How should a multilingual e-commerce website for selling abroad be built?

Translating the site into English is not the same as selling abroad. Currency, shipping, payment, tax and which language Google shows to whom... What we learned on the silver jewellery sites.

The most common mistake among manufacturers in Türkiye who want to sell abroad is this: add an "EN" button to the existing site and wait. Yet the overseas customer looks less at the site's language than at whether they can order with confidence. The multilingual silver jewellery sites we built for Makro Silver and Mikro Silver taught us a great deal here. The summary is below.

Language and currency are separate things

A customer arriving from Germany wants to read German and see euros. One from the US wants English and dollars. The site should choose this automatically from the visitor's location, but the user must be able to change it at any moment. Prices should not be converted live from the exchange rate; keep a rounded, fixed price list for each currency. A product priced at €47.83 does not inspire confidence; €49 does.

Tell Google which page is in which language

Each language needs its own address: /en/, /de/ and so on. Google treats sites that switch language with JavaScript at the same address as a single language. Every page needs hreflang tags stating the language and country match; otherwise a customer in the UK may be shown the Turkish page. It looks like a technical detail, but it determines all the traffic you get from overseas searches.

Localisation, not translation

Running product descriptions through machine translation weakens exactly the pages you most want to rank. Category names, product titles and the descriptions of your best sellers should pass through the hands of someone who writes in that language. On jewellery sites even "ring size" changes by country: 16 in Türkiye, 7 in the US, N in the UK. If the size chart doesn't show this, the return rate goes up.

Payment: local methods alongside cards

An overseas customer hesitates to enter card details on an unfamiliar Turkish payment page. Seeing options they recognise, such as PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay, noticeably increases conversion. The virtual POS must be open to foreign cards and multiple currencies; this needs to be discussed with the bank in advance.

Shipping and customs information must be visible before ordering

The sentence "shipping is calculated at checkout" is the main cause of abandoned baskets. Country-based shipping cost and estimated delivery time should appear on the product page. Whether customs duty is the buyer's responsibility should be stated clearly. Free shipping above a certain amount is the simplest tool for raising the average basket abroad.

Trust signals

• A returns and delivery policy written in English (not a translation of the Turkish page, but written for that country's habits)
• Real customer reviews, with country where possible
• Support in that language via WhatsApp and e-mail; working hours that mention the time zone difference
• Company address and contact details; a workshop or team photo on the "about" page

Choosing the platform

Most off-the-shelf platforms offer multiple languages and currencies as an "add-on" and create a separate muddle for each language. As the number of products and languages grows, you need a structure where everything is managed from a single panel. We compared when an off-the-shelf platform is enough and when custom software is needed in a separate article.

If you want to expand abroad, you can request a quote from our e-commerce website page; we also assess your existing site against these points free of charge.