Making a website available in multiple languages takes four ordered steps: language detection that respects user choice, native human translation across every page, hreflang tags wired to a clean URL structure, and a continuous-sync process so new posts and product pages do not drift. Skip any one of these and you end up with a site that ranks for English, hides the German version, and quietly leaks 25-35% of its EU revenue to Amazon.de competitors who took translation seriously.
The four-step process that actually works
Language detection should default to the visitor's browser locale on first hit, then store the explicit language pick in a cookie. Never auto-redirect a returning visitor who chose English the day before — that is the single biggest cause of bounce in multilingual rollouts.
Step two is the translation work itself. Machine output without native review fails for ecommerce because German product copy needs Bestellungen abschließen, not "complete the order" rendered word-for-word. We commission a native human reviewer for every page in scope and document their sign-off, which doubles as the legal record if a tax authority queries product descriptions later. Step three wires hreflang tags into the <head> of every translated page, plus a x-default fallback for the canonical English. Step four is the bit most agencies skip — a monthly sync that catches new blog posts, new product variants, and pricing changes before the foreign-language version goes stale. The W3C internationalisation guidance covers the underlying language-tag standards. See our translate website pillar for the underlying methodology.
Language detection done right
Browser-locale detection should never override an explicit user choice. The reliable pattern: read Accept-Language on first request, set a lang cookie when the visitor clicks the language switcher, then trust the cookie on every subsequent request.
Server-side rendering is mandatory here. JavaScript-only language switchers — the kind that swap text in the DOM after page load — are invisible to Googlebot and to AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity that read raw HTML. Each language must live at a distinct URL: subdirectories like /de/ and /fr/ are simplest; subdomains work but split your domain authority; and ccTLDs (.de, .fr) are the strongest signal but require fresh SEO from scratch. Google's Search Central guidance on multi-regional sites is unambiguous: pick one URL pattern per language and stick to it. We default to subdirectories for clients on a single ccTLD, and to separate domains only for buyers who already own .de and .fr properties.
Where Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and WordPress fall short
Each major platform has a multilingual gap that costs you European search visibility unless you fill it manually. Knowing the gap before you start saves a rebuild later.
Shopify Markets translates checkout strings and product titles automatically but renders blog posts and CMS pages in the source language unless you configure the Translate & Adapt app or a third-party app like Weglot. Squarespace has no native multilingual feature at all — see our Squarespace multilingual breakdown for the three documented workarounds. Wix Multilingual covers menu and page-level translation but does not handle product variants in Wix Stores cleanly. WordPress with WPML is the most flexible but adds 200-300ms to page load on shared hosting and breaks if you swap themes. The deeper issue across all four: none of them ship continuous sync. New content stays English until someone manually triggers a re-translation, and on a 50-product store that means three days a month of unbillable admin or 60-80% English-only pages within a year.
The 14-day done-for-you path
Our managed rollout takes ten to fourteen working days from contract to live multilingual site, with native review built in. The timeline is fixed because the bottleneck is human translator turnaround, not the technical work.
Day one to three: scope locked, page list audited, hreflang URL structure finalised. Day four to nine: native translators (one per language) work through the full content set with brand glossary applied, while we handle the technical migration, SSL, GDPR cookie banner, and analytics. Day ten to twelve: hreflang QA, schema markup applied, internal links rewritten so German visitors land on /de/ versions of every linked page. Day thirteen and fourteen: client review, edits, push live. We charge a single activation fee plus a monthly retainer that covers content sync. See website translation cost for the full breakdown. There is no pay-per-word charge, and no per-page upcharge for revisions inside the agreed scope.
Cost reality: DIY versus managed
Self-managed multilingual rollouts run £4,000-£7,000 across translation, plugin licences, developer time, and the inevitable rebuild when hreflang breaks. Managed rollouts via our service start at £497 activation plus £99/mo for the Starter tier, which covers five core pages plus the first language pair.
A typical Growth-tier rollout — twelve pages, one hundred blog posts, twenty-five products in two languages — is £997 activation plus £149/mo. The four-language EU bundle (German, French, Italian, Spanish) ships with a 15% activation discount. Compare that against the translation cost per word data: at 12-14 pence per word for native translation, a 25,000-word site in four languages runs £12,000-£14,000 on a freelance basis before plugin and hosting costs. Our flat-fee approach makes sense when the implicit alternative is three months of internal project management. If you operate in EU markets you will also need EPR registration — we handle the website side; epr.eldris.ai handles the producer responsibility filings.
When done-for-you wins outright
Done-for-you wins when your team has no in-house native speakers, no SEO lead with hreflang experience, and a launch deadline tied to a marketing campaign or Amazon FBA EU restock cycle. The maths is simple: the £997 Growth fee saves you 60-80 hours of internal time at any plausible internal rate.
It also wins when accuracy is legally load-bearing — cosmetic claims under EU regulation, food labelling, or anything covered by the unfair commercial practices directive. A mistranslated ingredient list is a recall, not a typo. We sign every translation off with a named native reviewer and keep the audit trail in your client portal. For brands moving into Germany alongside Amazon FBA DE, see amazon FBA Germany website. For the broader cross-portfolio: voice.eldris.ai handles multilingual phone receptionists, responsible.eldris.ai covers UK packaging compliance, and contact us for a fixed quote on your specific page count.
Frequently asked questions
How many languages should I launch with?
Start with the two markets that already drive demand. For most UK and US ecommerce brands that means German first (highest GDP, largest Amazon EU market) and French second (Amazon.fr plus Belgium and Switzerland reach). Italian and Spanish follow if your category has share to take in those markets. Launching four languages at once is fine if your catalogue is stable, but six or more becomes a content-sync problem fast. We recommend Growth tier (£997 activation) for a two-language launch and the four-language bundle for brands committed to full EU coverage.
Will machine translation hurt my SEO?
Pure machine output without human review will, yes. Google's quality guidelines flag auto-generated translations as low-quality content, and AI engines that increasingly drive product-discovery traffic — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — actively avoid citing pages with detectable MT errors. Our process uses DeepL or GPT-4 as a first pass, then routes every page through a native human reviewer who edits idioms, fixes brand voice, and confirms product accuracy. See machine translation SEO penalty for the data.
What happens to my existing English SEO?
Nothing negative. Adding /de/ and /fr/ subdirectories does not dilute the canonical English pages; hreflang tags tell Google the relationship and consolidate ranking signals. We document the current English URL structure during the audit and preserve every existing redirect, canonical tag, and meta. The English site keeps its rankings and gains the long-tail benefit of internal links from the new language versions.
Can you translate a Shopify, WooCommerce, or Squarespace site?
Yes to all three. Shopify is fastest because Markets and Translate & Adapt give us the API hooks we need. WooCommerce via WPML takes a day longer because of the database structure. Squarespace is the slowest because the platform has no multilingual API — we use a duplicate-site pattern with hreflang wiring. Pricing is identical across platforms; the website translation pricing tiers are platform-agnostic.
How do you keep new content in sync?
Monthly sync is included in every monthly retainer. We pull new pages, posts, and product variants from your CMS via API or scheduled export, route them through the same native reviewer who handled launch, and push the translated versions live with hreflang updates. Turnaround is five to seven working days per sync cycle. New languages added later are the same tier as your existing site minus 15% on both activation and monthly — for a Growth-tier client, an additional language is £847 activation plus £127/mo.
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