WooCommerce + WPML : Increase Sales With a Multilingual Store

As e-commerce store owners, I’m sure you’re looking for ways to make your customers happy. Well that is what the business is about- Happy Customers, Increased Sales. The goal of course is to increase sales. What do you do to achieve this? Do you think of offers, discounts, loyalty programs, up-selling and such?

What if I told you, there was an easier way- a cost effective method and a logical medium for growth- to increase sales?!

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Increase Reach with a Multilingual Store

A store which reaches more customers is bound to have an increase in sales. It’s logical. The more the customers visit your store, the more the chances they’ll purchase your products, and the more the sales.

Increased Reach = Increased Sales

If your products allow it, there’s nothing stopping you from shipping them across the globe. There’s the matter of tying up with a shipping service of course. But once you’ve got that, you’re all set. 🙂

Now, the next thing you need is an edge over your competitors and the perfect boost to start rolling your sales- and that is- speaking the language of your customer. I literally mean, speaking the language they speak. For visitors from China, you have to speak Mandarin, for visitors from Argentina you have to speak Spanish.

Translating your services and products to a customers local language is a way to improve customer experience.

Increased Reach + Improved Customer Experience = Increased Sales x 1.6*

* your results could vary

If you don’t believe me, here are some statistics for you. Research has shown that 9 out of 10 online shoppers prefer switching the website to their primary language given an option. A survey conducted showed that 42% of Europeans did not shop on sites which weren’t in their language.

The solution?

It’s simple. On your WordPress website, you just need to use a multilingual plugin to translate your product descriptions to a different language.

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How to Integrate WooCommerce and WPML

For your WooCommerce store, the multilingual plugin we recommend is WPML. Along with WooCommerce, several WooCommerce add-ons like Product Enquiry Pro, are compatible with WPML. This means, you only need to install and set up the needed plugins.

To make your WooCommerce store multilingual, you need the following plugins:

1. WPML 3.1.5+,
2. WPML String Translation 2.0+,
3. WPML Translation Management 1.9+,
4. WPML Media Translation 2.1+,  and
5. WooCommerce Multilingual 3.3+

Once you’ve installed and activated these plugins, you need to translate your product descriptions and categories, set up automatic inventory and product attribute synchronization, and enable different payment processors for different countries. WPML provides a great guide for the same.

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Benefits of Having a Multilingual Store

Building a multilingual WooCommerce store can help you create a relationship with your customers. It’s a customer oriented approach which shows that you empathize with your customers by allowing them to pay in their local currency and manage international taxes without any headache.

Having a multilingual store personalizes customer experience, and enhances it. This is valued by search engines as well, and thus promotes your website’s ranking for certain regions.

“Research shows that 40% of customers buy more from companies which personalize their experience.”

A multilingual store can even provide you global insights and trends as well.

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Your Thoughts

These are my thoughts, but I’d like to hear yours. Do you have a multilingual store and have an experience to share? Do you have a better suggestion or better multilingual plugin you think WooCommerce store owners should use. Leave your thoughts or questions in the comment section below!