--- title: "Translatable URL Handles on Shopify: A Guide" description: "Translatable URL handles on Shopify: better localization and international SEO for your store - what the update delivers and how to use it." url: https://shoplab.cc/en/shopify-tips-tricks/verbesserung-der-lokalisierung-und-seo-mit-uebersetzbaren-url-handles-auf-shopify datePublished: 2023-06-26T09:30:00Z --- [Back](https://shoplab.cc/en/blog) Shopify Tips & Tricks # Translatable URL Handles on Shopify: A Guide June 26, 2023 ยท 2 minutes reading time ![Portrait of Mark Chang, shoplab founder and CTO](https://shoplab.cc/images/team/mark.jpg) Mark Chang Founder & CTO At shoplab, we continually stay ahead of the curve, ensuring we're on top of all new features and updates that can elevate your eCommerce experience. Today, we're excited to share a significant advancement in Shopify's platform that allows for greater localization of your online store - translatable URL handles. ## What Shopify changed As of June 26, 2023, Shopify has enriched the eCommerce environment by enabling merchants to employ the TranslationsRegister GraphQL API. This innovation means you can register translations for resource handles, thereby creating localized online store URLs. The brilliance of this update lies in providing a direct solution for localizing your shop's URLs. With just a few simple steps in the free Shopify app "[Translate & Adapt](https://apps.shopify.com/translate-and-adapt)", you can now translate your shop resource URL handles into different languages. This update is not just user-friendly but also significantly contributes to improving your shop's SEO, as localized URLs can enhance your page ranking in countries and regions that speak your selected languages. ## How to switch on translatable URL handles **It's as simple as:** 1. Install the "Translate & Adapt" app from [here](https://apps.shopify.com/translate-and-adapt). 2. Go to the "Apps" tab in your Shopify dashboard and select the "Translate & Adapt" app. 3. Select your desired language and navigate to Products. ![Translate & Adapt in the Shopify admin, with "English" selected as the localized content language and the "Products" row highlighted for editing](https://shoplab.cc/images/blog/verbesserung-der-lokalisierung-und-seo-mit-uebersetzbaren-url-handles-auf-shopify-1.webp) 4. Select a product and translate the URL handle to reflect your desired language. ![Translation view of a sample product in Translate & Adapt, with the German source on the left, the English translation on the right, and the URL handle set to "example-product"](https://shoplab.cc/images/blog/verbesserung-der-lokalisierung-und-seo-mit-uebersetzbaren-url-handles-auf-shopify-2.webp) For instance, your product URLs can now be tailored as example.com/products/en-us/red-shoes for English-speaking customers and example.com/products/es-us/zapatos-rojos for Spanish-speaking customers. This fantastic update extends across various resource types, including Products, Collections, Articles, Blogs, and Pages. Best of all, this change is supported across all API versions, ensuring it's accessible to all Shopify merchants. ## Why this matters for international SEO In summary, Shopify's now translatable URL handles represent a long-awaited update that holds high importance primarily for the search engine optimization (SEO) of your store. Your localized URLs can enhance your page ranking in countries and regions that speak your selected languages. For localized URLs to actually pay off, your theme, your hreflang markup and your Markets configuration all have to line up - which is part of what our [Shopify development](https://shoplab.cc/en/shopify-development) covers. At shoplab, your trusted Shopify expert studio, we're dedicated to helping you harness the power of these new features. If you are not yet a shoplab client and are interested in a consultation, get in touch and we'll find a time that works. As always, shoplab stands by your side every step of the way. For stores serving mainly the German-speaking market, this work is day-to-day business for our [Shopify agency in Munich](https://shoplab.cc/en/shopify-agency-munich). 1. [01What Shopify changed](#what-shopify-changed) 2. [02How to switch on translatable URL handles](#how-to-switch-on-translatable-url-handles) 3. [03Why this matters for international SEO](#why-this-matters-for-international-seo) Get a free consultation Expert guidance tailored to your Shopify business. Got questions? ## Let's clear things up! We've gathered the most asked questions with answers to help you better understand our services. ![Portrait of a shoplab team member](https://shoplab.cc/images/faq/faq-contact.jpg) Still have a question? Let's have a call and clear things up. ### Do you only work with Shopify? Yes. We have worked exclusively with Shopify and Shopify Plus since 2020, and turning down other platforms is what got us here. The trade is deliberate: a team that sees the same platform every day knows which problems have a native solution, which need an app, and which need custom code - so less of your budget goes into rediscovering that. It also means we follow Shopify's own conventions instead of porting patterns over from Magento or WooCommerce, which is what keeps a store upgradeable after we hand it over. ### What services do you offer? Strategy & consulting, custom Shopify theme development, custom app development, store migrations, UX/UI design, integrations & middleware, ongoing store management, and AI e-commerce readiness. Most projects combine three or four of those: a migration usually arrives with an ERP integration and a redesign attached, and a redesign usually surfaces a performance problem. Everything runs through one team, so a design decision and its development consequence get settled together rather than negotiated between two agencies. ### Can you redesign my existing Shopify store? Absolutely, and it is one of the most common ways clients start with us. We audit the current store first - conversion path, page performance, and the templates that carry the most revenue - then redesign against what the audit found rather than against a moodboard. Your products, customers, orders and URL structure stay where they are, so rankings and store data are not at risk. Redesigns can also ship in stages: the pages that sell first, the rest afterwards, so you see the effect before the whole budget is committed. ### Do you build custom Shopify themes? Yes, from scratch rather than by reskinning a marketplace template. A custom theme means the sections your merchandising team actually needs, editable in the theme editor without a developer, and no inherited code for features you will never use. That last part is the performance argument: off-the-shelf themes carry the union of every use case they were sold for, and you pay for it in Core Web Vitals on every page load. We build against your catalogue and your content model, then hand over documentation so your team can run it. ### Can you migrate my store from another platform? Yes - WooCommerce, Magento, Shopware and other platforms, in a staged, low-risk process. Products, variants, customers and order history come across, and every indexed URL gets a mapped 301 so the rankings you already earned survive the move. What decides the timeline is rarely catalogue size: it is data structures with no direct Shopify equivalent (bundles, configurable products, customer-specific pricing) and the systems your store talks to. We inventory both before a cutover date is set, which is why our migrations do not end with a redirect list written the night before launch. ### How long does a Shopify project take? It depends on scope: focused improvements often take 4-6 weeks, while full custom builds or migrations typically run 8-16 weeks. A store moving onto a configured theme is usually live in 4-8 weeks; a fully custom storefront runs closer to 10-16\. You get a timeline with defined milestones before we start, and those milestones are staged releases rather than one launch date at the end - so a delay in one area does not push everything behind it. What moves a timeline most is late scope additions and integrations nobody inventoried at the start. ### Will my Shopify store be optimized for mobile? Always. We design mobile-first because that is where most e-commerce traffic sits, and where most of the conversion loss happens. Every store is tested on real devices rather than a resized browser window, and measured against Core Web Vitals - largest contentful paint, interaction latency, layout shift - before it goes live. Image handling, font loading and third-party scripts get the most attention, because apps are usually what turn a fast theme into a slow store. Performance is a launch requirement here, not a follow-up ticket. ### Do you provide ongoing support after launch? Yes. Store management plans cover Shopify and app updates, iterative improvements, testing and technical support, on a monthly scope you can adjust as priorities change. Most stores need the first weeks after launch more than they expect: real traffic finds edge cases staging never produced, and the analytics only start telling the truth once volume arrives. After that, ongoing work tends to be conversion iterations on the templates that carry revenue, seasonal campaign support, and keeping the theme current as Shopify ships platform changes. ### Can you improve my store without rebuilding everything? Definitely, and we will say so when a rebuild is not the right call. We often work in focused iterations - a conversion audit, performance optimization, or redesigning the handful of templates that carry most of the revenue - shipped as staged releases with measurable outcomes instead of a big-bang relaunch. For a store that already converts this is usually the better economics: you keep what works, spend where the data points, and avoid the risk window a full replatform opens. A rebuild earns its cost when the underlying theme or data model is the actual constraint. ### How do we get started? Book a free strategy call - about thirty minutes, and you keep whatever comes out of it. We ask what you run today: platform, catalogue structure, connected systems, and what should be better after the project. From there you get a written proposal covering scope, timeline and pricing, with named work blocks rather than one number. If the call shows that what you need is smaller than an agency project, we will tell you that too. It is a cheaper conversation for both of us than finding out in month two. [Read more questions](https://shoplab.cc/en/faq) More articles ## Related blogs Explore more insights, ideas, and practical resources to support your e-commerce journey and inspire your next move. 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