The Best App For Language Conversion On Shopify

The reach of your website is limitless; choose a language app that supports your goals

As the world of Shopify becomes more diverse, it can be tough to know which apps to choose for your website. Reviews can be skewed, and don't really give the full picture of a product, so we are here to give you our professional opinion. You need Weglot in your life. Now.

Okay, you specifically may not need it because we're guessing you're a native English speaker, but what about your customers further afield? Old ways of working tended to assume that there were certain languages that were core; English, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin. Broadly speaking, someone, somewhere could converse or read one of these languages to a standard where they could purchase a product online. If there was a picture and a price with the product description – even better.

However, modern marketing and online business realise that customers prefer genuine, value-driven interactions. Being able to engage with, and sell, to a person in their native language opens up a whole new avenue for you. An avenue that Weglot have expertly cornered.

Why should I install a language app?

It's a fair question. After all, Google has a translate function, as do most browsers and platforms. The beauty of Weglot is that it translates your website, and then allows you to modify any translations that have come across as awkward or odd-sounding. You can do this via a visual editor function, it's easy and effective – which saves you time, and let's you fine-tune your written content to reflect your brand's personality.

Did you know that in Europe alone there are 24 'official' languages, and over 200 spoken language variants? The difference between a person trying to navigate buying your products in their second language, or having the choice to browse your whole Shopify site in their mother-tongue is simply a non-starter. Imagine a potential customer browsing for a certain product whilst they're watching Netflix.

They are only half-concentrating on their phone or tablet. The mental gymnastics they have to undertake to read a product description in English, compared to say Bulgarian, is too distracting... and they may give up on the search/website entirely. If they see there's a switch option to translate to Bulgarian, and when they start reading the text it flows correctly and sounds familiar – they are more likely to purchase your product, and remember your brand.

Weglot has so many options! At the time of writing this article you can translate your site into more than 100 languages, including Yiddish, Tongan, Scottish Gaelic, Esperanto, Mongolian, Azerbaijani... rare indigenous voices, to common-place and everything in between!

So, what else can the language app do for you?

Automatic language detection helps the customer. Weglot can discover what language the browser is set to, and suggest this as a translation. It's intuitive; ensuring you get a better shot at that commitment to buy.

The app also helps the customer (and you) during checkout. It translates the checkout process and delivery information, whereas in other apps Shopify checkout is in the original website language (English). Then, after the customer has made their purchase, Weglot saves the language they used so that if you need to email them marketing material or contact them for aftersales customer service, you can continue to give them a personalised experience.

Are there any others on the market? Why should I choose Weglot?

As we mentioned, there are hundreds of apps available for Shopify websites, with several strong contenders in the language/ translation sector. So why did we partner with Weglot?

Let's look at Langify, one of the older translation apps. Yes, it's been established for longer, however this means it isn't as intuitive as Weglot. This is the main issue you will come across with older applications; they were developed several years ago and may not have the functionality that Weglot has brought to the table.

For example; in Langify you need to manually enter every single translation. That's right. You need to hire professional human translators who can can write your content, then you need to type it into the app/ website. If you don't have the spare cash to hire a translator you can risk putting your content into Google Translate, then saving it to a document, and copy/paste this into Langify.

Sounds like a headache waiting to happen? It is.

We're not saying that every 'older' language app is worse than Weglot, there are benefits to some of the others. Unfortunately their age, functionality and lack of intuitive processes means that you need to weigh up what will suit your brand's way of working.

If you'd like to find out more about Weglot and what Pear Digital can do for your business, please don't hesitate to contact us – we work in your best interests, so you can continue to move forward.