Multilingual website: power up Webflow with Weglot
I can’t describe how excited I was when my client, a Winnipeg, Canada-based advertising agency, reached out to say they needed a landing page in two languages and were willing to give Weglot a try.
At that point, I knew only that Weglot, as a tool, existed, and had never had a chance to use it. However, this project presented the perfect opportunity.
A brief outline of Weglot:
- Weglot is a hosted translation service that lets you convert your content into more than a hundred languages. (As our second language was going to be French, we had no concerns whatsoever.)
- Translations are processed automatically using DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator. The machine translation should be treated as a first, base layer after which proofreading can then be done.
- Any new content added to the site is automatically detected and translated. If you edit translations, the changes are automatically applied to your website in real time.
- Weglot follows Google’s best practices for multilingual SEO (as per information on their website).
- Weglot translates your pages directly on the server-side – that means they’re translated before the pages are sent to the visitor’s web browser.
- Weglot detects not only the content on your page, but everything from your menu, widgets, footer, theme elements, and even dynamic content.
- Weglot automatically creates language subdirectories or subdomains for each of your new languages.
- Weglot adds hreflang tags for you.
- Weglot also translates the metadata and image alt tags.
Now, let’s delve into the experience itself.
Luckily, our one-pager didn’t exceed the word limit for the free plan (2000 words). While that was good news, I was still worried about the level of support available on the free plan. I anticipated that at some point I may need support. If so, would it be delivered professionally and on time? Spoiler alert: my concerns were completely unfounded. I messaged the support team twice, and both times I received a prompt, high-quality response from a real human. Just keep in mind that the support team’s working hours are Monday–Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Paris Time).
Right away there was a challenge (or so it seemed to me at the time) regarding a form on the page. Instead of being translated, the form was supposed to be switched with a similar French form for leads tracking purposes. Thankfully, it turned out to be very easy to display content only in a specific language. It required just one line of code! That discovery was so delightful that we ended up switching a bunch of images, hiding some English reviews and videos, etc. to enhance the experience for our French-speaking audience.
For the language switch we opted for something fancy and added a nice one from Finsweet’s Weglot UI Kit. Thank you, Joe, for all the detailed instructions!
We also customized our subdomains so the French version could be advertised directly. You need access to your domain settings to be able to do this. As a result, we got a link that could be used in ad campaigns in the French-speaking provinces. It looks like fr.website.com. Which is super cool.
The only frustration I experienced related to the Weglot dashboard. It wasn’t always clear when the changes I made in the dashboard would become visible on the live website. While the notifications kept informing me that it would happen in 30 seconds, in practice this time period varied. (And yes, I always used incognito mode).
Overall, I consider this project a success and I’ve enjoyed the ease of working with Weglot. Integration was simple, customization was easy, and performance was high. My client was also satisfied with the result and is now planning to add Weglot to the main company website. Can’t wait to expand!
To learn more about Weglot, please visit the official Weglot website.
If you have a project and you plan to go multilingual, reach out and we’ll discuss how my skills can benefit your business.
