Guide to Create a Multilingual WordPress Site

Internet started as an Invention of English speaker’s and as a result has been dominated mostly by the English speaking users and as well as websites. But the times are changing and the people buying PC’s and internet connections from Nigeria to New Zealand. English speakers will soon be the less ones in number when it will come to internet use.

Once you have an ability to communicate to a whole new international audience in their own language. It will yield results not only in a financial terms but also in terms of marketing and creating awareness of your brand, services or products.

Benefits Multilingual Websites

Cost effective marketing – A multilingual website can be one of the most cost effective ways of marketing for your company. It helps in capturing new markets, build relationships with clients and giving your brand an international outlook.

New Customers – Multilingual websites brings new customers. Having your website accessible to thousands of new people, it helps to showcase your company across the globe. Non-English speaking users looking for products or services that you are selling will automatically capture their attention.

Sales – According to the estimates every new language added to your website increases the potential to 100% in sales. If your website is translated into a few major world languages, i.e. Spanish, Italian and French. It increases the website’s potential easily upto 400% in sales.

Customer – Centric – A multilingual website give a message that you are focused to think about your customer. This extra effort can show your customers everywhere that you care about them to the extent that you offer the website in their language. Similar to any other business, if your customers feel that you care for them, they will always want to do business with you.

Trust – Buying products or services over the internet has not been a very trust worthy activity, especially if it in a language that your customers are not fully proficient in. Offering products and services in a language that makes the customers feel secure will help in the long run.

Beating competition – Getting a multilingual website is the first step to build a competitive advantage in today’s environment. If your competitors do not use multilingual website then it is the right time to become a smart player and establish your website abroad before they do.

International Nature – A multilingual website is a way to demonstrate how you think, work and deal internationally.

Search Engines – Search engines do an excellent job of leading people to your website. However in countries like China, Japan and France, Google, Yahoo and MSN do not play an important role. They have home grown search engines which are proving to be more successful because they communicate in native languages. Tapping those search engines is the key to tap those markets.

List of best plugins for creating a Multilingual WordPress site

WPML

WPML has become one of the most popular premium plugin for turning your site multilingual. It comes along with more than 40 languages and you can also add other language variants, such as local dialects. There are three plans of this plugin such as Multilingual Blog, Multilingual CMS and Multilingual Lifetime.

WPML gets regularly updated with new features and is compatible with most of the themes and plugins, including our own MarketPress.

qTranslate

It is one of the most popular plugin which comes for free and it is also fairly quick and easy to install. One can easily translate posts and pages from within the editors, rather than creating a separate post for different languages.

qTranslate also offers a professional translation service from within the dashboard using Web Translations.

Please do let us know of your queries or feedback with regards to the multilingual support for your WordPress websites.