Wix is a great platform for anyone to build a website in any language that they want. If you have a multilingual Wix website, there may come a time where you’d want to adapt your website to fit the language and culture of a particular audience.

Localizing your website can help you reach out to people who may not speak your language – but who may nevertheless benefit from your products and services. Adapting localizable content involves more than just translating your website too, because different people may use and interpret it differently, based on their cultures.

But when done properly, localizing your content may open up massive new opportunities for growth and revenue.

If you’re looking for a versatile and powerful website localization tool, Weglot works seamlessly with Wix to translate websites, set them up for multilingual search engine optimization (SEO) and more.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to localize a Wix website and some best practices to follow if you’re planning on doing so.

How to make your Wix website multilingual

1. Use Wix Multilingual

Wix Multilingual is Wix’s native translation option. With it, you can translate the contents of your website directly in your Wix project, and preview how your website will look after it’s been translated.

However, a major drawback is that this is a very manual process. You’d need to hunt down and replace each text, image, link and so on with their translated versions by yourself.

Multiply this process by the number of languages you’d like to translate your website into, and it’s clear that you’ve got a lot of tedious translation work ahead of you.

2. Use a third-party Wix localization tool like Weglot

The alternative is Weglot, a tool available on the Wix App Store that provides fast and seamless website translations without the need for any coding knowledge.

Here are the main benefits of using Weglot for Wix localization:

Automatic detection and translation of website contents

Once you’ve added Weglot to your Wix website, it automatically detects and translates all of your website’s contents. This includes the translation of text, media source files, links and SEO metadata (with the latter being important for multilingual SEO—more about this shortly).

Weglot makes it easy to localize images that contain text too. Simply add media translations for each of these images.

If your website has a Wix app or two, you’ll also be able to translate these using Weglot.

This is unlike Wix Multilingual, which can translate only certain Wix apps.

Choose your translation quality  

Weglot uses the four main machine translation providers in the market – DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translator and Yandex Translate – to automatically translate text.

The performance of these and other providers is regularly tested in all language pairs too. This helps ensure that our users get the best translations, no matter the languages they need translations for.

You’ll be able to conveniently view all the translations in your Weglot dashboard.

While automatic translation is improving in accuracy, there may be times where you want to fine-tune it for better nuance and context.

In such situations, you can edit the translations right within the Weglot dashboard. And if you need expert help, you can order professional translations from experienced professionals who will deliver on your live site within 24 to 48 hours.

Supports multilingual SEO

If you’re looking to expand your website’s reach to people performing searches in various languages and on different search engines, then you’ll want to set your website up for multilingual SEO.

This includes:

• Helping search engine bots find and index your translated content
• Adding hreflang tags to your web pages so search engines can show the appropriate language version of your content to searchers
• Translating SEO metadata and image alt text, that people use to decide whether to click on your web page in the search results and understand your images respectively.

Doing all this can get quite technical, especially if you aren’t an SEO professional or developer. However, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a Wix website that’s optimized for multilingual searches.

Weglot will take care of all the technical aspects of implementing multilingual SEO during the Wix localization process, such as automatically adding hreflang tags for your web pages.

As for translating your SEO metadata, you can do so right within your Weglot dashboard.

Navigate to the Translations tab and filter for “Meta (SEO)” to review and modify the translations.

To learn how to make a multilingual Wix site in just 4 steps, read our guide on how to create a multilingual Wix website using Weglot.

Best practices for Wix localization

Do a localization road map beforehand

Depending on the scale of your website and the number of languages that it is to be translated into, Wix localization can be a major project. Preparing a localization road map can go a long way in helping your localization efforts go smoothly.

For example, before embarking on Wix localization, you should be clear on which web pages are to be translated.

Then, for these web pages, check that all their content is accurate and up to date. After all, your translations will be based on your website’s original contents…As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out!

Here’s a quick list of pointers to help you plan your Wix localization efforts:

• How many languages will your website be translated into?
• Which web pages should be translated?
• For these web pages, is there any copy that is outdated?
• Do certain web pages need more copy before you start translating them?
• How soon do you need to complete all translations?

Optimize your Wix design and content for a multilingual website

Wix localization involves more than just translating text—you’ll need to ensure that your website looks and reads great, no matter which language it is presented in.

Design-wise, this includes:

• Choosing fonts that can display text in multiple languages legibly
• Setting aside space for installing a language switcher without obstructing other website elements.

Also, be mindful that words can have varying lengths in different languages. This will affect the look of your website.

For example, the text in this website’s button fits perfectly when the website is viewed in English:

But when the website is viewed in French, the text stretches out the button considerably and even causes it to exceed the header. It’s not a good look.

As for the content of your Wix website, multilingual versions of the same web pages should be clearly flagged as such for search engines to find. As far as possible, their text should also be tailored to the unique cultures of your multilingual audiences.

This applies to images too, because imagery can have different meanings in different cultures.

A classic example is how a thumbs-up is generally a positive symbol in Western cultures, but is seen as a rude gesture in countries such as Iran and Russia.

Finally, create unique navigation menus for each language your website is to be translated into. This will help you deliver a truly market-tailored user experience.

Engage your local audience

If you want to create a loyal following, it isn’t enough to just offer your content in their language.

You’ll need to constantly connect with them, so they’ll be happy to spend their time and attention (and dollars) with you. So go engage your local fans!

Apart from optimizing your website for multilingual searches, you can also reach out to local audiences by:

• Optimizing your content for local SEO, such as by setting up local Google Maps listings
• Offering customized lead magnets to entice local users to subscribe to your email list
• Setting up country-specific social media accounts to share relevant content for each local audience
• Developing products that fit their specific needs and desires.

Examples of Wix localization done with Weglot

Henson Group

If you have operations in multiple countries, it’s good business sense to make localized versions of your website available for all these countries.

Azure reseller Henson Group has done exactly that. With its extensive international presence across multiple continents, the company has offered its website in 11 languages.

Toggling between each language is also smooth—the web pages are localized instantaneously.

Lemca Musical Instruments

Apart from reaching an international audience, sometimes you’ll want to localize your website to maximize your reach to the domestic crowd.

For example, a country like Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French and German. If you made your website available in only one of these languages, you’d potentially be leaving a lot of customers lost in translation.

Which is likely why Belgium-based musical instruments retailer Lemca has made its website available in two of the country’s official languages: Dutch and French.

From a localized product navigation to checkout flow, the business has taken great care to create a seamless customer journey.

aRway

The website of Swedish enterprise modeling firm aRway is available in English and 10 European languages, making it clear that the business is catered to a European audience.

Even the fields and buttons of the website’s contact form have been translated for a better-localized experience.

They’re not the only ones creating stunning Wix websites. We also teamed up with the Brown Owl Creative to create a Weglot Wix showcase website to show you how well we work together!

It’s time to go multilingual

As we have learned, Wix localization involves many steps, from identifying the text that needs to be translated to ensuring that your website looks good in multiple languages.

You’ll also want to think about how to encourage your new local audiences to visit your website, whether by optimizing for multilingual searches and/or engaging the local community.

And of course, translating your website text itself is a big part of the process.

While Wix offers a native multilingual solution, it involves a lot of manual finding and replacing of text with their translated versions. This can be rather time-consuming and a chore to do, especially for large websites.

In contrast, Weglot combines the best of both worlds. It brings you fast and accurate website translations, while also helps set your website up for multilingual SEO, among other benefits.

What’s more: you can get started with Weglot for free.

Simply sign up for a free trial of Weglot to try out its features today!