Best practice for language selection

[googlitos-gr]

Hello!

I am building a new store. We are based in Greece and our customer base are in Greece and a small part in Cyprus. The languge we are using is Greek and our customers too. Our top level domain is on ".gr" and we don't want to use another domain.

We have plans to expand to another markets in EU and we want to serve our store also in English.

What is the best practice to start our store? Is it better to have default language Greek and then English or reversed? Also as i am aware the Geolocation app will be unistalled on 1st of February, so how Shopify will know that a customer from France visiting our store so it will serve her the English language?

Thank you.

[CreativeFati]

1. Use Greek as the default language.

2. Use Shopify Markets for location-based language detection.

3. Add a language switcher in your theme or via an app.

4. Configure Shopify Markets for future EU expansion.

5. Implement hreflang tags

for SEO.

[googlitos-gr]

What is the benefit of setting Greek as the main language and not just selecting it as the default language in this market?

[Suraj_]

Hello,

For your store, I recommend setting Greek as the default language and adding English for your EU expansion. We’ll use Shopify Markets to handle language selection based on the customer’s region, and we can also implement Geolocation to ensure visitors from different countries, like France, are served the correct language (e.g., English).

If you need assistance with the setup or have any questions, feel free to reach out!

Thanks

[googlitos-gr]

What is the benefit of setting Greek as the main language and not just selecting it as the default language in this market?

[Langwill_Lynn]

For creating a multilingual store, all translations are based on the primary language of your store. For example, if your primary language is Greek and you want to translate into English or Arabic, all translate apps will use Greek as the source text for translations. Since Greek is your original content, using it as the source language ensures higher translation accuracy.

From a functional perspective, the choice of primary language doesn’t affect much beyond this. The key is to set the default language for each market individually. If no redirection rules are in place, or the visitor’s location doesn’t match any specific settings, Shopify will display the default language configured for that market.

So, as long as you configure the default languages properly for different markets, visitors will always see the most appropriate version of your store.

[googlitos-gr]

We are going to use the default Shopify’s category meta fields coming from the new taxonomy system.

Assumimg that we are going to use the Greek as our default language. The metafields I mentioned are predefined by Shopify only in English and are not translatable. So in the translation of Greek to English we are going to have the color “red” to color “red”. No Greeks here. So if a Greek visitor comes he will see the word “red” instead of the related Greek word «Κόκκινο».

[Langwill_Lynn]

I did encounter this issue when testing Greek. Generally, the translation of product categories is provided by Shopify and is not passed to the translation app. However, I found that on websites in some languages, the product type filter is hidden by Shopify, while in other languages it is displayed correctly. If the filter is displayed, our products do support translation. 

I am currently in communication with Shopify on this matter. I will inform you of any updates as soon as I have them.

Lynn | Langwill Product Manager
Langwill - Language Translate

[Bundler-Manuel]

Hey @googlitos-gr  You should definitely start off with Greek as the default language then as your store expands you make use of Shopify markets to enable other languages as well in the store. 

[googlitos-gr]

We are going to use the default Shopify's category metafields that are in English. If i choose the Greek as default language, the colors that are made from the default Shopify's category metafields, will be in English and not in Greek.

Do you know how to translate these?

[Langwill_Lynn]

Here's the best practice for your scenario:

1. Default Language Setup:
   Since your primary language is in Greece, it's ideal to set Greek as the default language for your Shopify store. You can then add English as the translated language to bulid English version.

2. Market-Specific Default Languages:
   Shopify allows you to set different default languages for different markets. So you can:

   • Keep Greek as the default language for the Greece market.

• Set English as the default language for the EU market.

3. Geolocation and Language Redirection:

Shopify's Geolocation app will  detects a visitor's location based on IP address or browser language preferences. 

If you don't offer a French language version, and a customer from France visits your store and you have added France to your EU market settings, Shopify will show the default language for that market (in your case, English).

To summarize:
Set Greek as the default for your primary Greek market and English for the EU market. This ensures a smooth experience for both local and international customers.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have more questions or need further advice.

Lynn | Langwill Product Manager
Langwill - Language Translate