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Multi-Language Store

Category: Storefront  ·  Min plan: Unlimited (Enterprise included)  ·  Slug: multi-language

Serve your storefront in both Arabic and French, each on its own indexable URL, with a customer language selector.

Video tutorial​

Features​

  • Customer-facing language selector
  • Arabic & French
  • A separate URL per language, indexable by Google
  • hreflang + x-default SEO annotations emitted automatically
  • RTL/LTR auto-switching
  • Works across all live themes
  • No loss of CDN edge caching

Supported languages​

Arabic and French — that is the complete set. There is no way to add English, Spanish, or any other language, so don't buy the Unlimited plan expecting one.

The storefront chrome translations are provided and maintained by DZBuild, not by you: they are complete and consistent for both languages out of the box.

What it does​

Once activated, every storefront page renders a small language selector with the languages you enabled.

On stores where the separate-language URLs are switched on, each language has its own URL. Your store's primary language stays on the bare path, and the other language is served under a language prefix:

https://yourstore.com/                    ← primary language
https://yourstore.com/product/my-item
https://yourstore.com/fr/                 ← French version
https://yourstore.com/fr/product/my-item

The selector navigates to that URL rather than re-rendering the page in place. When the customer lands on the Arabic version the entire layout flips to RTL automatically; the French version renders LTR.

Because the language now lives in the URL, a returning visitor who bookmarks or re-opens /fr/... stays in French — while someone who re-enters your bare domain gets your primary language again.

How a visitor's language is chosen

Auto-detect browser language is on by default. On a visitor's first page view the storefront reads their browser's preferred language and serves that one when it is Arabic or French. Clicking the selector replaces that choice. Either way the preference is kept for 30 days and applies to every storefront page, so a returning visitor lands back in the language they last used.

The separate-language URLs are switched on per store by DZBuild. Until yours is switched on, the selector changes the language for that visitor without changing the address, and the bare URL is the only one search engines see.

SEO​

This is the strongest reason to activate the add-on. Where the separate-language URLs are switched on, each language is a real URL, so DZBuild emits hreflang alternates for every enabled language plus an x-default pointing at the bare path, on every storefront page (product, category, listing, cart, checkout and home). Landing pages don't carry hreflang alternates. Google indexes both versions separately, so a single store can rank for both Arabic and French queries on the same products.

And because the language is in the path rather than in a cookie, multilingual pages keep full CDN edge caching — there is no speed penalty for turning this on.

How to activate​

  1. Open Dashboard → Add-ons at /dashboard/addons.
  2. Find Multi-Language Store under Storefront.
  3. Click Activate (Unlimited plan required).
  4. The settings panel exposes three toggles:
    • Enable French (on by default)
    • Enable Arabic (on by default)
    • Auto-detect browser language (on by default; see the note above)
Keep both language toggles on

These two toggles are the complete language list. Because there are only two languages, switching either one off leaves a single language — which switches the whole add-on off: the selector disappears and the /fr/ URLs stop resolving. Your store still serves its own primary language (that comes from your store setting, not from these toggles), but you lose the multi-language feature entirely.

What gets translated​

The add-on translates the storefront chrome — navbar, cart, checkout strings, buttons, generic labels.

Product titles, descriptions and category names are not translatable today. They render exactly as you typed them on both language URLs. There are no per-language product or category fields anywhere in the dashboard.

Tips​

  • Even if you only sell to Algerian buyers, Arabic-first and French-first shoppers are both large audiences, so a second language removes a reason to leave. Nothing in your dashboard reports orders by language, so if you want to know what the second language changed, compare your order count before and after.
  • Set the right primary language for your audience; the language selector is for the minority portion of your visitors.
  • Test the storefront in both languages after activation. Some custom CSS doesn't flip cleanly on RTL — a quick visual pass catches it.

Compatibility​

  • Works on all seven live themes: starter, brico, digital, showcase (shown as Started V2), prestige, bloom, promobi.
  • The selector's placement depends on viewport. The navbar switcher is hidden below 768 px — on mobile the language links appear in the slide-out sidebar instead. Pages without the standard navbar get a floating button in the bottom corner.
  • Compatible with the Product Reviews and Stop Desk add-ons — their UI strings translate too.