NF-BS

NF-BS is a web agency that builds custom sites for ecommerce brands within the artisan and luxury sphere, in particular those working within wine and spirits, fashion and accessories.

They focus on creating an experience around clients that are truly specialized in what they do. A team of 8 around the world, NF-BS approaches website building with a strategic approach, spending time on overall brand strategy before moving on to design and development.

With extensive experience in the ecommerce industry, the team at NF-BS guides their clients through the entire process of selling online.

‘We have internationalization in our DNA’

As an international web agency not only from an employee standpoint but also with clients from all over the world, NF-BS has a core understanding of internationalization.

When working with clients, NF-BS often approaches internationalization from the beginning. As part of their extensive client strategy meetings, they’ll get to understand where the brand wants to take its business in some cases it’s the client asking for it and in other instances NF-BS suggesting it.

“Discussing expanding beyond a core market with our clients isn’t always about more sales. It’s also because many markets are deprived of the great craftsmanship these brands provide.”

There’s naturally a lot to get into place before internationalization is a realistic possibility. On the client side, the team needs to be ready logistically and this can take work to put into place.

They need to be able to ship, accept the right payments and have good support in place. Then of course there’s website translation, and finding a way to maintain that continuously and indefinitely within the internal structure of the brand.

And that’s where Weglot comes in for the team at NF-BS.

“Weglot allows the answer to “let’s go multilingual” to be a yes.”

Finding a website translation tool that can work for their clients was a big priority for the team. Weglot ticked all those boxes immediately. It was a key requirement for NF-BS to have a solution that didn’t require the management of multiple websites simultaneously. This is a non-starter and most teams they work with just wouldn’t have the resources to keep that up.

Weglot allows NF-BS to implement multilingual with just a few clicks and gives their clients the tools they need to maintain a multilingual website independently.

Translation quality at scale

Working with clients in niche artisan industries means they want a website that reflects the quality of their brand and products. It’s very nuanced for each market and each product type, especially brands that are focused on their practice. That’s why where possible the team at NF-BS recommends tapping into Weglot’s translation management features.

Their clients will always start with the machine translations given through Weglot and then many will go on to manually edit these with a professional translation agency. This process of translation saves the client and the agency a big chunk of the work.

As NF-BS has clients in specialist industries, for example, a Champagne house, they tend to use a specialist translation agency that works in that field and knows the specific terminology associated with it. NF-BS onboard the translation agency on how to edit and use Weglot so they can make the best out of the export/import feature and the Visual Editor.

“If you’re touching every word across 5 languages it can get complicated and messy very quickly. Weglot centralizes this, making the process of adding multiple languages as smooth as possible.”

Multilingual design challenges

As a web agency that’s focused on detail and design, they ensure this is reflected in the translated website version too.

There’s always a challenge with translated content as it varies in aspects such as the length of the word or right-to-left languages. Getting these details right for each market requires care and attention where possible.

The way they approach this is to design websites in English and then stress test the designs in Figma with the translation content to see for text expansion. This can be difficult to do across five or six different languages so there’s naturally some compromise to make to try and create a design that can be flexible to scale for multilingual.

By focusing on the main languages that will drive visibility and growth for their customers, they’re able to limit imperfections across the design process.

Localizing email marketing

Another specialty the team at NF-BS counts themselves as experts on is Klaviyo.

Klaviyo is a customer marketing platform that enables its clients to create personalized multi-channel marketing campaigns. As their clients expand into new regions, it allows them to consider the different languages, cultures, and time zones in their email marketing messaging.

Continuing the multilingual experience beyond the website and into their marketing channels is crucial. NF-BS ensures that their clients’ messaging reflects the customer’s native language and goes further to build specific email marketing strategies, based on each market. Taking into account cultural differences, like regional-specific holidays and events.

For example, Singles’ Day is a specific ecommerce holiday in many countries in APAC, whereas Black Friday is popular in western countries, tailoring this means they serve the right markets at the right time. What’s more, Weglot and Klaviyo are compatible so that email campaigns can also be translated. Once integrated, Weglot and Klaviyo enable you to understand what language a customer is browsing and shopping in, so you can ensure that every message they receive is in the language best suited to them.

“Using Klaviyo and Weglot together has opened up new gates we didn’t imagine for email.”