Toader Photographer is a portrait and wedding photographer agency based in Romania. Its work is mainly based in Bucharest but they also do events across Europe.
Daniel Toader started the company.
Why did you decide to build a multilingual website and how has it affected your business?
As a wedding photographer, it’s tough and essential to be visible in the top search engine results. Having only an English version of the website in a country that speaks Romanian didn’t help me either.
I gained a lot of exposure and new clients. Now, after a couple of months, my translated version of the website is ranking on the first page of Google for a multitude of relevant keywords related to my businesses.
Why did you choose WPML?
The majority, including my theme makers, recommended WPML, I did the obvious.
What features of a multilingual website have you enjoyed/benefited from?
Being able to reach a whole new market that was practically inaccessible.
What is your approach to attracting new clients digitally (newsletters, blogging, promotions or any other methods)?
Search engine optimization. Together with link building, my goal is to create high-quality images and write content that is appealing both to search engines and new potential clients.
What are the common tools or plugins that you use?
I use Yoast, Sucuri and Redirection ( to fix the childish 404 mistakes of the past ).
How important was it to localize your website for each customer (offering a different version for Irish customers compared with the British website for example)?
I think it is professional to give a potential client content in his native language. Every major brand is doing it, we should too.
When did you decide to expand your business outside your home country and what did you do to accomplish it?
My approach was the opposite, my website was in English and WPML helped me get back on track in my home country.
If you had any advice for a business starting to build a multilingual website what would it be?
Tough question.
First, I recommend that the translation is done in the offseason because it will take some time.
Second, to be really careful with the new permalinks of the pages and articles, creating a lot of content in a short period of time could represent a challenge, so it’s a must choosing the best words for SEO purpose from the start.
Maria & Sandy is a wedding photography business based in Portugal and Estonia.
Maria is one of the founders of the company.
Why did you decide to build a multilingual website and how has it affected your business?
We decided to have a multilingual website because we are offering our wedding photography in the Algarve, Portugal, mostly for international clients. The clients choose their wedding photographer from abroad, as a part of their wedding planning. So for us, it is very important to target the international market language specifically. For example, most of our clients are coming from the UK, the second largest country we are targeting is Germany. And as weddings in the Algarve are becoming more popular, we are working already on other translations (French for France and English for the North American market and Russian too).
Why did you choose WPML?
We chose WPML because we wanted the best multilingual solution for WordPress. We started building our website in January 2018, to rank for the coming season. There was not much time left and definitely no time for experiments with different tools. We did some research and then made our decision. Our site is already ranking well in the UK and Germany. It’s so well integrated that we are saving a lot of time, widgets, categories, taxonomy, all just a few clicks and it’s done.
What features of a multilingual website have you enjoyed/benefited from?
Since we are wedding photographers and not web designers / SEO specialists, we can’t spend too much time on the website. WPML allows us to simply translate an existing page into another language, just with a few clicks. The new page is an exact clone of the original one. We then start translating the copy and the alt tags for the images and of course the URL, to make sure that clients can find us. We love the integration of WPML in WordPress.
What is your approach to attracting new clients digitally (newsletters, blogging, promotions or any other methods)?
To attract new clients we are currently doing some blogging. Right now we are working on the translation of our blog posts. Most of our clients are searching online for a wedding photographer, comparing the style and the prices of course. So our website is the most important factor to be found naturally through Google, Bing and Yandex. Then, of course, we are working with social media, like Facebook, to attract new customers.
What are the common tools or plugins that you use?
There are not many plugins we are using right now, we like to keep it simple. WPML for sure, for all the translations, then Yoast to focus on country-specific keywords. The third important plugin is the Google Analytics Dashboard, of course, to keep track of the visitors.
How important was it to localize your website for each customer (offering a different version for Irish customers compared with the British website for example)?
It’s good that you are asking about localization. That’s something we did not consider in the beginning. But soon we learned how important it is to offer different versions to our customers. We are currently working on this, since our main page is localized for English (UK) customers and we noticed that we are still not ranking that great within the North American market, not to mention other countries. So right now we are working on it, using WPML.
When did you decide to expand your business outside your home country and what did you do to accomplish it?
(See above) Because our main clients are doing their research about getting married in Portugal from their home countries, we knew that we had to target those countries and their languages. So our first translation was German, to attract clients from Germany.
If you had any advice for a business starting to build a multilingual website what would it be?
My advice for a business starting to build a multilingual site would be to have an exact plan of the languages they want to implement. Do some market research with Google Adwords and start with the biggest market. Keep in mind that there are differences between American and British English and so on. Localize specifically for one language and then – if necessary – localize for the other.
Szmigiel Design offers online graphics solutions for websites.
Lukasz Szmigiel is the founder of the company.
I’ve been using WPML for quite some time now. I stumbled upon it while doing my first multilingual website and it seemed like an ideal solution being the only complete WordPress translation suite on the market. Since then I’ve used it on every multilingual WordPress based site.
Why did you decide to build a multilingual website and how has it affected your business?
I’ve decided to translate my website after the announcement of WPML Contractors program. There was a plan to do it anyway but the email from OnTheGoSystems was a true catalyst. I originally thought that making it multilingual will have to wait for a while as I had other tasks to do first.
Why did you choose WPML?
Choosing WPML was straightforward as I said before — being the only complete solution on the market – and I already had a license for it. Funny thing is I’ve never had to use translation manager to make translations. The websites I create focus on advanced and customized layouts that often slightly differ between languages. It often happens that clients differentiate certain layout elements and, therefore, I prefer to copy original layouts and translate content manually. It may seem cumbersome but it works.
I also create narrated videos for my clients, recorded while working on their website which arms them with the knowledge necessary to translate even the most complex layouts using various visual editors (Visual Composer, Muffin Builder, Swift Builder, etc). And it works — they can give the videos to their employees or translators so even people who have never worked on WordPress before know what to do.
What features of a multilingual website have you enjoyed/benefited from?
I’m really happy to have string translation module. It makes virtually every single thing translatable — as long as it’s built up to WordPress standards (underscores and the database).
What is your approach to attracting new clients digitally (newsletters, blogging, promotions or any other methods)?
I’m mostly cooperating with other creatives, typically gathered around bigger entities like a creative agency. This allows me to focus on my work and expertise, without having to deal with marketing. However, having created a new website for my own brand together with an English version — I’m thinking about diversifying my work and having some more individual clients.
What are the common tools or plugins that you use?
I typically start with my own, customized WordPress installation having several “basic” plugins installed already. There are some classics like Yoast SEO, some small but very functional ones like Imsanity and security-oriented like Wordfence Security. I have a blog post about my “standard” collection but unfortunately, it’s only in Polish at the moment.
The way I work is by using commercial, universal themes like BeTheme, Avada or Uplift as frameworks for custom layouts and custom content. This method is very powerful, affordable and flexible. For low budget clients, I can offer a personalization of BeTheme layouts or completely custom, more expensive layout built from scratch if they so desire. I don’t have to code the templates, I just use child themes with LESS and provide PHP modifications where necessary (although I always focus on minimizing custom PHP code).
How important was it to localize your website for each customer (offering a different version for Irish customers compared with the British website for example)?
I certainly cannot speak for myself as my multilingual website is quite fresh and I haven’t had any significant marketing actions to benefit from it. However, my clients often benefit from internationalization as it instantly shows they aren’t language or geographically locked which is very valuable, especially for larger business.
When did you decide to expand your business outside your home country and what did you do to accomplish it?
As I said before — it’s a rather fresh topic and mostly an indication of my future plans than actions taken already. I believe that translating a small website built with WPML and well-thought architecture is a breeze and should be a basic step towards seeking business opportunities outside the home country. People often want to check one’s online presence (quality and trust evaluation) and therefore I can’t imagine any serious business relationship without having even the basics established in the language people understand.
If you had any advice for a business starting to build a multilingual website what would it be?
I’d focus on well-thought site architecture that looks and works well in its base language and doing some research beforehand on themes and plugin compatibility with WPML. This is especially important if you plan on using translation editor or translation services as not every theme or plugin is compatible. I personally typically do manual translations and I had problems only twice — once with a commercial theme that wasn’t written up to WordPress standards (custom framework and coding philosophy) and once when I worked on internationalizing a small, custom-coded template where strings were hard-coded.
DBrown Studio is a web design and development company.
Daniel Brown is the founder of the company.
Why did you decide to build a multilingual website and how has it affected your business?
We decided to build a multilingual website in order to be able to work with clients from all around the world.
Why did you choose WPML?
I chose WPML because I saw it on Themeforest with good reviews and it was also recommended by my theme Qode Bridge.
What features of a multilingual website have you enjoyed/benefited from?
The best features are String Translation, WPML Language Switcher, Support RTL languages, WPML Support, WPML WooCommerce, WPML Media Translation. Everything.
What is your approach to attracting new clients digitally (newsletters, blogging, promotions or any other methods)?
All kinds of digital marketing: paid & free.
What are the common tools or plugins that you use?
WPML, Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, Akismet, Contact Form 7, Yoast SEO.
How important was it to localize your website for each customer (offering a different version for Irish customers compared with the British website for example)?
It was very important to translate our website into English because it’s an international language.
When did you decide to expand your business outside your home country and what did you do to accomplish it?
We decided to expand our business outside our home country from the beginning.
If you had any advice for a business starting to build a multilingual website what would it be?
First of all to choose the theme that is compatible with WPML and to start to build the website with the English language first and after to translate into local languages.
Carp Tigernuts creates fishing products that will ensure the most efficient catches.
Ramón Rautenstrauch helped create the website.
Why did you decide to build a multilingual website and how has it affected your business?
From the beginning, we invested heavily in Research and Development to try to find new applications for the tigernut. One of the uses we found after being some years in the business was the use as a bait for carp fishing.
In Spain, Carp Fishing is not very extended so we had to go outside of Spain to market our product.
In 2007 we first started with ads in magazines but we immediately noticed that this would cost us a very large amount of money and with unclear ROI.
That’s when we decided to build a website to reach out to the world from Spain. First, our idea was to set it up only in English, but after analyzing our potential customers, we knew that we needed a multilingual website to reach our potential customers in their language.
From this moment on we have been working together with some of the most important European companies and carp anglers, developing a 100% natural catalog to ensure the most efficient catches. Carp Tigernuts specializes in particles, and particularly in tigernuts, probably the most efficient and widespread particle you can find at the moment.
The creation of the multilingual website has permitted us to be the worldwide leading exporter of tigernuts. Without the website, it would have been much harder to reach this position or even impossible.
What is your approach to attracting new clients digitally (newsletters, blogging, promotions or any other methods)?
Our approach to attracting new clients digitally is based on using a wide range of tools, that together are an effective weapon to acquire new customers. We have been running continuously for over 10 years now ads at Google AdWords. This strategy is still proving to be a good one, even after such a long time. Nowadays we combine Google AdWords with Bing Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Facebook Ads. These 4 ad channels make us visible and bring us leads every day.
Our first idea was to blog extensively about the tigernuts as a bait for carps, but we noticed that there were many other bloggers that were doing the job for us and they were doing great. So we started to reach out to these bloggers and offer them free samples to try our products and blog about them. This has proven to work very well. We are satisfied with the work of the bloggers and they’re satisfied with our products.
And finally, we sent out monthly newsletters with news and offers to our mailing list. This also brings us a steady increase in traffic and sales.
What are the common tools or plugins that you use?
The plugin that has made it all possible has been WPML. We are very happy with it because it opened a whole new business world for us.
Other plugins we use are: The great cache plugin from “WP Rocket”, “BackWPup” for making daily backups in the cloud from the website, “Contact Form 7” as our main contact form (together with the addons “Contact Form 7 Lead info with country” and “Contact Form 7 Submission DOM tracking”), “Customize Login Image” to make the login screen more appealing, “Server IP & Memory Usage Display” to control the memory used by WordPress in the backend and “Yoast SEO” as our SEO plugin.
MailChimp as a marketing platform has helped us very much to create mailings easily and spread our word out in the world. And our favorite marketing tools are Link Research Tools, SemRush and Ahrefs.
How important was it to localize your website for each customer (offering a different version for Irish customers compared with the British website for example)?
The localization has helped us to be in front of our competitors that decided to set up a website in English and not in the main languages of the potential customer base.
Being the leader today in the market has proved that we made the right decision to localize the website not only in English but also in the main languages our customers speak natively.
When did you decide to expand your business outside your home country and what did you do to accomplish it?
In Spain, carp fishing is not very extended so we had to go outside of Spain to market our product.
In 2007 we first we started with ads in magazines but we immediately noticed that this would cost us a very large amount of money and with unclear ROI.
That’s when we decided to build a website to reach out to the world from Spain. First, our idea was to set it up only in English, but after analyzing our potential customers, we knew that we needed a multi-lingual website to reach our potential customers in their language.
It’s also important to mention that we did not only translate the page into different languages but had staff that could answer the potential customers in their language. Speaking the customer’s language has also been a great part of our success.