The Ideal Partner for Multilingual Websites

Choosing the right domain(s)

Most companies in the D-A-CH region start with a .de domain or .at or .ch domain. These are the so-called “country code top-level domains (ccTLD)” of the respective countries. But do these domains also work well in an international context? It depends...if, for example, you want to reach English-speaking customers in the respective country, then the multilingual part of the website can be easily managed via a subdomain or a corresponding subfolder /en/ for English or /fr/ for French, etc. But if you then also want to be easily found in the search engines google.com (e.g. especially in the USA) or google.fr, then it could be difficult. Especially if you want to be found internationally with a domain, then a .com domain is still the first choice, followed by .net, .org and other TLDs.

hreflang tag mark-up

One of the most important things with a multilingual website is the right content strategy: With which subpages do you want to be found, in which language, in which country or in which version of Google? Example: As the operator of a hotel website, I would like to reach customers from Switzerland in German, Italian and French, and could therefore offer a subpage in three different languages for people who are looking for it in Switzerland. Correct hreflang tag markups would then be e.g. hreflang="de-ch", hreflang="it-ch" and hreflang="fr-ch", which should all appear reciprocally in the HTML header of the respective version.

Multilingual Content

Most websites that our web developers and programmers create are based on a content management system (CMS). The understandable reason for this is that our customers usually want to be able to maintain the content of their website themselves. Systems that we often use are, for example, WordPress, Redaxo or Contao. However, if you wish, we can also implement your new website in Typo3, Joomla or Drupal. Thanks to the intuitive and relatively easy usability, however, we implement WordPress websites more often than sites based on other CMS. We rely on the WPML plug-in to be able to cleanly implement the important hreflang tag markup. Although there are other WordPress solutions, WPML has simply prevailed over the years.

Analysis

Before we start the international web project, we carry out analyzes in advance to determine the "status quo". What is your strategic positioning? What competitors are there? And in particular: Which keywords should be strategically targeted with the website?

In this context, carrying out professional keyword research via Google Ads Keyword Planner has proven as very important and effective. In addition, we also use tools such as Sistrix, Ahrefs, the Google Search Console, Google Trends, SEMrush, and other professional tools to make the keyword collection as comprehensive as possible and to design a target-oriented website structure based on this. If this homework has been done well, then multilingual website creation turns out to be much more effective.

Conceptual Design of your WordPress multilanguage website

After your multilingual website has been roughly outlined in a concept, we start programming. For this we first use a test environment on which you can follow how your website is created step by step. Right at the beginning of the programming phase, we will send you a link and a password to the test environment and you can access it at any time.

Furthermore, the work proceeds in close consultation with you. If some elements do not look or work as you imagined, we will be happy to make individual adjustments. Finally, when your international website is up and you are completely satisfied with all content and design elements, we can leave the test environment.

Why do we use a test environment for your multilingual website at all? Our experience has shown us that web development based on very concrete graphic designs is anything but easy. In addition, there are usually change requests from the customer or we find out that something needs to be reprogrammed because everything doesn't always work the way we imagined or hoped.

Crossbrowser-Testing of your international website

Before your website goes live, after we have programmed all the important templates and elements of your multilingual website and carefully added all content, we carry out precise cross-browser testing.

Cross-browser testing means testing your website on different end devices and in all common browsers and resolutions in order to notice and correct any display errors that may occur. This is a very important step that needs to be done thoroughly and accurately. Our programmers are very experienced in cross-browser testing and always go through all devices and browsers with the utmost concentration so that nothing is overlooked.

In the end, you can be sure that your international website will be displayed well and correctly on a wide variety of devices (actually on most modern screens), from smartphones and tablets to desktop PCs and on all known browsers.

Final Check

Your brand-new international website project is almost ready to launch! After your team has proof-read all the contents, and we have conducted the final technical checks while using our onsite worksheet that we have finetuned during the past years, we are almost ready to launch your project!