Overview
I led a six-month multilingual initiative for Squarespace’s 4. 9M customers in 200+ countries. My work spanned research, product direction and interaction design, partnering with a PM, TPM, four engineering leads, and the Websites and Commerce teams. We proved demand through Weglot before designing the native experience.
Problem
Translating a simple site meant duplicating it for every language, pasting content into Google Translate, then keeping every copy in sync by hand. Most people who wanted a multilingual site never got one. Without a product, we also lacked direct feedback on what they needed.
Opportunity
Make Squarespace competitive in Europe with a free, native multilingual tool. International customers represented roughly 30% of bookings; multilingual had been a top request for over ten years. European trials grew quickly but converted at about half the US rate. We would start in Europe, then focus on sellers.
Shaping the direction
A native translation service was expensive and a year-long build, without proof people would use it. My call was to integrate Weglot first in 2023 as a low-cost test of real demand. It became Squarespace’s most-used extension that year, providing the evidence to make the case for native.
Demand is there
Demand was real, but the third-party setup lost users: 92% allowed access, 42% completed setup, and only 6. 5% subscribed. Users were willing to pay, but €150+ a year felt too expensive and the free 2,000-word tier was insufficient. A native experience needed to remove both setup friction and those limits.
Weglot filled the knowledge gap
Feedback revealed three barriers: cost, editing and quality. Users compared Weglot’s price with free translation on Wix, struggled to edit translations, and disliked the site refreshing when switching languages. Translations sometimes removed capital letters or sounded too formal, leading people to rewrite them in ChatGPT.
North star
One click, great quality, set it and forget it. Setup should feel like a no-brainer, even for someone not yet considering translation. People should trust the results without constant editing, with translations that match their site’s style and tone. Google Translate’s familiar browser experience helped frame that simplicity.
Map the whole job
I mapped discovery, setup, browsing, editing, language management and continuous translation before designing screens. With engineering, I compared machine translation and LLM quality and speed, preserved site personality, and designed for future email and service translation. Our localization team guided the flow and terminology.
