7 reasons your WordPress site should be multilingual
One of the best ways to open up your business to reach international audiences is to have a multilingual WordPress website.
Think about it.
As we all know, English is not a universal language. The majority of the world population is from non-English speaking countries. In fact, only about 25.9% of Internet users are native English speakers.
So if you want to quickly improve your customer experience and increase your market share globally, make your website multilingual. Your customers will pay more attention to your brand when you speak their language. According to research, about 76% of online shoppers prefer to purchase from brands with information in their native language — 40% will not even consider buying if the language is foreign to them.
Therefore, a multi-language website can transform your business and be the edge you need to stay ahead of the competition. This article will explain seven reasons your WordPress site should be multilingual.
Multilingual WordPress expands your potential market
Globalization and cross-border e-commerce are expanding very quickly. By the end of 2021, the international e-commerce market was valued at $719.02 billion, and it is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.8% from 2022 to 2030.
So as an online business, you need to take advantage of this to win a piece of the pie. And being able to communicate with people from other parts of the world is a vital part of this process.
Including different language options on your site can open up your business to new customers that were not reached before, potentially increasing your sales and revenue.
Also, remember that a multilingual website is not only necessary when reaching a market outside of your country. Many languages can be spoken within the same country too. For example, Spanish is the second most popular language in the US. To reach and communicate efficiently with this group of people, you should have a Spanish option on your website.
Reduces the bounce rate
Consider this: you’re looking for a kitchen appliance for your townhouse and are very specific about what you want. You search for the appliance online, and the first result is a Spanish website with a detailed product description in Spanish. But you don’t understand Spanish. What do you do? Close the site and bounce to the next search result, right?
Online shoppers will spend the most time on a website in a language they understand. Before clicking the “Buy” button, customers need to feel that they have understood what they have read and all the steps in the buying process.
Having a multi-language website means that foreign online shoppers visiting your site are less likely to leave immediately if they don’t understand the language. Consequently, the reduction in bounce rates can increase your conversions significantly.
Better for international SEO rankings
E-commerce has quickly become an indispensable part of the retail market. Today, consumers will first search online for goods and services that they need before they consider visiting businesses in person. As a result, everyone is competing to be the first option that the customer sees when they search online.
So, the success of your business in both local and international markets depends on your rankings on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The higher you rank, the more traffic you get and the higher the conversions.
A multilingual website offers the opportunity to rank highly locally and internationally. Search engines love multilingual pages because they view them as independent and thus automatically give them additional rankings.
To increase your chances of ranking high for all the languages on your website, you must translate 100% of the content, including the metadata. It would help if you also had a unique URL for each page with a language-specific subdomain or subdirectory. This will make it easy for search engine bots to scan and rank your content in specific languages.
It makes marketing cost-effective
For most businesses, a website is the focal point of all their marketing efforts — and for a good reason. A website is the most cost-effective way of marketing, both in terms of market reach and cost. And there are numbers to support this theory. According to research, a website-centered marketing strategy costs at least 62% less than other traditional marketing methods. Even better, it brings in about three times more business leads.
Hence, a multilingual website offers a cost-effective and reliable way of communicating and engaging with customers who speak different languages. If you translate your content to reach different regions, making your product or services available to more people worldwide, you are increasing both your customer base and revenue.
Builds brand recognition and trust
Consumers buy more from brands that they trust. And in this day and age, brand recognition and trust are built from general customer engagement.
A multi-language website expands your business’ playing field and allows more people worldwide to engage with your content. Once people can communicate and understand what you offer, they will begin associating your brand with certain needs and wants. They will start to seek out your brand for solutions to their problems, which will gain you recognition and trust, and set you apart from the competition.
Additionally, if customers understand and connect with your content, they are more likely to share it with their friends and family. This means that you will have repeat business and new business from referrals.
A multilingual website also helps build your brand’s credibility. People worldwide will begin to trust that your business is an expert in what it offers. People who speak different languages will feel like you understand them and their culture and will more likely purchase from you.
Ensures uniformity
Gone are the days when people thought the best way to reach international markets was to have an army of websites in different languages. Today, all you need to do is to set up a multilingual website. This allows your site to have the same external effect on consumers worldwide, allowing you to maintain your brand’s identity. One multilingual website ensures that the design and all the processes remain the same regardless of the language chosen.
But this doesn’t mean you should have different content for different languages. WordPress allows you to customize each language to match the needs of each consumer subset. For instance, you can have separate purchase and invoicing processes for each language.
Both CMS WordPress and WordPress online shop systems are highly suited to creating whichever type of multilingual site you need for your business.
In most instances, you can create a multi-language website easily without changing the template’s design. You only need to create a single language website, add the TranslatePress plugin, and choose the languages you want to include on your site.
Creates a competitive advantage
In online selling, everyone wants to win. And to succeed in online marketing in these economically precarious times, you need to differentiate yourself so that a customer will choose you over the competitor.
As mentioned, a customer is much more likely to purchase from a website in their native language, so having multiple languages on your website gives you an edge against the competition.
For example, let’s say that a foreign customer is looking for information on how to build credit without a credit card. If you have a page explaining the different ways people can build credit in their language, this customer is more likely to trust your brand than if the article was written in English.
Make multilingual sites a priority
When it comes to user experience, ensuring your WordPress site is multilingual is widely overlooked. But as you can see from what we’ve discussed, there are many benefits associated with multilingual websites.
Whatever reason inspires you the most, it’s time to take your website and company to the next level. Making your WordPress website multilingual is simple, cost-effective, and can transform your business.
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