Conduct user research for you to have a better understanding of cultural factors for your intended audience. The online experience should be culturally relevant to establish an emotional connection with your audience. You must also enable online users to find your multilingual site through prominent access on the English website. You should make access to your multilingual website available on the global navigation on the top right hand corner of the English page.

I have noticed that many sites do not translate some elements of their site (menu, banners, etc.) It is very important that you have it translated not only for your site users, but also for search engines. If your site is in English and French, for example, you could have the french version in the “/fr/” folder and English in the root:

http://www.yourcompany.com

http://www.yourcompany.com/fr

Make sure that your multilingual site offers the same user experience to your English website. Update and maintain your site regularly to ensure that it remains comparable to the English website. You can manage user expectations by giving notice when users navigate to an English-only area or external website.

Allow users to toggle between comparable features content on the multilingual and English websites if available. Also provide functionality and interactive features on your multilingual website and integrate its initiatives with external consumer touch points and internal infrastructure, as well as into your general online-offline strategy.

I found it very useful to have the pages open in a new window. This is to avoid the users getting lost – users will still have the site in his/her language open and won’t have a problem to get back. Put yourself in users’ shoes when entering your site.