How to Build a Multilingual Website in Minutes Using Avada and WPML

We invited the WPML team to demonstrate how to set up a multilingual website that caters to all of your audiences, no matter what language they speak. This article will cover three quick and easy steps to creating a website using Avada and WPML.

To get started, we’ll import one of the stunning Avada prebuilt websites – which are ideal for beginners and professionals alike. They can be imported at the click of a button and then fully adapted to meet the needs of your company or brand.

Using WPML’s option to translate your WordPress website automatically, we’ll then show you how you can turn your website into a multilingual powerhouse in minutes.

A multilingual site is proven to boost site traffic, increase sales, and improve support satisfaction. It also helps that it’s a remarkably cost-effective marketing strategy.

Ron Henry, a finance blogger, and author tested this by translating thirteen of his articles. Within three weeks, he saw a 25% increase in traffic – the kind of results that would typically take several months and come at a significantly higher cost.

Celebrated marketing blogger Neil Patel also recognized the benefit of going multilingual. When he translated his website, his global traffic increased by 47%.

These results aren’t hard to come by. It’s never been easier to make a WordPress website multilingual, mainly if you’re using a powerful duo like Avada and WPML. Let’s show you how.

Avada is an impressive, all-in-one WordPress website builder that gives you complete control over the design of your website. It comes with all the tools you need to create and customize beautiful websites, including WooCommerce stores.

With Avada, you can build virtually any design and layout that you can imagine – your imagination is the limit. Avada has a visual Drag & Drop interface with a vast resource library of over 90 Design Elements.

But suppose you do need some inspiration to feed your inner creator. In that case, you can get started by using one of the professionally designed, prebuilt websites. There are over 90 to choose from, and they are imported in a few straightforward steps.

We’ll assume that you are using a fresh WordPress install with the Avada theme registered and activated. You’ll also see two Avada plugins installed and activated on your site:

The fastest way to install a prebuilt Avada website is to use the built in Importer tool.

Here’s how:

And that’s it! You’ve installed an Avada prebuilt website in a few simple steps.

In this tutorial, we will keep the Avada Winery prebuilt website content. Since WooCommerce comes pre-installed, we will use this as an opportunity to show how WPML seamlessly handles the translation of e-commerce content. 

But, in your case, you’ll need to start personalizing and adapting the content of your prebuilt website to make it exactly how you want it—for example, adding products.

When you’re happy with your first iteration of content, it’s time to turn your website multilingual.

The easiest and quickest way to turn your site multilingual is by using a translation plugin like WPML. As one of the most comprehensive and affordable solutions available, WPML lets you translate your website into multiple languages and works seamlessly with the Avada Website Builder.

Various methods are available to translate your website with WPML, including translating by yourself or sending content to professional translators. Still, we’ll cover the fastest: translating your entire site automatically.

With the click of a button, you can set up WPML’s Translate Everything Automatically mode – and make your content translation faster and easier than ever.

The Translate Everything Automatically mode typically reduces 90% of the effort required to translate a WordPress website. In addition, it automatically translates your main site content into all secondary languages as you create or update it.

Although automatic translation is far more accurate than it used to be, all translations can be reviewed on the front-end either pre-or-post publishing. Thus, it gives you peace of mind and lets you – or a professional reviewer – make any immediate changes to the translations if needed.

We’ll use our prebuilt WooCommerce website to show you exactly how to translate your site in minutes using WPML’s Translate Everything Automatically mode.

You’ll need a WPML CMS or Agency account to get started. Then, install WPML on your website via the OTGS Installer plugin. This plugin includes all the necessary WPML components.

Once you register WPML on your site, you’ll need to configure it with the help of a simple setup wizard. This wizard takes you through the steps, which involve choosing your secondary language and deciding how you want to translate your site.

For this guide, we’ll work with the Translate Everything Automatically mode, which automatically translates content as you publish or update it. You can choose whether you’d like to publish your translated content immediately without review, publish it and review it later, or review it before publishing. The choice is yours.

In the setup wizard, you can also install and activate additional WPML components. To fully translate your WordPress website, you’ll need the WPML String Translation add-on.

If you’re looking to translate your WooCommerce site, you’ll also need to install WooCommerce Multilingual and Multicurrency. This glue plugin comes with the WPML CMS Multilingual and CMS Agency account types and ensures that you can easily translate product pages, your shop page, cart and checkout pages, and more. It also lets you sell your products in multiple currencies.

It’s worth noting that once you complete the setup wizard for WPML, you’ll need to do the same for WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency (WCML). This setup wizard automatically creates the store pages in all the languages on your site and lets you choose the translation mode for your products.

After finishing the setup wizards for WPML and WCML, you’ll be taken to the Translation Management Dashboard, where you can see the status of your automatic translations. You’ll see when WPML has done its work and translated the site’s content into all your secondary languages.

Depending on which review option you choose during setup, you can either review your translated content immediately or at a later date. You can do this by yourself or assign it to someone more familiar with your secondary languages, like a professional translator.

And that’s it! Your primary website content has been turned multilingual. Don’t worry if you need to change your content over time. WPML automatically updates the translations any time you make a change to your default language content.

WPML’s Translate Everything Automatically mode translates everything from pages, posts, and custom fields, to taxonomies and WooCommerce products. But, it can’t translate more minor texts, like those in menus, widgets, and form fields, for example.

There isn’t enough context for automatic translation to translate minor texts accurately. To learn how to translate such content, you can follow WPML’s guide to String Translation.

If you need any further guidance about specific Avada settings, including how to translate Avada Sliders and Forms, check out WPML’s documentation about building multilingual Avada websites.

If you would like to create different designs for different languages, WPML and Avada also have you covered. For this, you’ll need to manually translate your content:

You can now edit the design for this page independently. You can find the full, step-by-step instructions in WPML’s guide to translating content manually.

As you can see, Avada and WPML are a powerful combination. Everything you need to build a multilingual website that’s ready to drive business and capture leads is right at your fingertips. With these plugins, it’s easier than ever to make your WooCommerce store multilingual and push your products and services to a global audience!