With localization marked as one of the top three challenges marketers face when trying to adapt content for different audiences, the demands of adding 1, 2, or even dozens of languages to a corporate website is becoming commonplace.
But how can web agencies keep up with market demands, particularly when website translation can prove a real challenge?
At Weglot, we like to think (as well as the 60,000+ websites we’re active on) that website translation doesn’t need to be complicated, and it most definitely doesn’t need to hold back your client project or extend your deadline.
If you’re reading this article, then it’s likely you’re already at least somewhat curious to see how you can use Weglot in your next multilingual client project. So, let’s take a closer look at how exactly Weglot works and the workflow you can adopt for adding languages and onboarding your clients.
We mentioned that Weglot removes the complexities of website translation, but how exactly?
Firstly, Weglot is quick to install, requires zero code, and can be added to any website technology including Webflow, WordPress, and Shopify. No matter how you’re building your client websites, we’re compatible with all your favorite tools and CMSs.
Weglot then detects, translates, and displays the content of your website under language subdomains or subdirectories.
As a web agency, it’s important that Weglot doesn’t mess with any of the tools, extensions, apps, or plugins you’ve added to the site you’re building. And, good news, it won’t! Weglot is compatible with all third-party tools, so no matter where the content is coming from, such as a review app, or form builder, the content will be detected and translated.
One of the questions we often hear is whether you can edit your website translations with Weglot. The answer is yes. Weglot gives your clients the flexibility to use machine translation, human editing, professional translation, or a combination of all three.
It’s important to reassure your clients that Weglot has all the translation options available. Interestingly though, only a third of Weglot customers end up making edits.
The benefit of using machine translation as a first layer is that it allows for instant translation. It also means that any newly added content will be picked up and translated instantly, ensuring your client’s site is continuously synced and translated.
Ease of use is an important factor for our users. It’s likely you’re building websites for clients that aren’t technical. The same goes for Weglot too, our tool was created with those people in mind. A translation solution that allows anyone to translate their website.
So with that at the core of our product, handing us over to your end client won’t be an issue. In fact, we’ve got a whole host of resources to onboard your clients, but we’ll get to that later.
As you’ll often be dealing with the marketing team when working on a new company website, one of their biggest concerns will be the SEO performance of their new site.
The same goes for a multilingual one. The work is multiplied when you also need to take into account multilingual SEO, or international SEO. Technical aspects such as hreflang tags and setting up language subdomains or subdirectories can quickly become labor intensive for you.
In particular, if these are badly implemented, they can end up damaging your multilingual site and harm its chances of ranking.
Web and digital agency, Influence Society, uses Weglot as their preferred website translation solution and in particular benefits from the automatic hreflang tag implementation and translated metadata which is often overlooked.
“Weglot takes care of the technical multilingual SEO elements that are so often overlooked or poorly implemented. It complements our own SEO services and allows us to create a full SEO strategy for our clients.”
Sébastien Felix, Founder, Influence Society
Check out our guide on how to pitch Weglot to anyone for a detailed look and explanation when selling us to your clients.
Next let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how you can actually run a client project with Weglot and what’s the best approach for your agency, starting at the beginning.
The first step is to decide how you’ll bill your clients for using Weglot as this will form how you’ll create a multilingual project. There are two different options:
If you plan to bundle the pricing of Weglot into your monthly/yearly maintenance cost for your client then it’s better that you create a master account where you can handle multiple client projects under one login.
Note, that you’ll need to be on a Pro plan or above to have the option to manage multiple websites under one plan.
To do that, simply signup for a Weglot account using an email address that multiple team members within your agency have access to. When adding a new project (website), you just need to click on the plus icon at the top of the homepage of your Weglot Dashboard and go through the normal setup steps.
It’s unlikely that you’ll also want to be responsible for managing the translations for your client, so when you’ve finished creating the website you can then add your client as a team member so they can take care of this part.
The second option, when the client will be responsible for monthly/yearly payments, will require you to create separate projects per client.
Select the plan based on the size and needs of the client’s website and then you can either let them create the account on their side or you can create an account with your own agency email address. For the second option, once you’ve finished the client project you can then transfer the project to your client, which we’ll show you later.
We discuss plans in more detail in the next section.
As we’ve just briefly mentioned plans and pricing above, we’ll take a closer look at how to calculate which plan is right for your project.
Going for option one and managing multiple client projects under one plan will mean you’ll need to go for the Pro plan or above as this allows you to manage 3+ projects under one account.
If, however, your client is going to manage the payments themselves, then it would make more sense to choose a plan specific to their needs. You can see a detailed overview of what each plan includes here.
In this instance, as we mentioned, you can still create the project and then hand it over completely to the client at the end, rather than just adding them as a team member.
To calculate the number of words on the website to see what plan is best suited, you can use Weglot’s word count tool.
A question that’s often asked by agencies is whether you can add Weglot to a staging website and if so how that then works when it goes live.
The answer is yes. The website translations are directly linked to the API key of the Weglot project you’ve set up and not the domain of the website.
However, there are a few different scenarios when going live.
You can learn more about the subject through our help center.
Once you’ve completed a multilingual project then you’ll either transfer the project fully to your client or add them as a teammate. Either way, there are some simple ways to onboard them so they’re up to speed with how to manage their translations.
Firstly, how to actually transfer a project quickly and simply. Again, we need to go back to the two scenarios we mentioned earlier.
If you’re going to continue managing the monthly cost of Weglot from your side and want to keep the Weglot project managed under your agency account, then all you need to do is add the client as a team member.
You do this by going to the ‘Settings’ tab in your Weglot Dashboard, clicking on ‘Team’ and then adding the email address of the client. You can either add them as a manager where they’ll have full editing rights on the translations, but also on the plan management, or as a translator where they’ll only be able to access the translations.
If you’re going to fully transfer the project to your client so you’ll no longer need to have access to it then this will depend on how you set up the project originally.
If you purchased a single plan, e.g. you didn’t add a project under your master account, then you can go to your account settings by clicking on your profile picture and ‘Account’.
Here you can modify the email address that the account is linked to and replace it with your client’s email address. Your client can reset the account password by going to the login page, adding their email address and clicking on “Forgot your password?” and following the steps.
Note, if however, you created an account under your agency profile where you also manage several other projects, you will need to contact support@weglot.com for assistance.
Next, to ensure your client understands how Weglot works, we’ve created a couple of useful resources that will ensure they can use Weglot to its fullest.
All the basics are covered in this short and sweet video where they’ll be able to see an overview of the main features they can use when managing their translations.
The best way to onboard a client fully would be to use our Weglot Academy ‘Fast Track Training’ course. This 25-minute online course covers everything a client would need to know about managing their translation project, in a simple video format.
This process is simple and seamless and will require little effort from your side, just direct them to the course and they can go through it at their leisure.
So, there you have it. Everything you need to know when handling a Weglot project for your next multilingual project.
We’ve also put together a specific section on our help center dedicated to agencies and freelancers where all your questions are answered in full. Or, if you need to reach out to us directly you can contact our dedicated team.
