3 Steps to a Multi-Language Shopify Online Shop
Selling in multiple languages increases sales. With Shopify, it seems to be challenging, but it isn’t.
Step 1: Translate Your Products and Other Resources
Products and other resources like variants, collections, pages, blog posts, etc., are managed in Shopify admin. Shopify added native support for multiple languages via an API recently. Unfortunately, it comes without an admin interface for the shop owner.
Therefore, I created a user interface for the official Shopify Translation API and developed the Shopify app Adria Translate. I put a lot of effort into providing seamless integration into Shopify admin.
The left picture shows a standard Shopify product page — VANS shoes. Adria Translate embeds into Shopify admin via the “More actions” menu on the top right corner. Clicking “Translate” opens the app and shows this product for translation (right picture).
There are alternative translation apps available for Shopify, but I developed Adria Translate exclusively for Shopify. This enables me to integrate into Shopify admin and the Theme Editor deeply. I use the recently released official Shopify Translation API to store all translations directly in Shopify. Therefore your translations persist even if you decide to cancel your subscription or switch to another tool.
In addition to manually translating your products and other resources, I implemented integration with DeepL for automatic translation. You will be surprised by DeepL’s translation quality.
Step 2: Translate Theme Content
Besides your products and other resource data, the online store contains other text to be translated. You can do this via the Shopify Theme Editor.
For all text fields and rich text fields in each section, Adria Translate injects blocks for translation for all your configured Shopify languages. This makes translating theme texts a breeze.
Step 3: Install Adria Translate and Get Started
Install Adria Translate from the official Shopify App Store. The onboarding process guides you through setting up and configure your online store for multi-language support.
First, you have to add additional languages to your store. This is done in the “store language settings” in Shopify admin.
Then I recommend updating your theme to inject multi-language blocks into your sections. Before updating your theme, you can create a backup of the existing theme by duplicating it in the “themes settings.”
Finally, I recommend installing the Geolocation App by Shopify. It verifies that the customer visits the store in the correct language.
Conclusion
With Adria Translate, I tried to make it very easy for merchants to add additional languages to their online stores. It’s a partner-friendly app. Therefore Shopify Partners can install and use the app for free on development stores. For all standard Shopify stores, I charge $9 per month (7 days free trial).
Why did I create this app? Two years ago, I searched for a way to set up an online store in 4 languages for the Swiss business unit for my former employer. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied with the solutions available.
Last year when the pandemic started, my work hours were reduced to 50%. The idea of a Shopify translation app was always in my head, so I started prototyping. I really enjoyed developing this app, and over time the app matured. End of 2020, I decided to quit my job and work on Shopify client projects and the app full-time. Creating an app is hard work, but I’m really happy that my app is now available in the official app store.
