Shopify Translate & Adapt vs ConveyThis
This guide maps the full Shopify customer journey to show where Translate & Adapt fits best, and where dedicated localization with ConveyThis helps you scale confidently.
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Introduction
Most articles about Shopify translation tools focus on feature lists. But the real question isn’t “What does this app do?” — it’s:
Does your multilingual experience hold up across the entire customer journey?
A store can translate product descriptions and still lose international customers if filters, forms, SEO, or key UI elements stay partially English (or inconsistent across apps).
So instead of a generic limitations list, this guide walks through the four major stages of a multilingual customer journey — and shows where Shopify Translate & Adapt is a good fit, and where a dedicated solution like ConveyThis becomes the better growth choice.
1. Discovery: How shoppers find your store
In the discovery phase, your job is to make your store findable and understandable in the shopper’s language.
Translate & Adapt is helpful when:
- You’re launching 1–2 languages to test demand.
- You’re primarily translating core theme content and products.
But discovery becomes fragile when:
- You need consistent multilingual SEO at scale.
- You want more control over how language versions are structured and maintained.
- App-based content or dynamic elements aren’t fully included.
Where ConveyThis fits:
ConveyThis is designed to support broader multilingual expansion with centralized translation management and SEO-focused localization features, which helps keep language versions cohesive as the store gets more complex.
2. Consideration: Product pages, collections, and on-site UX
This is where browsers turn into buyers — and also where “partial translation” quietly kills conversion.
Translate & Adapt is helpful when:
- Your catalog is small-to-medium.
- Your experience relies mostly on native Shopify content types.
- You don’t need heavy in-context editing.
You may outgrow it when:
- Your store depends on third-party apps for reviews, upsells, bundles, subscriptions, or inventory messaging.
- You need a smoother workflow for refining translations visually and at scale.
- You want a more unified way to manage translation quality across many categories and SKUs.
Where ConveyThis fits:
ConveyThis’s visual editing and centralized management can help you refine translation accuracy and consistency in the exact places that impact buying confidence.
3. Conversion: Cart, checkout, and forms
International customers don’t abandon carts because one headline wasn’t translated.
They abandon carts because the last-mile experience feels risky or unclear.
Translate & Adapt is helpful when:
- You’re keeping checkout and form complexity minimal.
- You just need a basic multilingual foundation.
But conversion becomes a problem when:
- You rely on localized forms, pop-ups, or custom conversion flows.
- Your checkout-adjacent experience depends on apps or custom UI that require deeper coverage.
Where ConveyThis fits:
ConveyThis is positioned to support more complete end-to-end localization, which is especially valuable when your conversion journey includes multiple touchpoints beyond standard theme text.
4. Retention: Post-purchase, support, and repeat buying
The multilingual experience shouldn’t end at checkout.
Translate & Adapt is helpful when:
- Your post-purchase system is simple.
- You’re not yet running multi-language retention campaigns.
You may outgrow it when:
- You want consistent language experiences across help content, transactional messaging, and lifecycle touchpoints.
- Your brand is expanding into regions where tone, nuance, and localization quality matter as much as raw translation.
Where ConveyThis fits:
A dedicated platform can reduce gaps between storefront language and ongoing customer communication — supporting a more “native” brand feel across markets.
A simple decision guide
Choose Translate & Adapt if:
- You’re testing international demand.
- You need a lightweight, low-cost starting point.
- You’re focusing on a small number of languages and mostly native Shopify content.
Choose ConveyThis if:
- You’re scaling beyond early-stage multilingual testing.
- You need broader coverage across apps and UI elements.
- You want a centralized workflow that supports consistent quality as your store grows.
- Your multilingual strategy is tied to long-term SEO and international revenue.
| Feature | Translate & Adapt | ConveyThis |
|---|---|---|
| Best stage | Early testing | Scaling & long-term growth |
| Auto translation | Great for initial rollout | Strong for multi-language scale |
| Third-party app coverage | Can be limited depending on app setup | Stronger coverage emphasis |
| Workflow | Basic, native | More centralized + visual editing |
| Multilingual SEO structure | Shopify handles hreflang + language indexing features | Emphasizes dedicated multilingual SEO tooling |
Summarize this post with:
Ready to Get Started?
Translation, far more than just knowing languages, is a complex process.
By following our tips and using ConveyThis , your translated pages will resonate with your audience, feeling native to the target language.
While it demands effort, the result is rewarding. If you’re translating a website, ConveyThis can save you hours with automated machine translation.
Try ConveyThis free for 3 days!
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