Creating a version of your webpages in another language is an easy way to attract an additional audience. It gives your brand a presence in a new market and it helps with SEO. Wix makes it relatively easy to duplicate the existing infrastructure, although there are a few pitfalls to be mindful of.
Follow the step-by-step guide to localisation on Wix, or just jump straight to the following sections:
The Wix Multilingual App
Install the Wix Multilingual the app from the Wix App Market (Dashboard > Apps > App Market). Once this is done, it will become visible from your Dashboard menu under "Multilingual".
The app offers you a "Multilingual overview" and a "Translation Manager". The Multilingual overview shows the languages your website is published in, and the Translation Manager allows your localisation translator to go through the site sentence by sentence to translate it all.
Tip : Don't waste your money on the option to buy automated translation credits from Wix, and look for a professional localisation translator working in the language you're interested in (you will probably need one for each language).
The website localisation (aka get translating)
Your translator will probably find the Wix Translation Manager a little clunky comapred to their usual workflow. You have the option to simply extract all text into a csv file for them to translate and then upload it back.
1. Go to Multilingual overview and click "Add a language" at the top right. Chose the language you need and the flag to go with it. A new language appears in the list, with the number of words translated (0 !) and the total number of words to translate (you'll need that info to get a translation quote).
2. When you're ready, click on the "..." next to the target language and click "export" to download a csv and share it with your localisation translator. Better still, give them access so they can do this themselves and proof-read. Let them do their magic.
3. When your translator has translated all segments in the target language column of their spreadsheet/csv, you can come back to the Multilingual overview and click on "..." , then on "import" to upload it.
Proof-reading
Your human translation should now be visible in the Translation Manager, or your translator can start proof-reading in the Website Editor by clicking back and forth between pages and languages shown at the top left of the editor. Each page can be edited in-situ.
Translating visual content
Any images, slogans, infographics in English will benefit from being translated into the target language at this point.
SEO transcreation
Your web pages in other languages offer the same SEO functionalities as the ones in English with the exception of the slug. To give this new target market its best chance of success, find a translator specialised in SEO transcreation. They will be able to help you with the keyword research, to integrate the keywords in the translated copy in a natural and engaging way, to work on the image ALT and captions, etc.
When you're ready, click on "Publish" to make the site live. A "languages" menu will appear in your header. Hurrah!
Future content
Don't forget to retain the services of your translator to work on any newly published content in future.
A few limitations to be aware of
When you click "Publish" at any point during the translation process, the multilingual pages will all be uploaded to your live site regardless of whether the translation has been finalised or not. It's not really a problem since you probably won't have done any SEO or promotion at that point, but it's something to be aware of.
The slug won't be translated, and your multingual pages will have a url like www.domain.com/fr/same-slug-in-english.
The automated translation is powered by Google. Marketing copy is notoriously difficult to translate because of its creative and SEO elements, and Wix themselves suggest including a disclaimer as it "may be flawed or innacurate". Enough said... To find a good linguist, try typing "[language] professional translator specialised in SEO" into Google, or drop me an email for a French translation quote or to ask me to recommend one of my colleagues working in other languages. To keep the cost down, hire a freelance translator rather than working through a translation compagny.