translation quality of your site.
This hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds: the speed and cost-effectiveness of automated translation with the option for human refinement.
No-code solutions such as Weglot can also handle complex SEO tasks that often need developers to oversee. For example, hreflang tags are how search engines serve the right language and locale combination to a visitor.
The Cola-Cola website for African audiences speaking French, showing the hreflang tag within the URL.
Getting this wrong could be a nightmare for your User Experience (UX). Even Google’s own engineers deem this sort of technical functionality a complex and hard aspect to implement, but Weglot does this in the background for you.
However, modern website translation isn’t just about converting text from one language to another. It’s about building a complete localized experience that resonates with visitors from different cultural backgrounds.
Visual editing can often be better than having to visualize how content looks from language translation files. As such, a real-time preview of your language additions can speed up the whole process:
The Weglot visual editor.
This lets you keep an eye on a few other facets of your multilingual efforts:
Speaking of UX, language switchers can also provide an excellent way to help visitors choose the right site language:
A Weglot language switcher
As global e-commerce continues to grow, the ability to reach international audiences using all of these tactics is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Weglot’s approach suggests a future where language barriers no longer limit your business growth and where even small companies can compete within international markets.
If you are considering international expansion, the barriers to entry have never been lower. Weglot’s website translation software offers a risk-free way to test new markets, with a ten-day free trial that lets you experience the full potential of your website in multiple languages.
The beginning is as simple as installing Weglot. Within minutes, you can reach new audiences and test international waters without the traditional technical overhead or financial investment.
The digital economy is increasingly global, and the ability to communicate effectively across languages is becoming a critical success factor. With solutions such as Weglot, businesses of all sizes can now participate in this global conversation, reach new markets, and connect with customers worldwide in their preferred language.
Read also: Are Nigeria’s unicorns truly billion-dollar giants amid naira’s 82% decline?
This process is undergoing rapid change thanks to innovative solutions that democratize how businesses of all sizes attain a global reach.
Enter Weglot, a translation solution that turns the traditional website localization model on its head. It eliminates the need for technical expertise and significant upfront investment and helps businesses tap into international markets with unprecedented ease.
How no-code translation is changing the game
The typical approach to website translation is often a developer’s domain. It requires deep technical knowledge of your chosen Content Management System (CMS), an understanding of language files (such as .po files), and expertise in maintaining multiple versions of the same website.
This complexity means many smaller businesses without the budget are effectively locked out of international markets.
Weglot’s approach is fundamentally different. Rather than requiring you to modify your website’s code or create separate instances for each language, it integrates directly with your existing CMS through a simple plugin or code snippet.
The installation takes under 5 minutes, and the platform will detect and translate all of your website’s content without the need for your manual input. This includes text, images, and even metadata.
From local shop to global presence: A real-world success story [CHANGE STORY]
Consider the case of respond.io, a customer conversation management platform that serves over 10,000 companies across 86 countries.
The respond.io website.
With clients including Klook and British Airways, faced a common challenge: how to effectively reach and serve a rapidly growing international customer base where many users didn’t speak English as their first language.
Using Weglot, they were able to launch their website in 15 different languages in a matter of days rather than months. The process—which traditionally requires extensive technical resources and ongoing maintenance—became streamlined and efficient.
The result was impressive growth in international reach, with some language versions seeing more than double the traffic within just one year. As Project Lead Polina Usynina notes:
“…Weglot did all of that for us with minimal effort on our part…”
What made the transformation particularly notable was the ease of implementation. Through Weglot’s Visual Editor, the respond.io team could review translations in real-time and make immediate changes without touching a line of code.
This enabled them to maintain their brand voice across every language while keeping costs and technical complexity manageable.
Breaking down the barriers to global expansion
The key to Weglot’s accessibility lies in its user-centric interface and automated processes. In fact, this is crucial. The typical process involves altering files and lots of manual labour that happens behind the scenes.
The Weglot Translate language editing interface.
This is the no-code revolution in action, as Weglot handles both the translation and technical aspects of making a website multilingual without the need for a developer. For instance, you can achieve most of your goals within minutes:
- Launch a multilingual website with zero coding.
- Choose from 110+ languages, including custom languages.
- Edit translations directly through a visual interface.
- Maintain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) across all languages.
- Scale your translation efforts as you grow.
Perhaps most importantly, you can start small and expand your language offerings gradually. This way to test new markets won’t require a significant upfront investment but will give you the quality you’d expect from a world-class translation service.
The technology behind the simplicity
While Weglot’s interface is straightforward, the technology that powers it is sophisticated. The platform uses a combination of machine learning and neural networks to provide an initial layer of machine translation.
For instance, DeepL, Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, are used to translate the content of your site.
You then get access to these translations through your dashboard, where you can edit, manage, create translation rules, exclude pages from translation, and more, so you can refine the translation quality of your site.
This hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds: the speed and cost-effectiveness of automated translation with the option for human refinement.
No-code solutions such as Weglot can also handle complex SEO tasks that often need developers to oversee. For example, hreflang tags are how search engines serve the right language and locale combination to a visitor.
The Cola-Cola website for African audiences speaking French, showing the hreflang tag within the URL.
Getting this wrong could be a nightmare for your User Experience (UX). Even Google’s own engineers deem this sort of technical functionality a complex and hard aspect to implement, but Weglot does this in the background for you.
More than just translation
However, modern website translation isn’t just about converting text from one language to another. It’s about building a complete localized experience that resonates with visitors from different cultural backgrounds.
Visual editing can often be better than having to visualize how content looks from language translation files. As such, a real-time preview of your language additions can speed up the whole process:
The Weglot visual editor.
This lets you keep an eye on a few other facets of your multilingual efforts:
- You’re able to maintain design consistency regardless of text length, which matters in some languages (such as German).
- You don’t erode your UX and can tailor your site to the needs of your customer base.
- Given the visual design step, there’s less need to convert and test any language changes you make.
- You can see your translations in context.
Speaking of UX, language switchers can also provide an excellent way to help visitors choose the right site language:
A Weglot language switcher
As global e-commerce continues to grow, the ability to reach international audiences using all of these tactics is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Weglot’s approach suggests a future where language barriers no longer limit your business growth and where even small companies can compete within international markets.
Making the move to multilingual
If you are considering international expansion, the barriers to entry have never been lower. Weglot’s website translation software offers a risk-free way to test new markets, with a ten-day free trial that lets you experience the full potential of your website in multiple languages.
The beginning is as simple as installing Weglot. Within minutes, you can reach new audiences and test international waters without the traditional technical overhead or financial investment.
The digital economy is increasingly global, and the ability to communicate effectively across languages is becoming a critical success factor. With solutions such as Weglot, businesses of all sizes can now participate in this global conversation, reach new markets, and connect with customers worldwide in their preferred language.
Read also: Are Nigeria’s unicorns truly billion-dollar giants amid naira’s 82% decline?