Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news. He's from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Waumsley, and Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. Once again, this is episode number 195. Entitled translate your WordPress website with we got it was published on Thursday, the 3rd of September, 2020. My name's Nathan Wrigley and the usual housekeeping just before we begin, if you wouldn't mind heading over to WP Builds.com, there you'll find all of the content that we create.
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You can check it out and get a free [email protected]. Okay, let's get stuck into the main event. Shall we? This is episode number 195. I can't believe it. And we're talking with a goose NAMPO from week lot. It's a really interesting episode. I'm sure that many of you will have built websites before, which have had the requirement to be translatable, to be read in multiple languages.
we'd blocked is a plugin that can help you do this. I've got saline comes onto the podcast today, too. Explain how it works, how he's built it and all of its capabilities. It's a really in depth discussion and we get into the nuts and bolts of how it all ties together. like I say, if you are interested in multi-lingual sites, this is a good episode for you.
I should also add to that. He's very kindly given us a lifetime deal, a 15% off. The pricing, you have to use the coupon code at WP Builds, and you've got 15% off the first, the second, the third, every year that you subscribe to one of their plans, also, I'd like to say that I'm launching a giveaway for three pro licenses.
That's three pro annual licenses for. We plot. And you can find that by going to WP Builds.com forward slash win, it's a viral contest. So the more you share it, the more chances you've got a winning, but you never know this might become yours and you can test it out for free for a whole entire year. So that's three [email protected] forward slash gosh, when, okay.
Let's get on with the podcast. Shall we. Hello there. Welcome to the WP Builds podcast interview section. Thanks for making it this far today. I am joined all the way from Paris by Augusta and Paul, how are you Augusta?
Augustin Prot: [00:04:51] Very rarely. Thank you. And Nathan, very happy
Nathan Wrigley: [00:04:54] to be there. Welcome now, Augusta is on the podcast today.
We're going to talk about a couple of different things. We're going to try and divide the podcast into we'll see how that goes. But, first thing to say is. That a Augusta is representing a company, which is on the increase. He was telling me just a moment ago that they've now got their body count up to 20 members of staff.
So it's very much on the ascendancy and I'm a good Stan is from a weak lots, which is a translation plugin. So first of all, I'm going to ask Augustana if we can talk about week, lot, what is week, lot?
Augustin Prot: [00:05:29] Eh, Wiglets is a solution to make any website multilingual. So it's, originally built for WordPress with a dedicated plugin.
And so basically you have a website in French. You want to have to display it in English. You would use a wiggler to do that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:47] do you know if there is other, any kind of like legal rights requirements? I know that, for example, if you're in Canada, you have to produce things in both French and English, but beyond that, I'm not really sure.
Do you know, is there any compulsion? So let's say for example, I am here in England typing out a website and I do it all in English, apart from the, how nice it would be to translate. I'm just wondering if there are situations where it's mandatory or compulsory.
Augustin Prot: [00:06:14] that's a good question, actually.
yeah, I do think that I'm pretty sure in Canada, you have to, in certain regions of Canada and Quebec, for example, you have, nutrition, and any public, organization, they have to, disparate the content in French. And English.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:06:35] Yeah.
Augustin Prot: [00:06:36] Maybe it's the same for Sweden. And for example,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:06:40] actually I was born in Switzerland as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.
Augustin Prot: [00:06:43] You have same thing also, for example, in Morocco, the official administrative language, there are two official administrative languages, which are Arabic and French.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:06:57] Ah, okay. And, another one which comes to mind is Wales. I know that if you drive through Wales, all of the road signs, for example, and all of the documentation that on, paperwork that you receive is in both the Welsh and English.
Anyway, the point is in some jurisdictions, it's mandatory in most jurisdictions, I suppose you're just doing it simply to increase the reach of your website. Let's say, for example, we've got a shop and it's an international shop and you're shipping all over the world. It makes perfect sense to reach out to those visitors in French, in German, in Chinese, and what have you, but not being particularly familiar with week lot and how it works.
How do I actually achieve that? How, for example, let's say that I've got a simple web page that I've built using. I don't know the block editor let's go for that. As opposed to a page builder, how would I actually interact with we plot after installing the plugin? what does it do? How do I make things go to Chinese and, French and German and so on.
Augustin Prot: [00:07:56] Yeah, actually, we tried to build a solution that it's super simple to anyone to use it. So there is, there are no frictions, technically speaking and content on the content part. So how does it work? you're gonna. tell Willard, what is your original language? So for example, in your example, English, you're going to select the translate languages you want to add.
So that say French and German, and then we'll let you know doing all the hard work. So we're detecting the content that's that is on your website, We're providing a first layer of translations. So it's, machine-based, we're sourcing automatic translations from different providers, which are Google Microsoft, for example.
And then we are displaying the page with the translator translations on it. So once you have that, you can manage it from stations. So you can, if you know how to, translate in French or German, you can just simply, over read, edit, tweaks to have your turn voice and to have your corporate brand, within your contract that the content, or if you don't know how to do that, you can invite someone from your team, from your network.
that knows how to do translations in French and German. Or you can even hire a freelancer or professional translators to do this job. the ultimate goal is to provide, all the tools to manage translations for our end users so they can use. Automatic translations. And you mentioned stations either themselves or by involving freelancers, their local chains, their network or professional translators.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:09:40] I'm really interested in the automation side of things. And what I mean by that is I'm interested in how that actually works. If, for example, I've written a simple blog post with just text. and it's maybe a thousand words. And presumably there's some, if you like Metta box to use it an old fashioned term underneath that content and I click publish.
So the, in the automated scenario we got then goes out to one of the providers that you mentioned. So for example, Google or Microsoft, it submits the English. It requests a translation back into whatever language you've specified and then it puts it in to the post automatically for you. You don't have to do anything else.
Augustin Prot: [00:10:20] Yeah. it's almost that. Exactly. So what it does, it, it will not look into your, WP admin. It will look at the HTML of the page. So for example, if you have a contact page, my website.com/contact. And you translated the, and you selected for the French version and you visiting the page.
we've learned, we'll detect all that. It HTML this GML, all the content, which is, it can be metadata calls, H one. Paragraph, whatever it will send it to a, two Wheeler API. And then we let API is going to look at, do you have this translations for this content? If it does not exist, it goes to one of the messages, traditional providers.
If it exists inside your account, it will get the translations that are related to this content and send it back.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:11:15] That's amazing. So just to be clear, the pub, the post needs to be published in order for the API to be called. you can't, for example, get a translation within a, Oh, I don't know, post which you've shed world for some point in the future.
Augustin Prot: [00:11:30] there are ways to do that, but, the default behavior, yes, it has to be published, but when you, we provide, we can provide, ways to do that. So first one is to, we have a private mud. So you can activate a private mode so that, you could, private a page or a whole website, or you could also install a wig on the prestaging pre production environment.
If you have one or you can also use , in the preview, if you don't have any pre staging, pretty, development environment. So you can actually, do the translations before. It's published.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:12:07] I understand. So there are ways around it. that's good to know because there's quite a lot of the content that I produce that I write and then put to one side and it might be nice if I was translating things to come back to it later and fiddle.
how in your experience, how quickly do those translations come back? Let's say, for example, I've written a thousand words in English. Press go. All of your automated systems, correct cough. How long would it be before I can go back into the postal page or what have you and see the translations in situ in the little metal boxes.
Augustin Prot: [00:12:37] I would, on average, it would add 200 milliseconds to your actual page load, in your origin language. But, each really depends on if it's the first time you're visiting the babes. So for example, if you are actually, if we are, I could be doing the cold to the, mesh transition providers, it takes a bit more time.
if not, it takes, less time and we're working with. A lot of caching solution. So if you're using WP work ads or any other caching solution in it will be as fast as any other Castro beach. Yeah. Yeah. And,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:14] go ahead. Carry on.
Augustin Prot: [00:13:16] no,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:16] please go. I was going to say, how long does it take, for the actual translations to come back from, let's say Google.
So you call Google and say, I've got this text in English, please translate it. How long does it take for Google to come back and say, there it is.
Augustin Prot: [00:13:32] it's really milliseconds. we actually wrote a blog post about that. comparing the different transition automatic transition program. So I don't want to make taping right now to find this out on our blog.
but, yeah, it's really a matter of seconds. let me check.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:50] Oh, Okay. So that's amazing. I thought it might be, a couple of minutes or half an hour or something, but,
Augustin Prot: [00:13:55] it's milliseconds.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:56] Wow. That really is astonishing. the length of the article is not really important.
It'll translate any length of texts, in a very tiny amount of time. And in your experience, how. How accurate are those translations? I'll give you, I'll give you an example. I use a third party solution to translate what we are now saying, from audio into text. So that's a very different process.
It's turning audio. Into text, which I then put on the page as a sort of an accessibility thing so that people can see and read what it is that we're both saying. Now, typically I would say that's about 95% accurate and it makes sense, horrific errors on words. for example, we got a word, which it's not accustomed to.
It we'll struggle with it. We'll probably come up with some complete nonsense for, we got, and I will then have to go through and correct it. I'm just wondering how text-based translations, how accurate Google is, or these other providers are in giving something back, which you can be fairly certain is readable because the.
The embarrassing thing I suppose, would be that if you rely on the automation and it comes back with something which is just horrible or slightly wrong, or, just slightly off, such a way that it's a bit embarrassing. all of those kinds of concerns really.
Augustin Prot: [00:15:19] I'd say that overall it's really good.
it's really readable, not horrible at all. four, four 90, 95% of the translations, but it's really depends on different criteria. First is, the languages. So for example, if you're doing translations for French to English or Spanish to English or German to, to, to Spanish. These are languages that are, we use, on online web content.
So they are a lot of data that are feeding the, read them for four, for Google of Google and others. It's more relevant because they have more data to rely on. But if you're looking to translate, I don't know, a French to a type of French to a Philippine, flip, flipping your content. Yeah. it might be a less, I create that's one point.
The other one is. It's getting better and better. I can remember when I was trying to, when I was at school and trying to use Google translate for my homework, it didn't work at all. I think, I guess I got to see your grades for that, but, I'd say that now. It's it's grammatically correct. It makes sense.
It's reliable. now it's not at the point where it's taking your company corporate voice or your brand voice and include an inkling in it. I think it would be take a lot of time to do that because. Translation is like it's content. So it's super subjective and it's part of how you present your product, your brand is.
And so on so far, it's very important that users, can have the, their hands on it and they can. Easily, edit stuff. they're on their own, done.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:12] Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an important point. if you are happy to let the machines do the work for you, basically, it's fine. But if you want it to have.
that rise and fall. And that allows you to describe it, company, voice, or certain sense of humor or whatever it might be. Then you really are probably gonna have to still require a human being to do that. And weed enables you to do that, which is nice in terms of. I'm creating a blog post with the block editor.
That's all very straightforward, lots and lots of texts. But increasingly we seem to be in a world where people are using more complicated solutions to create their WordPress content. Let's say, for example, a page builder, how does we Glocks interact with a more complex solutions? Like for example, Elementor or Beaver builder, is there a different process that you go through?
What does that look like?
Augustin Prot: [00:18:01] No, it's exactly the same process. from the very beginning, we focused on providing a turnkey, super easy solution to use and to enter. And so the way it's working, which is a bit outside of the box, it's looking at the HTML page. So it's not looking at where is it?
Content is actually coming from or how it's been generated. So it's, it allows with regards to, to being, independent of, the solution you use to create the websites, looking at the HTML page. So it doesn't matter if you're using Elementor Beaver builder. Another page builder or good Tim bag, it works.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:41] How would I, how would I subsequently go and edit? So let's say for example, I've produced a fairly complicated page in, element or, and the HTML has been rendered a week. Lot has done its thing, provided the translations, but where would they appear for me to edit? Do I have to go and actually edit the post or the page itself?
in the traditional editor, be that the classic or the block editor, or is there a kind of interaction with element or is there an element or, section for example, that we can interact with?
Augustin Prot: [00:19:13] No, that's the point. We're not interacting with the website builders or page builders. Correct. So if went from, to manage translations uses, are doing that into there.
Got it. Adding a set of tools to do that. So there is a classic translations lists where you have original content on one side and translation is on the other side and we were also providing. sometimes it's easier to visualize your page. So we have a visual editor where you can actually see translations on your webpage.
And any them.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:19:48] Okay. Thank you. that clears that up. That's great. In terms of things like, I suppose one of the things I've seen many times on the internet, but, don't seem to use too much just because of the fact that so much content is. It's created in English. there's a feature, often it floats to the top, right where there's a little flag or something like that.
And I could pick out the French flag and, and I would have a French website in front of my eyes. How does wee Glock handle that? does it kind of auto detect? Okay. This is a French IP address. Let's give it, that's handed over in French, but give me the option to click an icon or something like that.
how to end users interact.
Augustin Prot: [00:20:25] We're, we're providing a, a language button by default that, and in our specific case, it's at the bottom Of the website, but obviously you can put it wherever you want and you can design it however you want. and so that's where visitors can. Select the languages.
So for example, if you have a website in English and you selected French as a translated language, you can click on the button, click on the French, a French name or fr if it's F R two, that occurred or the French flag or the three of them, if the three of them are selected and it will change the page, the version of the page from English.
Two French narrow. we also, added a feature to automatically detect. The visitor languages, because sometimes it's easier to just a kit, one action from your visitors, if you want to improve the conversion rates. So for example, what we're using is we're not using IP geolocation because we, it's us, it's not the best practice since, geography is not the language.
So what we're using is the brother. Languages preferences, which is, it's fairly, I create. So for example, if I, myself, I'm French, my first language in my brother preference is friend. So if I go to a website that's available in French and English using , it will be automatically. Displayed in French.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:21:58] Yeah. good. that's the way, that's the way to do it. Isn't it. So that's perfect. So if you've got your browser set up for German, you're going to see the German translation. One of the, one of the things I'm sure that people will be interested to know about is so for example, the SEO consequences of these kinds of things.
So let's say for example, it's difficult enough to get a, an, a purely German or purely English website to appear higher up in the search engine results. But obviously if you're selling products internationally, you would very much like it. If the French and the German and the English and the Chinese versions were all ranking highly, is there any sort of inbuilt capability which assists with SEO?
Augustin Prot: [00:22:38] yeah, actually when we started, we got out at the very beginning, we didn't have this SEO capabilities, so it wasn't in 2015 way before we started the official company, by the way. But, we worked a lot, so we applied and we followed, Google best practice guidance. we make sure. That the translated version of your page are ranked, detected and, and SEO friendly for Google and other search engines.
How would you that they are three key? Points to, to apply the first one is to have dedicated URL for the translated version of your page. So basically we're using sub-directories to display your page, but it's my website.com/fr for the fringe version. Got it. Then we use, we. You need to let Google know that there are other versions of the beach.
So we're using the H ref, the Lang tag to do that. Yep. And then the last point is. Even if Google told us that it can crawl JavaScript, dynamic content. It's still a better to do server side content. So into source code. That's what we are doing. We're preventing translations. In the source code.
So we make sure Google can see everything. You do not need to pre-render stuff or to do things like this. So this way, yeah, there's this way you can be sure that all your translated versions will be ranked by Google.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:11] Perfect. That sounds like a really intelligent way of doing it. Yeah, that's great.
That's clear that one up as well. One other thing you mentioned, which I'm interested to know about is you talked about the automation and how Google and Michael. Chris Hoffman, someone can do this, but if you chose to go down, the more likely I would imagine it's more likely to get a hundred percent accuracy and to be able to do your company voice and so on.
If you go for the human angle, are there Companies that you associate yourself with that the plugin links to so that you don't have to strike up those relationships yourself, does we lot enable you to reach out to a company who has expertise in translating to all these languages and can it automatically, fill in the language fields in weak lots.
Once that third party company has submitted it, as translated.
Augustin Prot: [00:24:59] Yeah, exactly. the goal is always the same is to provide all the tools, for our end users. So you don't want to do translation themselves. And they want to use a third party, like professional trends, agency to do that. And they don't have, they don't have one.
They used to work with them and just simply order professional translations directly from the platform. And we're sending them audit to our vetted partners. And then it's automatic send back when it's done. Integrated in your account and in your website, you do not have nothing to do except ordering the translations.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:37] Perfect. And presumably the billing and all of that is taken care of you pay that provider. and it's all done and you can stop thinking about it. Yeah, that's really nice. One sort of other thing that I wanted to mention was the pricing, because obviously it's important for people to know about how much this costs.
I won't hold you to your pricing because sometimes these episodes go out. But what are the different plans that you offer from, right? I think you've got a, I know that you've got a free version on wp.org, but then you've got versions going from, more basic plans right up to enterprise.
let's hear about those.
Augustin Prot: [00:26:10] Yeah. Sure. Thank you for the question. A notion to talk about pricing. We have a, yeah, we have a free and paid versions. we believe it's important to have users with a low volume, to be able to enjoy. We'd get on their website. So that's why we have a free version. It's also allows us to be present and that org, directory for plugins, and for the patients, it's mainly, DRI driven by volume today.
So it's basically the number of languages you want. The number of translated words you need. The number of projects, website, you want to use the big words and the number of team members there's you want to invite to? A project. That's basically how you can, have a fairly estimate of the amount of money you're going to spend with us.
And it's, it's starting at 10 euros a month and it goes up to 500 euros a month.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:27:08] Okay. So the options really is the numb, the more translatable languages you wish to acquire them, the greater, the number of words, the bigger, the increases. It looks, I don't know if it's true. I think you offer a discount as so many companies do these days.
If you pay annually. You basically pay just 10 months instead of paying for 12 months. So that's a, that's another way of making it slightly more affordable in terms of the support that you offer. Actually, I'll come to the support in a minute, cause it will link nicely into what we're talking about next.
But I wouldn't mind if it's all right with you talking about the other things that you do outside of work. Yes, because I know that we were a WordPress podcast largely, but we also tinker with other toys. and I know that you do too, so it's not just WordPress. This could be attached to, other things.
So for example, Shopify, so feel free to tell us what else it can do outside of WordPress.
Augustin Prot: [00:27:59] Thanks. Thanks Paul, for mentioning that. Yes. I think, we started, we got as a WordPress plugin, but we also quickly so that, we, we received interest of using without outside of WordPress. so we built a dedicated Shopify app to do the same and it's working great too.
And then we also decided to be able to offer our solution to any websites using CMS. Or not. And we, so we did build an another way to integrate. We let we set domains. And so basically it's exactly the same then, or press, it's easy to use, but you can use that on any website. So if you're using the CMS are a websites, you can use a billet.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:43] Yeah. If you go actually to a week glock.com forward slash integrations, you'll see it a really rather impressive list. the notable ones for this podcast would be WordPress and WooCommerce. That's all taken care of, but nice to see that the products, it feels to me like we're commerce would be a really superb way to deploy Glock because selling internationally is fabulous.
but then you've got, it's a Shopify Squarespace. Big commerce. You can just implement some Java script onto presumably a sort of more static site. A couple of things I've never heard of in here, Jim DOE that's interesting Wix Weebly web flow. and then interestingly, a couple of other, eCommerce solutions, Magento and Presta shop another CMS go CMS.
And then this is nice. Help scout and Zen desk. So you can translate your sort of help documents and your Zen desk, the way that you interact with customers. That's brilliant like that a lot.
Augustin Prot: [00:29:33] Thanks for that. Yeah. the whole idea is to any web application actually can use weekends.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:29:39] Yeah. So you being everywhere all at the same time, which is yeah, really nice. Now the segue that I wanted to make is because I did say at the top, we're going to talk about your business. So let's introduce it this way. one of the things which I always ask, because it's something which comes up again and again, is how do you deal with support?
Because it's all very well, we subscribed for, a standard plan at $99. And then we run into some hitch six months later and we want to know, we want to know what. capabilities you have. How is your support, Don? Are you dealing with chatter? Are you on email? Is there a kind of do you respond within a certain period of time and so on?
Augustin Prot: [00:30:15] Yeah. thanks for the question before detailing, how we handle support today. I think I want to mention that from the very beginning support has always been super important for us. it's really in our DNA. I can remember was Remy my co founder and I during our first six months of roulette.
So first half of 2016, we were doing support live chat. Every day, almost every night, whenever someone was asking for something, we were answering them, it was amazing because it, because you, direct feedback, direct, communication with your users, it's really key. and also because.
we did want to offer an experience that is not what we experienced when you go to your telecommunication company or any other public system. So it was super important for us, and why it's still super important for us. So today we have a team of experts. they are. Seven, all based in Paris, we're only doing emails to getting support.
We're not doing anymore live chat support. we're also preventing a very detailed and extended, FAQ. So we, yeah, we have a one business day, a turnaround maximum. So if just sending us an email between nine and six GMT, plus one we're answering you. there is no way you're not going to get an answer from us.
It's super important to have everyone happy. And when I say everyone we're answering, and replaying to all our readers, including free ones. Even if we are not, we don't have the same level of priority and emergency or users get an answer from us.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:00] Okay. That's great. And you said seven.
Did you say seven people simply in support?
Augustin Prot: [00:32:05] Yeah. Yeah. Seven people in support and a, because support is not only about. Replying to two users. It's also about, taking the temperature of West working. What's not working what should be improved. So real, it's a fuel for the roadmap, for the product roadmap.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:21] Yeah, that's a, yeah, that's a good point. Anyway, that's great. That clears that one up nicely because. It's a big thing, if you purchase something and you're on a monthly retainer or an annual subscription or whatever it might be, then you, you want to know that product is supported. So that's great.
Augustin Prot: [00:32:36] And it is monetary. yeah. the whole point of a SaaS product is that if you're paying subscription and you're not getting the value for the money you're paying each month, you just go. Yeah. And that's it. And we don't want you to go, for financial reason, of course, but more than that for we were trained to provide a value to you.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:55] yeah. Yeah. that's really nice to hear. that leads me very nicely into the other part of the podcast that I wanted to cover, which is the growth, how you've managed to grow a business. I mentioned at the top that, that you've got 20 staff currently, and obviously you've decided to.
Deploy, roughly a third of them over to support, which is interesting, but let's rewind the clock. I'm going to go back. I think you said four years was when you said let's go back a little bit further than four years. There must have been a period of time prior to launching it where you decided this is what you were going to do.
And you presumably joined forces. You mentioned a partner Remi. tell us a little bit about the journey. How did you decide to build a translation plugin for WordPress of all things? what was that all about?
Augustin Prot: [00:33:38] so actually the idea came from Remi, my partner in co-founder, he built the first startup, which was, geolocation.
I dunno how to say that in English, when you're like a creative list on Google map. Okay. That's fine. Yep. So if you want to, if you want to sell or buy a small stuff from. From other people you would do this app. he didn't, it didn't go as expected, so they shut it down with, his former partner.
And when he shut it down, he told us himself, okay. What was the most painful stuff I had to do when doing the deep web application was translating it? he did part of this. Of his today is, in the U S so English was not the problem, but technically speaking, setting up the websites, managing translations, it was a nightmare.
he, he told himself, okay. I should have a simple, super easy to use, serious, The legs, the one you're going to have with Stripe, for example, payment, but for translations. So the idea came like this. Yeah, it was first a JavaScript snippet. That you would add in your HTML head.
but, so we did coworking trade too. we made people trade and we get feedback about it. So it was the two feedbacks we had was where, it's not SEO friendly and I have a WordPress, I don't know how to add the JavaScript. How do you have a plugin for that? So that's how we actually discovered WordPress.
We didn't know about for press. At this time. we built the wa the WordPress brilliant. now based on the feedback we received and then, and then it really started to work. Very well on a go to market distribution part because we, we met the community, the WordPress community, which is very kindness, which is full of kindness for, by the way.
and we also, we had a good traction with users coming every day and liking their product. So we focused our energy and resources on WordPress for six months. from very early 2016 to mid 2016. then when we had something stable, we decided to do the same thing on another technology.
That's why we went to Shopify and we did an app. and then we just hated to do the same for any websites. So we didn't have to build a specific dedicated integration for example, I dunno, for PrestaShop or for another CMS. at first. we tried to do specific dedicated integration for other CMS, but it didn't work as well as for WordPress or should be fine.
we just, we threw three, three months of work, in the bin. And if you use, let's
Nathan Wrigley: [00:36:31] say yes, that's the perfect way of describing it. Yeah,
Augustin Prot: [00:36:34] because it didn't work at all. So we didn't have any interaction and user. So we just, we think, we thought, okay, we should build something. That's working out kind of technology.
and that doesn't mean and a specific integration. That's how we came with the. With the new way of integration, we less, so now you can use any websites, WordPress, or should be fine with you get an integration. And one, one, which is universal,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:37:01] during this time, was it just you and Remy? Was it just the two of you trying to handle absolutely everything.
So building that, you've achieved the WordPress one, the Shopify ones managed and the JavaScript capabilities are all done as well. but there's obviously the support that's going on. There's obviously, designing, the new integrations, which we've talked about already.
Just two of you at that point, or had there been enough growth for you to start to build up a team? The
Augustin Prot: [00:37:25] first year we were not making enough money to hire anyone. Oh yeah. We had an intern Jonathan, after six months. and we were doing like, I don't know, like 80 to 90% of our day, was support only answering users, but.
It was a great problem. yeah, it would have either, it would have been worse if we didn't have users.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:37:47] So very good point. Yeah,
Augustin Prot: [00:37:48] it was really a rich and nice program. and so at some point when almost a hundred percent of our day where was only support, we decided it was time to. To start the team and to hire new people.
And we also decided to raise a little bit of money. So we did a seed round with 'em. Meat of business and drones and seed, capital in France. And it allows us to in a ha in a healthy, way the CIM. So we hired a first, head of support and also a lead engineer. yeah.
And then we started building the gym, with the business growing. We didn't want to do it big hirings, going from there to 10 or to 20 without being sure that we were having enough work for them. yeah, we did it progressively.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:38:41] Yeah. And D have you, has that been a successful? Yeah.
You mentioned that you've got some sort of seed money and what have you, from your experience that was the right direction to take. There's no regrets with that. It didn't mean that you ended up giving a sizeable proportion of your profits away. clearly not because you've grown, but would you repeat that process going out and getting some capital at the beginning?
Augustin Prot: [00:39:02] Yeah, I think so. I think, a tribute to be 100% percent transparent, been profitable since we raised money. So on a pure economic, standpoint, we didn't need it. but it gave us the stability and the healthy environment to do our first hirings. But also it gave us, some smart money with, smart people, giving us advice and supporting us, during not easy a moment with
yeah, I would do it again and also it gave us some money dynamic. some, yeah, some momentum to do to keep. growing and to keep giving energy and resources into this, great adventure.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:45] Yeah. It's interesting. I'm sure that a lot of people who listen to this have had notions of building a product and, perhaps even got to the point where they had a working product and maybe it failed.
Maybe they just decided not to bring it to market. was that a fairly scary decision to things like that? did it bother you that you were borrowing money? Presumably with a, some kind of requirement at some point to pay it back. Does that kind of stuff, did it keep you awake at night or was it all very good?
Augustin Prot: [00:40:12] if you're talking about specifically the raising money part it's not scary. It's a bit, it's exciting. It's you need to sell your product to other people you need to, the only thing is it's defocusing. So you, if you want to, if you want to do it right, you have to give it like three months.
And one of the, one of the cofounders needs to be, very focused on it. So you have less time to do other things. So you need to take this into account before going for that, unless you have an amazing wrecking project where all the VCs are the place knocking at your door, the way it's going to happen.
but no, it's not scary. It takes time and energy, but it's. It's exciting.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:40:58] Okay. So at some point you managed to reach seven. I don't know exactly how far into your journey you were, but I think you mentioned the number seven. where do we go from there? How do we add the extra 13 employees?
What have you been doing that requires it, is it simply growth that's required? This you've grown to the point where 20 people is what's needed to keep this going. Is it because you've got to, a healthy roadmap in the future or is it well. What are the reasons why do we need 20 people at Weglot?
Augustin Prot: [00:41:24] Yeah, I guess it's simply growth. what I mean, we actually, we, today we have, since two days we have four teams, but before this Monday, we only had three teams, which, which are, the development team, the marketing team and the support team, or a third of the, of their, of the team she meets are in each team.
So it's pretty bad dance. And since, Monday we have a, head of sales who's coming in. But yeah, it's basically grown. when we had more and more users and more and more, needs at the support we needed to, to, stringent since the support team, right? So we hired people and then we did the same for the developing parts, with more and more API calls and more and more.
users we need to have, also the world map with more features to, to improve or to release, same thing for marketing. but it's, we try to have a virtual cycles. So new leads, new users to feed the roadmap and produce and to feed new leads, new users, and so on.
So far it's not, we didn't write down a plan to hire X number of people during the next three years. It's more about, and by the way, we are not very good at anticipating our needs in demo. We tend to wait, a lot before triggering the hire process, which is good and bad. And it was good to be very sure about what you're going to give to, to new people coming in, but it's bad because sometimes you're just doing too many things and you're not focused enough on what, where you can provide value for the company.
Yeah. But yeah. It's I think it's really depends on people, on founders and, on your growth, dynamic growth.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:43:14] That's perfect. that's the kind of answer that you want to be able to give you. You could rewind the clock for years and answer that question. I think growth would be the exact reason you'd want to have support staff and everything.
you'd want to be profitable and growing. So that's very pleasing, four years down the road, you've got four teams, you've got 20 employees. You've got a thriving business. Perfect. just before, unfortunately the time is, I don't know where the time went, but where we're at the sweet spot.
August, then I was wondering if there's anything that we missed that you, I feel I desperately wanted to say that if that's the case, please say it now, otherwise feel free to just drop your URLs. Your Twitter handles your Facebook group or whatever it might be. you can take the floor and say whatever you like.
Augustin Prot: [00:43:59] Thank you Nathan. maybe mentioning that we're giving away three days since three per license for a year. and we are also super happy to be on the HUD deals page of WP built. and, yeah, we're. what we want to do is still to be, the brick for multilingual, and translation for websites for WordPress.
But also if you're using other technologies, feel free to try, we let out.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:44:23] Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay. So I should probably mention the URL one more time. Go to weglot dot com that's w E G L O T. Dot com and you can find out absolutely everything that you need to know. I go son, thank you so much. Not only for being such a marvelous guest and telling us everything about your business and your plugin, but also for, for offering those nice prizes, which we mentioned at the end.
So you can go and check those out WP belts.com forward slash deals to find your 15% of code and WP Builds dot com forward slash win. If the competition is still running, can enter it Augustin. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Augustin Prot: [00:45:02] Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:45:04] I hope that you enjoyed that. It was very nice chatting to Agustin.
Hopefully you've learned some new information about how we Glock works and potentially whether it's something you'd like to adopt for your baby business. Don't forget to, as I said, at the top of the show coupon code WP Builds, if you would like to find 15% off. For one year, two years. every year, frankly, it's just a recurring 15% off.
You can find that on our deals page, go to WP Builds.com forward slash deals, and you can search for Weglot using the yellow button at the top left of that page. Also, as I said, at the top of the show, we're doing a giveaway WP Builds.com forward slash win because I go, Stan has kindly given us three pro licenses for one year.
So go to that page and you may win it. WP Builds.com forward slash. When, okay. That's it for this week. I hope that you enjoyed it. Please feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it on Facebook use at WP Builds. If you go on Twitter and also if you can rate us on your podcast, player of choice, Apple podcasts in particular seems to be very popular as it or Spotify, that would be enormously helpful.
So join us again next Thursday for another podcast, we'll maybe see you on Monday for the WP Builds weekly WordPress news, the prerecorded and the live version. I'm going to fade in some cheesy music and say, bye bye for now.
