Want Your Website to Scale? You Need to Think About Translation

By Josué Diaz, Jonathan Zaleski, and Ravi Asnani

Sometimes, thinking small is the key to expanding. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but hear us out: The more effectively you personalize your website for your users, the better your user experience will be. Localizing your website will improve your SEO scores and conversion rates and win your brand goodwill in a crowded market.

Localizing is a complex process, but it starts with translation. Meeting your users where they are starts with language: Translating your website into the language your users speak allows you to curate the experience you want them to have.

If you want your website to support your business long-term, it’s never too early to think about translation.

Read on to learn:

• How translation impacts SEO and market penetration


• Which CMS HFC recommends for translatable websites


• How translation works in Contentful


• How Contentful’s AI plugins make translating your website easy

The business impact of translating your website

Fun fact: 49.4% of live websites are in English, approximately double the percentage of native English speakers on the planet. The second most popular language for websites is Spanish, at a whopping 6% — though Spanish is spoken with native fluency by approximately 100 million more people than English.

The SEO market is tough and getting tougher but, if you’re willing to invest in translation, writing in a language that isn’t English will put you in a stronger SEO position than most websites on the internet.

Content written in a user’s native language is more trustworthy — and more likely to reach them. Users looking for products and services that meet their needs will want to see a website that feels like it was written with them in mind. By putting in the effort to help deliver a more personalized content experience to your users, you’ll make your users feel more valued, and they’ll be more likely to value your brand in return.

What about browser translation plug-ins?

Relying on plugins and browser-provided translation has two main pitfalls: quality control and the missed opportunity for personalization.

You’ve hired someone to write your web copy. You’ve spent hours writing, editing, revising, reviewing. You’ve designed your website with content in mind to make sure the whole package supports your business goals.

Why would you work so hard to develop the perfect branding and messaging only to hand the keys over to an auto-translator? When you rely on in-browser translations to get your message across, you’re giving up on quality control and hoping their work meets your standards — but if you’ve ever seen Google Translate Fails, you know it probably won’t.

No two markets or cultures are the same. If you want to create a website that most accurately positions your product, you need to make sure it reflects your product’s value in its new market. Entering a new market may demand a re-evaluation of your value proposition and product-market fit to address the competition in that space. In-browser translations can’t thoughtfully present your expanded, market-specific values within new cultural norms — only your team can do that.

Investing in translation allows you to further personalize your content for your new audience. When you expand to a new demographic or locale, translating your website allows you to customize your messaging and offers for the new market.

How do I know if translating my website will be worth it?

Building your website with translation in mind makes the process easier from the start — and the ROI will be dollar signs in your favor. With some forethought, you can set yourself up for success when you’re ready to expand your audience.

How Contentful can help your business scale

Throughout HFC’s time in the business of building digital products, we’ve analyzed hundreds of tools and integrations on a yearly basis. We’re always on the hunt for the strongest, most reliable products for our clients’ unique criteria and, year after year, Contentful has proved itself to be one of the stronger contenders in the headless CMS market.

Our strategy includes a tool analysis to find what’s best for each individual project; while Contentful isn’t the right choice for every client, we’re enthusiastic enough about it to be an official Contentful partner. Their scalability and ease of use, in particular, make them a natural choice for building websites that support our clients’ businesses worldwide. When evaluating CMSes for our clients, Contentful is often our choice for ease of use and scalability — because we want your website to support you today, tomorrow, and long into the future.

Contentful has a few features that make it especially powerful for localization and translation:

• Translation within their web app: Because Contentful was built to be used by global brands, they’ve made in-app translation easy. Nothing needs to be rewritten or re-uploaded because translation options all live within the same copy draft.


• Support for multiple languages: Want to start with one language? Neat! Want to expand to two, three, or beyond? You’re in luck: Contentful supports 50 languages.


• Location-based versioning: Spain and Chile are both Spanish-speaking countries, but they’re oceans apart. Want to make sure you’re translating your website differently for different markets? Contentful took that into account when allowing you to separate translations into different files, even for the same language.


• Your website, your developers, your translation settings: When your developer team is setting up Contentful, they can customize translation settings for your website — because quality control is up to you.

Check it out: How Audible and HFC unified seven blogs into one CMS

The nitty-gritty of translating websites in Contentful

Whether you have an in-house translator, you’re working with freelancers, or you’re relying on AI, Contentful’s integrations make global scaling simpler than other CMSes.

Contentful’s guidance for in-house teams

Contentful’s translation tutorials for developers are built to make adding new languages and locales as simple as possible. By providing extensive documentation and step-by-step walkthroughs, Contentful allows developers to reduce time-to-launch and increase their productivity.

Some highlights:

• Add a locale with an API: All it takes is a copy-paste. Contentful provides an easy-to-use API for adding a new locale to your database.


• Missing a translation? No you’re not — Contentful has it covered: By providing what they call “custom fallback locales,” Contentful makes sure your users never come up empty on content. You can set languages and regions to cover for anything your current version may be missing, so users get as much value as possible from the content you’re ready to share.


• Use AI wisely: Contentful has a few AI plug-ins (including one they built themselves) to make translation easy and quick while you’re getting set up.

How Contentful leverages AI to make translating your content even easier

Using AI for translations is a quick and inexpensive way to translate web copy. Contentful works with numerous vetted tools to simplify translation, especially for teams at the beginning of their translation journey.

Whether you’re translating your content into one language or many, the process can seem daunting. AI translation tools were built to simplify the translation process by using advanced technology to understand your brand guidelines and adapt existing content to the market needs of other countries and cultures. AI models can be trained on your guidelines, making quality control a non-issue. Even if your team hasn’t engaged with AI yet, Contentful has integrated AI tools into their backend seamlessly, making onboarding a breeze.

AI translations aren’t 100% accurate, and (in general, but especially for translations) a real human will provide more reliable results than any AI is capable of. If you want a cost-effective push to build a foundation, however, AI can provide that for you.

How HFC can help you build to scale

HFC’s years in product development have taught us there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Every client has its own unique specifications and needs that demand different tools and tech stacks. What each project has in common, though, is a desire for long-term growth: we build digital products with the future in mind, because investing in smart solutions now will set your business up for success in the years to come.

When we choose Contentful for your CMS, it’s because we know it will make sure your website meets your needs now — and what your needs will be as your business grows.

Ready to talk about building a website that scales? Reach out to us today!