Most ecommerce store owners default to English when building their first site. That makes sense. But if a large portion of your target customers don't shop comfortably in English, your conversion rate has a ceiling from day one. CSA Research found that localized shopping experiences can increase conversions by around 70%, and over 76% of consumers prefer to buy in their native language when given the option. This isn't just about preference. It's a real barrier that affects whether someone completes a purchase.
This guide covers what you need to consider when building a multilingual ecommerce website, including language selection, URL structure, translation options, hreflang setup, local SEO, and payments.
One of the most common mistakes in multilingual website building is picking languages based on instinct. Start with data instead. Here's a rough snapshot of key markets in 2025:
| Language | Key markets | Market size reference | Growth notes |
| English | US, UK, Canada, Australia | US ecommerce estimated at $1.34 trillion in 2025 (Statista) | Mature, highly competitive |
| Spanish | Mexico, Argentina, Colombia | Latin America projected to surpass $800 billion in 2025 | ~21% annual growth, strong momentum |
| Arabic | Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt | Saudi ecommerce at ~$15 billion in 2024 | High growth, lower competition for DTC sites |
| Japanese | Japan | Stable, high-spending market | Strong preference for native-language shopping |
| Portuguese | Brazil | Brazil's Black Friday ecommerce exceeded $2.5 billion in 2024 | Largest single market in Latin America |
Beyond market size, three more factors are worth weighing:
Always do fewer languages well rather than many languages poorly.
Once you've locked in your target languages, the next decision is multilingual website URL structure. It's one of those things that looks like a technical detail but actually has a real impact on how SEO authority gets distributed across your language versions, and it's expensive to change later, so it's worth thinking through early.
There are three main options:
| Structure | Example | SEO authority | Maintenance | Best for |
| Subdirectory | domain.com/es/ | Consolidated under main domain | Low | Most ecommerce sellers |
| Subdomain | es.domain.com | Distributed across subdomains | Medium | Teams with regional operations |
| Separate domain | domain.es | Fully independent | High | Large brands with local teams |
For most ecommerce stores, subdirectories are the practical choice. All language versions share the same domain authority, which compounds over time. You also only manage one backend, which keeps things simple.
One thing many people overlook. If you launch with a subdirectory structure and later decide to migrate to subdomains or separate domains, you'll need to handle a full URL redirect migration. That means potential ranking drops during the transition period. Getting the structure right from the start saves a lot of pain later.
Subdomains make more sense when you have dedicated regional teams managing each market independently. Separate domains are really only viable if you have the budget and resources to treat each one as a standalone site, with its own SEO strategy, content, and link building.
After your URL structure is set, translation is the next thing to figure out. Three main approaches exist:
In practice, a layered approach works well for most sellers: use AI translation to handle bulk content, then have a human review the pages that matter most — homepage, key product pages, legal policies, and checkout.
If you're using Shoplazza, the AI product description generator supports 16 languages, including French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Indonesian, German, Dutch, Thai, and motr. For sellers covering multiple language markets, this removes a lot of the repetitive translation work. Generate the drafts in bulk, then refine the pages that need them.
Getting your multilingual site live is one thing. Making sure search engines understand which version to serve to which audience is another. Many sellers overlook the technical side until traffic underperforms. Local SEO for multilingual sites covers three areas:
Hreflang is a tag that goes in your page's <head>. It tells search engines that "this version of the page is for users who speak this language in this region." Without it, your different language versions can end up competing against each other in search rankings.
IKEA is a good real-world example. Their <head> includes separate hreflang tags for Hong Kong Chinese, Hong Kong English, Taiwan Chinese, and Taiwan English, all pointing to the right URLs for each audience:
In addition, there are three things also needs to get right:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://domain.com/" />. Using x-default prevents visitors from landing on the wrong page and makes your overall hreflang structure more complete and predictable for search engines.<head> or your sitemap. Use Google Search Console to check that it's being crawled correctly.
Many sellers approach multilingual SEO by translating their existing keywords into the target language. This rarely works well. Users in different markets often search for the same thing using entirely different words.
Take "running shoes" as an example. A literal French translation gives you "chaussures de course", which is accurate, but the right term depends on the activity. French users searching for running-specific shoes do use "chaussures de course," while those looking for general training or gym shoes tend to search "chaussures de sport." Optimize for the wrong one and you're either missing your targeted audience or attracting the wrong one entirely.
The same gap shows up going from English to Japanese. "Wireless earbuds" translates literally to「ワイヤレスイヤーバッド」but Japanese users actually search for「完全ワイヤレスイヤホン」. Same product category, very different search terms. Optimizing for the literal translation means your pages won't show up for what people are actually searching.
To find the right local keywords:
Once you have your keywords, you need to apply them to actual pages. AlphaRank AI SEO Optimizer is useful here. It runs an AI diagnosis on your existing pages and gives recommendations on title tags, meta descriptions, and content structure. The paid version includes a Keywords Recommendations feature with up to 200 keyword suggestions, which helps surface long-tail opportunities you might not find manually.
A few things get skipped surprisingly often on multilingual sites. Shoplazza's SEO optimizer handles these automatically:
The areas covered above, URL structure, translation, hreflang, local SEO, each take real time and effort to set up. In practice, how smoothly these come together depends a lot on your platform.
Different platforms vary in how deeply they support multilingual features. Translation depth, payment localization, and checkout customization all differ. For sellers covering multiple language markets, choosing a platform with solid multilingual coverage from the start reduces the amount of manual configuration you'll need to do later. Shoplazza, with its all-in-one ecommerce store builder, is one option worth looking at for this. Its multilingual support spans content translation, market-specific pricing, and international payment setup.
Shoplazza's language switch supports automatic translation of all store pages, like product pages, category pages, policy pages, and checkout, across 109 languages. The platform also remembers each visitor's language preference, so returning visitors don't have to select it again.
Pricing across multiple markets isn't as simple as applying exchange rates. The same product priced in USD, CAD, and AUD can look inconsistent if the numbers aren't rounded or positioned correctly for each market.
Shoplazza lets you set product prices per country or region through its Markets feature. You can apply market-specific pricing to individual products or your entire catalog. Customers see prices in their local currency automatically. Price localization and language localization work together — both affect whether someone trusts the page enough to buy.
A well-translated store can still lose sales at checkout if it doesn't support the payment methods local buyers actually use. According to Stripe, payment method mismatch is one of the leading causes of cart abandonment in cross-border ecommerce. You'll notice this most in smaller language markets, where local payment habits differ significantly from what Western stores typically offer.
In Arabic-speaking markets, COD (cash on delivery) still accounts for a significant share of orders in countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Stores that don't support COD leave real conversion on the table. Arabic is also a right-to-left language. If your platform doesn't handle RTL layout automatically, switching to Arabic breaks the page — buttons and text end up mirrored, which makes the site look broken to local users.
Shoplazza supports COD with flexible checkout page options: a single-page checkout that completes the order in one step (well-suited for COD), or a two-step checkout that accommodates more payment types and scenarios. On the layout side, Shoplazza themes support Arabic RTL automatically, no manual adjustments needed when switching languages.
Japanese buyers have equally strong local payment preferences. Konbini (convenience store payments), PayPay, and Line Pay are all commonly used in Japan. These methods barely register in Western markets, but in Japan they're a real factor in whether someone completes a purchase. A store that only offers credit card and PayPal won't cover enough of the market.
Shoplazza supports one-click PayPal connection with no code required. Konbini payments are available through one-click integration with third-party providers like AsiaBill or Oceanpayment (AsiaBill setup guide, Oceanpayment setup guide).
For broader global coverage, Shoplazza Payments supports 180+ countries and regions, with credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay), digital wallets (Google Pay, Apple Pay), BNPL options (Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, depending on the market), and European local payment methods including EPS, Przelewy24, Bancontact, and iDeal. On the risk side, it includes an AI fraud detection system and SDR dispute prevention that connects to Visa's Verifi RDR and Mastercard's Ethoca, helping reduce chargeback exposure.
Beyond the setup steps covered above, a few best practices for multilingual websites are worth keeping in mind as you scale across markets.
A multilingual ecommerce website works when users in any language market can browse, trust, and buy without friction. Language versions open the door. Local payment options close the sale. URL structure, hreflang, and local SEO determine whether that door gets found in the first place.
Each part requires attention, but the right platform reduces how much you have to configure manually. Shoplazza covers multilingual translation, market pricing, and payment setup in one place, so you can focus your energy on the decisions that actually need judgment: which markets to enter, how to localize your content, and which payment methods matter for each audience. Get those three right, and a multilingual store starts doing real work.
Not significantly. Load speed is mainly affected by image compression, code quality, and CDN configuration. If your platform handles those well at the infrastructure level, adding language versions has minimal impact on performance.
Technically, each language version has its own SEO authority, and local backlinks from the target market do help that version rank. But if resources are limited, focus on getting the content quality and technical SEO right for your main language version first. Backlink building for additional languages can come later, once rankings start to stabilize.
Google's official position is that machine translation itself isn't a ranking penalty. But poor translation quality creates a bad user experience, which does affect rankings indirectly. In practice, many sellers now use AI translation for multilingual websites as a middle ground, and it produces noticeably better output than basic machine translation and handles bulk content efficiently. That said, for pages where buying decisions happen, a human review pass is still worth it.
Incorrect hreflang doesn't directly cause a ranking drop. Search engines just ignore the tags, which means your language versions go back to competing with each other in search results. The typical outcome is the wrong language version showing up for users in a given region, which hurts click-through rate and conversions.
It depends on your category and how much you're willing to put in. Arabic covers a population of over 400 million across the Middle East and North Africa. Japan has strong consumer spending and high brand loyalty. Both markets have relatively limited competition from DTC ecommerce sites. If your product has real demand there, adding a localized language version and the right payment methods is a practical way to improve conversion — not just a nice-to-have.