Multi-language: choose which languages your widget serves
Olvio works with the languages you publish in Shopify. Your plan sets how many of them the widget serves, and your default language always counts as one. You manage this in the Languages card of the Olvio admin.
How many languages your plan covers
Plan | Languages the widget serves |
Starter | 1: your default language |
Growth | 2: your default language plus one you choose |
Scale | Every published language Olvio supports |
The Plans page shows this as Bilingual widget on Growth and Multi-language widget on Scale. See Compare Starter, Growth, and Scale plans.
Your default language is always served. Your other published languages can be served only if Olvio supports them: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Turkish and Russian. A published language outside this list never uses one of your plan's languages.
Where Olvio gets your languages
Olvio reads the languages published on your store in your Shopify admin, under Settings → Languages. See Shopify's guide to languages.
When you add, publish, unpublish or remove a language, or change your default language, Olvio picks up the change automatically.
Choose your second language (Growth)
On Growth, you choose which language the widget serves alongside your default language. The choice appears when your store publishes at least one language Olvio supports besides your default language.
In the Olvio admin, open Appearance.
Click the Advanced tab.
In the Languages card, your default language is marked always included. If another language is already checked, uncheck it first: while one language is checked, the other boxes are unavailable. Then check the language you want to serve with your default language.
Click Save in the save bar. A Changes saved message confirms it.
Until you choose, Olvio picks one of your published languages it supports, and its box shows as already checked. Any save on the Appearance page keeps whichever language is checked, even if you only changed another setting. To serve only your default language, uncheck every box and save. It stays that way if you move to Scale, where the card has no language boxes to change it, so check a language again and save before you upgrade.
On Starter and Scale there's nothing to choose, so the card doesn't show this choice.
Hide the widget on languages you don't serve
The Languages card also has a Hide the widget on languages Olvio doesn’t cover checkbox, on every plan. It's off by default, and its help text lists your published languages that the widget doesn't serve.
Unchecked: the widget still shows on pages in those languages, but uses your default language. On pages in a language Olvio doesn't support, suggested questions and answers can be in English instead, and built-in widget text, the Expert name and Hook question, and product cards follow their own rules: see the sections below.
Checked: the product page widget and the Olvio Advisor don't appear on pages in those languages. The Shopify theme editor still shows them, so you can keep editing your theme.
If the widget serves every language you publish, the checkbox is unavailable and its help text says Your plan covers every language your storefront publishes, so there’s nothing to hide.
Click Save in the save bar to apply the change. The Advisor is available on Growth and Scale. See What is Olvio Advisor?.
How the language is chosen on each page
Olvio uses the language of the storefront page the shopper is viewing. For example, a page under /fr/ is treated as French. Olvio doesn't use the shopper's browser language.
On a page in a language your plan serves, the widget text, suggested questions, chat answers and the Olvio Advisor's replies use that language.
On a page in a language you don't serve, they all use your default language, unless you hide the widget there. On a page in a language Olvio doesn't support, such as Albanian, suggested questions, chat answers and the Olvio Advisor's replies are in English instead if your widget serves English. On served and unserved pages alike, built-in widget text, the Expert name and Hook question, and product cards follow their own rules: see the sections below.
In the product page chat, if a shopper writes a message clearly in another language, Olvio replies in that language from then on, unless the shopper clearly switches language again. Suggested questions don't change.
Suggested questions you write yourself are translated for shoppers on your other served languages. See Customize the suggested questions on your product pages.
Built-in widget text
The text you can't edit, such as the question field placeholder and the AI disclaimer, exists in six languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
On a served language outside these six, for example Dutch on Scale, this text uses your default language if it's one of the six, and English otherwise. Answers and suggested questions still use the page's language.
Product cards, in the product page chat and in Olvio Advisor conversations, work differently: their labels, such as Add to cart and Sold out, and their price format follow the page's language, even on a language you don't serve. On languages outside these six, card labels are in English. See Show product cards and let shoppers add to cart from the chat.
Expert name and Hook question in other languages
You edit the Expert name and Hook question on Widget → Product Detail Page. See Change the widget expert name, hook question, and avatar.
If you keep the default text, shoppers see it in the language of the widget text, such as VOTRE EXPERT on a served French page.
On Starter, text you write yourself shows exactly as you typed it, on every page.
On Growth and Scale, when you save, Olvio translates your text into your served languages among the six above. It uses your Anthropic API key, so it needs a saved key.
On every page, the Expert name and Hook question use the language of the built-in widget text, including on a served language outside the six. For example, on Scale with French as your default language, a Dutch page shows the French version. Where Olvio has no translation in that language, text you wrote yourself shows as you typed it.
On Growth and Scale, if translation can't run when you save, for example because no API key is saved, shoppers keep seeing the Expert name and Hook question from the last save where translation worked, including on your default language if it's one of the six. If translation has never worked yet, they see your text as you typed it. Once translation can run again, edit the Expert name or Hook question and save. To keep the same wording, change it and save, then change it back and save again. Both saves use your API key, and shoppers see the temporary wording until the second save.
If your widget starts serving another of the six languages above later, for example after you publish one on Scale, its translation is added the next time you save changes on the Appearance page. Until then, shoppers on that language may see text you wrote yourself exactly as you typed it. On Growth, choosing a new language and clicking Save translates into it in the same step.
When you change plans
When your plan changes, Olvio applies the new language allowance automatically. If you move to a plan that covers more languages and you have a saved API key, Olvio also translates your existing Expert name and Hook question into your newly served languages among the six, if they aren't translated into them yet. If all of those languages already have a translation, Olvio doesn't translate again. So if you edited the Expert name or Hook question while on Starter, shoppers may see your earlier wording after the upgrade. To fix it, change the text and save, then change it back and save again, as described above. If you move from Scale to Growth, the widget serves your default language plus one other language at most. Use the Languages card on the Advanced tab of Appearance to choose which one. If you move to Starter, the widget serves only your default language. See Upgrade or downgrade your plan.
If you unchecked every language on Growth and saved, the widget keeps serving only your default language after you move to Scale, so check a language again and save before you upgrade. If you've already upgraded, contact us: see Contact us and support hours.
If a page shows the wrong language, see The widget or the AI uses the wrong language.