Best Practices for Setting Up Multi-Language Stores and Market Redirection

When selling globally, offering the right languages and routing customers to the correct market are essential for creating a smooth, localized shopping experience. 

This guide outlines best practices for:

• Enabling language and country/region selectors on your storefront
• Translating your store content using different methods
• Automatically redirecting customers to the appropriate market
• Troubleshooting common multi-language and multi-market issues
   

Introduction

In SHOPLINE, a single store can operate across multiple markets, and each market can support several languages. For example, a store might serve the US, UK, and Japan markets, with the US market offering both English and Spanish to create a more localized shopping experience.

To learn how to add more markets, please see "Creating and Configuring Markets." 

Enabling Language and Country Selectors

The language and country selectors let customers choose their preferred language or region directly from your storefront. There are two ways to enable these selectors:

Method 1: Enable Selectors in the Theme Editor

1. Go to Admin > Online Store > Design and open the Theme Editor.
2. Click on the Header or Footer component, then enable:
   • Display language selector
   • Display country/region selector
     
3. Once enabled, both selectors will appear on your storefront.
    

Method 2: Enable Selectors via the Geolocation Redirects App

1. Install the Geolocation Redirects app from the SHOPLINE App Store.
2. In the app, go to the Footer language selector for countries tab and enable the footer country language selector.
   
3. The selectors will appear in the footer only (not in the header).

Translating Your Store Content

You can translate your store’s content in four ways. These methods can be used individually or combined, depending on your needs.

Method 1: Multi-Language Translator App (User-Generated Content, UGC App) — Recommended

The Multi-Language Translator app lets you customize translations for products, collections, blogs, pages, apps, and more. It’s ideal if you want full control and accuracy over your translations.

Please see "Multi-Language Translator: Adding and Managing Store Content Translations" for detailed instructions.

Method 2: Multi-Language Assistant App (Google Translate)

The Multi-Language Assistant app automatically translates your storefront using Google Translate. It’s best for quickly creating a multilingual store without manually entering translations. Once enabled, your storefront content will be automatically translated when customers select their preferred language.

Please see "Multi-Language & Multi-Currency Assistant: Automatically Translating Store Content and Switching Currency" for detailed instructions.

Method 3: Export/Import Translation Text In Bulk

This option is useful for making bulk translation updates. You can export your store’s full translation file, make edits (for example, changing "color" to "colour" across all product pages), and then re-import the file to apply changes.

To access:

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Languages > Import custom translation text.
   
2. Export translations as a CSV file.
3. Edit the file and re-import it to apply changes.

Please see "Managing Store Languages and Translations" for detailed instructions.

Method 4: Edit System Default Text

Use this option to customize built-in system text, such as "page not found," "copyright," or button labels.

To access:

1. Go to Admin > Online Store > Design.
2. In the live theme section, click the more icon (…) next to the Preview button and select Edit default text.
   
3. Choose a language, search for the text field you want to update, and edit it directly.
   

Setting Up Automatic Market Redirection

You can enable market redirection in two ways to automatically direct customers to the correct market based on their IP address.

For example:

• Customers with a US IP visiting the UK market → automatically redirected to the US market
• Customers with a Japan IP visiting the AU site → automatically redirected to the Japan market

Method 1: Enable Domain/Subfolder Redirection

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Markets > Preferences.
   
2. Enable Domain/subfolder redirection.
   

Customers will then be automatically redirected based on their IP address.

Method 2: Use the Geolocation Redirects App

1. Install the Geolocation Redirects app from the SHOPLINE App Store.
2. In the app, go to the Redirect component tab and toggle on Enable Geolocation Redirect.
   

Customers will then be automatically redirected based on their IP address.

Please see "Redirecting Customers to the Right Market Automatically" for detailed instructions.

Troubleshooting Commonly Encountered Issues

This section covers common issues you may encounter when setting up multiple languages or market redirection, along with steps to quickly identify the root cause and resolve the problem.

Scenario 1: Store content doesn’t translate after switching languages

If your store content does not translate after changing languages, try the following steps:

1. Confirm that your translation method is configured properly:
   • If using the Multi-Language Translator App (UGC App) only:
     • Check whether the untranslated section has translation content entered in the UGC App.
     • If not, it will display the default language.
   • If using the Multi-Language Assistant App (Google Translate) only:
     • Make sure the Enable UGC content setting is disabled for that language in the Multi-Language Assistant App
     • If it’s enabled, the app will not auto-translate the content.
   • If using both apps:
     • Check both apps to ensure there are no missing translations.
2. If both apps are configured correctly, check for untranslated text:
   • Go to Admin > Online Store > Design > Edit Default Text and check for untranslated system text.
3. If the issue persists, export and review all translations:
   • Export all translations via Admin > Settings > Languages > Import custom translation text > Export.
   • Review the CSV file for any missing entries.
      

Scenario 2: Language selector not showing

If the language selector is missing from your storefront, follow these steps:

• If using the Multi-Language Translator App (UGC App): Ensure the selector is enabled in the Theme Editor or through the Geolocation Redirects app.
• If using the Multi-Language Assistant App (Google Translate): Enable the selector directly in the Multi-Language Assistant app.
   

Scenario 3: Customers are not redirected correctly

If customers are not being redirected to the correct market:

1. Confirm that auto-redirection is enabled in either:
   • Admin > Settings > Markets > Preferences > Domain/subfolder redirection, or
   • The Geolocation Redirects app
2. Since market redirection is based on the customer’s IP address, test the setup by using a VPN to simulate visits from different countries.