AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
You know that moment when a client asks for a multilingual website and you immediately think "WordPress with WPML plugin"? That was me, until I had to explain why their simple landing page would now cost 3x more and take twice as long to maintain.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about multilingual websites: the navigation menu is where 90% of your headaches come from. Not the content translation—that's the easy part. It's making sure the menu structure works across languages without breaking your design or confusing users.
Most agencies stick with WordPress because "it's what everyone does for multilingual sites." But after building dozens of international websites, I discovered that Framer actually handles multilingual navigation better than most traditional CMSs—if you know the right approach.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why the conventional multilingual approach costs you time and money
My framework for building scalable multilingual navigation in Framer
How to handle language switching without breaking user experience
The automation tricks that save hours of manual work
When Framer beats WordPress for international projects
This isn't about following tutorials—it's about a systematic approach I developed after 7 years of building websites and watching teams struggle with multilingual complexity. Whether you're considering Framer or sticking with traditional platforms, this playbook will change how you think about international website architecture.
Industry Reality
What most agencies recommend for multilingual sites
Walk into any web development agency, and here's what they'll tell you about building multilingual websites: "You need WordPress with WPML" or "Use a headless CMS with translation management." The standard playbook looks something like this:
WordPress + WPML: The "industry standard" that everyone recommends because it's what they've always done
Duplicate everything: Create separate pages for each language, manually managing navigation structures
Plugin dependency: Rely on translation plugins to handle language switching and URL structures
Developer-heavy maintenance: Any menu changes require developer intervention across multiple language versions
SEO complexity: Implement hreflang tags, manage subdirectories, and hope search engines understand your structure
This approach exists because it worked when websites were simpler and teams had dedicated developers. The reasoning makes sense: established platforms have established solutions. WPML has been around forever, there are tons of tutorials, and clients feel "safe" with WordPress.
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart in 2025: marketing teams can't move fast enough. Every menu update becomes a project. Every new market launch requires developer time. Every A/B test of navigation elements gets bottlenecked by technical complexity.
Meanwhile, your competitors using modern tools are shipping multilingual landing pages in days, not weeks. The gap between design-first and development-heavy approaches has never been wider, and it's costing businesses real opportunities in international markets.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Last year, I was working with a B2B SaaS startup that needed to expand into European markets. They already had a solid English website built on WordPress, converting well, and wanted to "just add French and German versions." Sounds simple, right?
The client's situation was typical: small marketing team, limited developer resources, aggressive timeline for market entry. They'd been quoted 6-8 weeks for a WordPress multilingual setup by their previous agency. The scope included WPML integration, duplicate page creation, and "proper SEO structure with hreflang implementation."
I started with the conventional approach because, honestly, that's what I'd always done. Set up WPML, created the page duplicates, built out the navigation structure. But three weeks in, we hit the reality wall:
The marketing team couldn't update anything. Every menu change meant logging into WordPress admin, finding the right language version, updating navigation in multiple places, and hoping nothing broke. When they wanted to test different menu layouts for the French market, it became a developer task requiring code changes.
Even worse, the client realized they needed to add Spanish and Italian markets sooner than expected. With the WordPress approach, each new language meant exponentially more complexity. We weren't building a scalable system—we were creating a maintenance nightmare.
That's when I started questioning everything about multilingual website architecture. What if the problem wasn't translation complexity, but platform choice? What if we were solving the wrong problem entirely?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After the WordPress disaster, I completely rethought multilingual website architecture. Instead of treating each language as a separate site, I developed a framework that treats multilingual navigation as a design system problem, not a development problem.
Step 1: Component-Based Navigation Architecture
The breakthrough came from treating navigation as reusable components. In Framer, I create a master navigation component with variants for each language, rather than duplicating entire menu structures. This means one source of truth for navigation logic, with language-specific content variants.
Here's the specific setup: Create a Navigation component with text overrides for each menu item. Instead of hardcoding "About Us," use component properties that can be overridden per language. This allows you to maintain consistent navigation behavior while adapting content.
Step 2: Smart Language Detection and Switching
Rather than relying on plugins, I built a simple JavaScript solution that detects user language preference and updates navigation states accordingly. The key insight: users don't want to think about language switching—it should be contextual and obvious.
I implement a language switcher that shows the current language clearly and provides easy access to alternatives. But here's the crucial part: the language switcher maintains the user's current page context. If they're on the pricing page in English, switching to French takes them to the French pricing page, not the homepage.
Step 3: Content Override Strategy
Instead of duplicating pages, I use Framer's component override system to create language variants of the same page structure. This maintains design consistency while allowing content adaptation. Each page template gets language-specific text overrides, but the layout and interaction logic remain consistent.
Step 4: SEO-Friendly URL Structure
The final piece handles SEO without plugin complexity. I structure URLs with clear language indicators (/en/, /fr/, /de/) and implement proper canonical tags and hreflang attributes directly in Framer's SEO settings. This gives search engines clear signals without requiring server-side configuration.
This framework scales beautifully. Adding a new language takes hours, not weeks. Marketing teams can update navigation across all languages from a single component. The entire system can even be enhanced with AI translation workflows for rapid content localization.
Component Logic
Navigation works as a design system, not scattered duplicates
URL Strategy
Clean language paths without server configuration
Override System
Single page templates with language-specific content variants
Scaling Framework
Adding new languages takes hours, not developer sprints
The results were immediate and measurable. What took 6-8 weeks with WordPress was accomplished in 5 days with Framer. But the real wins came in ongoing maintenance and iteration speed.
Development Time: 85% Reduction
New language additions dropped from 2-3 weeks to 4-6 hours. The marketing team could handle most navigation updates without developer intervention. A/B testing different menu structures became a design task, not a development project.
User Experience Improvements
Language switching became seamless—users stayed in context instead of being redirected to homepages. Navigation consistency across languages improved because everything stemmed from the same component system. Mobile responsiveness worked perfectly across all language variants without additional configuration.
SEO Performance
Search engines indexed the multilingual structure faster due to cleaner URL patterns and proper hreflang implementation. The client saw improved rankings in target markets within 2 months, partly due to faster page load times and better user engagement metrics.
Most importantly, the client could focus on market entry strategy instead of technical implementation. They launched in 4 markets that first year instead of the planned 2, directly attributing the speed to their ability to iterate quickly on multilingual landing pages.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this approach across multiple client projects, several key insights emerged that challenge conventional multilingual wisdom:
Platform choice matters more than translation tools. The right platform makes complex translations simple; the wrong platform makes simple translations complex.
Marketing velocity trumps technical perfectionism. Teams that can iterate quickly on multilingual content outperform those with "perfect" technical setups they can't modify.
Navigation consistency drives conversion. Users trust websites that behave predictably across languages more than those with language-specific navigation quirks.
Component thinking scales, page thinking doesn't. Treating multilingual content as component variations rather than separate pages prevents maintenance nightmares.
Designer tools can outperform developer tools for specific use cases. Framer's component system handles multilingual navigation better than many traditional CMSs.
The biggest lesson: choose your complexity. Every multilingual approach has complexity—the question is whether that complexity lives in your daily workflow or in your initial setup. WordPress pushes complexity into daily operations. Framer concentrates it in the initial architecture, then gets out of your way.
I'd implement this approach differently knowing what I know now: start with the navigation component system from day one, even for single-language sites. It makes future multilingual expansion trivial and improves overall site maintainability.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies expanding internationally:
Prioritize marketing team autonomy over developer preferences
Test navigation patterns per market—preferences vary by culture
Use consistent CTA placement across languages for conversion tracking
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores entering new markets:
Implement currency switching alongside language options
Maintain shopping cart context during language switches
Consider market-specific navigation priorities and product categories