Overview

The Challenge

Our Approach

Building a Content Operating System for Scale

Oomph worked with edX to design and implement a content architecture that decoupled marketing execution from platform dependencies. The goal wasn’t to replace existing systems—it was to create the right separation of concerns so teams could operate independently at scale.

System Design: Oomph implemented Contentful as a central content orchestration layer, integrated with edX’s existing course databases. Course data remained authoritative in internal systems, while marketing and narrative content moved into a structured CMS. Pages were dynamically assembled using structured course metadata, modular editorial content, and reusable components governed by design system rules.

This architecture allowed edX to scale content output without duplicating data, increasing engineering dependency, or sacrificing brand consistency.

Content Governance at Scale: Oomph structured content models and component libraries to enforce design system standards while giving editors flexibility to adapt messaging by audience, channel, or campaign. Taxonomy and metadata schemas were designed to support SEO systematically rather than through manual optimization. Reusable content patterns minimized duplication across credential types and program categories.

Operational Enablement: The system was designed to shift content creation and optimization from engineering to marketing. Editors could launch program pages, build campaign landing experiences, and iterate based on performance—all without custom development. This freed engineering to focus on platform capabilities while giving marketing teams the speed and flexibility needed to support business growth.

What This Made Possible

The result

Why This Matters

Contentful is no longer just an alternative CMS—it’s become a foundational platform for organizations navigating complexity, regulation, and rapid digital change. In 2026, the question isn’t what is Contentful? It’s why are so many organizations rebuilding their digital ecosystems around it? The answer lies in how digital experiences are built, managed, and scaled today.

Contentful Is Built for Systems, Not Pages

Traditional CMS platforms were designed around pages and templates. That model breaks down when content needs to move faster, live in more places, and remain consistent across teams and channels.

Contentful takes a different approach. It treats content as structured data, not static pages. That means teams create content once and deliver it anywhere—websites, apps, portals, email, or future channels that don’t yet exist.

In 2026, this isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s how modern digital platforms operate.

Composable Architecture Is Now the Default

Composable architecture has moved from trend to standard. Organizations want the freedom to choose best-in-class tools without being locked into monolithic platforms.

Contentful fits cleanly into this model. It integrates with design systems, analytics platforms, personalization tools, consent managers, and AI services through APIs—without forcing teams into rigid workflows.

This flexibility allows organizations to evolve their stack over time instead of rebuilding every few years.

AI Depends on Structured Content

AI-driven experiences are only as good as the content behind them. In 2026, organizations are using AI to support personalization, search, localization, content optimization, and automation.

Contentful’s structured content model makes this possible. Clean, well-defined content enables AI tools to understand, reuse, and adapt content accurately—without introducing risk or inconsistency.

For teams exploring AI responsibly, Contentful provides the infrastructure needed to scale with confidence.

Governance and Compliance Are Built In, Not Bolted On

For regulated and mission-driven organizations, governance isn’t optional. Publishing controls, audit trails, permissions, and review workflows are essential.

Contentful supports these needs at scale. Teams can define roles, control who edits or publishes content, and maintain visibility into changes across environments. This level of governance is critical in industries like healthcare, legal, finance, and the public sector.

In 2026, compliance isn’t something teams add later—it’s designed into the platform from day one.

Marketing and Development Work Better Together

One of Contentful’s biggest advantages is how it aligns marketing and engineering teams. Developers maintain design systems and integrations. Content teams manage content without breaking layouts or workflows.

This separation of concerns reduces friction, speeds up delivery, and minimizes production errors—especially as digital ecosystems grow more complex.

Ready to explore what Contentful could do for your organization? Whether you’re evaluating platforms, planning a migration, or looking to optimize your current setup, Oomph can help you build a content infrastructure designed for the long term. Let’s talk about your next move.

Why Organizations Move to Contentful Now

Organizations typically migrate to Contentful when legacy systems start holding them back. Common triggers include:

• Slow publishing workflows
• Heavy developer dependency
• Difficulty scaling across channels
• Growing compliance requirements
• The need to support AI and personalization

In 2026, Contentful isn’t chosen because it’s new. It’s chosen because it’s resilient.

For organizations new to the platform, getting started doesn’t have to mean a complete rebuild. Oomph’s Contentful Kickstart Package helps teams move from decision to deployment with a structured, low-risk approach—giving you the foundation to scale as your needs evolve.

The Takeaway

Contentful has evolved alongside the modern digital landscape. It’s not just a CMS—it’s a content platform designed for scale, governance, and change.

For organizations planning beyond their next website launch and toward long-term digital maturity, Contentful provides the flexibility and confidence needed to move forward.

Ready to explore what Contentful could do for your organization? Whether you’re evaluating platforms, planning a migration, or looking to optimize your current setup, Oomph can help you build a content infrastructure designed for the long term. Let’s talk about your next move.

Overview

The Challenge

The voluntary carbon market had a visibility problem. Carbon offsets represent a powerful tool for individual climate action, but public awareness remained low. Most people didn’t understand what carbon offsets were, why they mattered, or how to purchase them confidently.

Rare needed more than a website. They needed a digital experience system that could:

• Educate and convert users unfamiliar with carbon markets
• Publish and iterate content quickly as they tested messaging and engagement strategies
• Scale efficiently without recurring platform constraints or cost bloat
• Maintain design and message consistency across all content and user journeys

The existing infrastructure couldn’t support this level of agility or growth. Rare needed a modern platform built for continuous improvement, not static delivery.

The Approach

What This Made Possible

The new platform gave Rare the operational infrastructure to:

• Test and refine messaging at speed, publishing new content and campaign pages without platform delays
• Scale outreach efforts efficiently, supported by a design system that maintains quality and consistency across growth
• Reduce editorial and technical dependencies, empowering the team to manage content, flows, and user experiences independently
• Build user trust through clarity, with educational content and conversion flows designed to meet users where they are

By decoupling content from code, Rare gained the flexibility to respond to user feedback, market conditions, and organizational priorities in real time—without platform friction or cost escalation.

The Result

Why This Matters

For many organizations, privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA seem like distant legal concerns rather than operational priorities. In practice, however, websites serve as the primary point of data collection—making compliance far more relevant than most teams assume. If your site collects user data in any form, privacy compliance isn’t optional.

Understanding When GDPR and CCPA Apply

GDPR governs the collection of personal data from users in the European Union, while CCPA applies to personal data collected from California residents.

Crucially, these regulations are triggered by user location, not company headquarters. A U.S.-based organization serving a global audience may be subject to both frameworks.

Why Websites Are at the Center of Compliance

Most modern websites collect data through multiple channels:

• Contact and intake forms
• Newsletter subscriptions
• Analytics and tracking tools
• Cookies and personalization technologies
• Third-party embeds and integrations

Each of these collection points creates compliance obligations around consent, transparency, and user control.

Moving Beyond Cookie Banners

Meaningful compliance extends well beyond footer disclaimers. Effective privacy management requires:

• Clear consent and opt-out mechanisms
• Transparent communication about data usage
• The ability to update policies efficiently
• Controlled publishing workflows
• Comprehensive auditability for content and data modifications

Legacy CMS platforms frequently lack the flexibility and governance capabilities needed to meet these requirements.

The Role of Your CMS in Privacy Compliance

Your content management system is instrumental in supporting privacy obligations. A modern, composable CMS enables organizations to:

• Decouple content from data logic
• Integrate consent and privacy tools seamlessly
• Manage access and publishing permissions effectively
• Deploy compliance updates across all channels instantly
• Minimize risk by limiting unnecessary data exposure

For regulated and mission-driven organizations, CMS limitations can translate directly into compliance vulnerabilities.

The Cost of Non-Compliance

While regulatory penalties are a concern, the greater risk lies in eroding user trust.

Today’s users expect transparency and control over their personal information. Organizations unable to deliver on these expectations risk damaging their reputation with customers, donors, and partners.

Final Thoughts

GDPR and CCPA represent more than legal obligations—they present fundamental digital experience challenges. Websites built on flexible, compliance-ready platforms are better positioned to adapt as privacy expectations continue to evolve.

In today’s environment, privacy compliance shouldn’t be viewed as a constraint. It’s an essential component of delivering a modern, trustworthy digital experience.

Need help ensuring your website meets modern privacy standards? Our team specializes in building compliance-ready digital platforms that protect your users and your organization. Let’s discuss your requirements.

Overview

Stats/Key Outcomes

The Challenge

The Solution

We partnered with Contentful to deliver a unified content architecture, beginning with a full migration of MyCase.com from WordPress to Contentful.

Key elements of the MyCase solution included a full migration of MyCase.com encompassing 166+ pages, 400+ blog posts, and 4,700+ media files. We built a structured content model for blogs, guides, webinars, press releases, videos, and landing pages. Design system standardization streamlined and standardized design components across the site. We ensured SEO continuity and GEO visibility by preserving 143+ SEO-critical redirects and improving metadata governance. For MarOps enablement, we integrated Marketo forms directly into Contentful’s structured model. Tech enablement connected Frontify DAM to manage brand assets consistently across all brands.

With the help of an Atomic Design System, this solution became the blueprint for ongoing migrations and updates across the broader 8am portfolio.

Shared DAM: One asset library powers all 8am brands — no duplication, no outdated files.

The Results

A website is the cornerstone of your brand’s digital presence. It communicates who you are, what you offer, and why customers should trust you. In today’s digital-first marketplace, your website is often the first, and sometimes only, impression a prospective customer will have of your business. That makes maintaining it not just a technical task, but a strategic business priority.

Owning a website is a long-term investment. It reflects your brand, reputation, values, and offerings, and it directly influences key performance indicators (KPIs) such as lead generation, conversions, and customer engagement. Consider how much time and budget go into designing and building a website. Once the site goes live, the work doesn’t end there; ongoing maintenance is critical to ensure it continues to run optimally.

The risks of neglecting website maintenance are extensive. Common issues include:

Security Vulnerabilities

• Outdated software, plugins, or CMS cores are prime targets for hackers.
• Data breaches and malware infections can cause reputational harm and legal consequences under GDPR/CCPA.
  

Website Downtime or Broken Functionality

• Incompatibility between themes, plugins, and core updates can cause errors.
• Features such as forms, checkout, or search may stop working.
• Downtime often results in lost revenue and poor user experience.
  

Slow Performance

• Slow load times drive users away and increase bounce rates.
• Performance issues also negatively impact SEO and conversions.
  

SEO Ranking Loss

• Google penalizes sites with broken links, outdated content, slow speeds, and security warnings.
• Dropped rankings reduce organic traffic and visibility.
  

Incompatibility with New Browsers & Devices

• Without updates, sites may not display correctly on modern browsers, mobile devices, or assistive technologies.
• This degrades accessibility and excludes segments of your audience.
  

Poor Analytics & Marketing Integration

• Broken or outdated tracking scripts produce inaccurate analytics data.
• Failed conversion tracking undermines ROI measurement and marketing opportunities.
  

Higher Long-Term Costs

• Neglected fixes can escalate into costly rebuilds.
• Emergency remediation is significantly more expensive than preventative care.
  

Brand Reputation & Trust

• Errors or outdated content signal neglect.
• Visitors may assume the business is unreliable, making trust difficult to regain.

The ROI of Regular Website Maintenance

Proper maintenance is a business-critical investment with measurable ROI. Regular updates and monitoring strengthen security, preserve performance, ensure compliance with accessibility standards, and protect user experience. With a clear process in place, maintenance safeguards your digital presence, reduces costs, and supports outcomes such as improved lead generation, e-commerce revenue, and stronger brand trust.

Here’s a breakdown of the ROI across multiple dimensions:

• Reduced emergency costs: Preventative maintenance is far cheaper than emergency fixes. Recovering from a hack, data loss, or system failure can cost 3–5x more than routine upkeep.
• Sustained SEO rankings and traffic: A well-maintained website performs better in search results. Search engines penalize slow, outdated, or broken sites, while optimized ones attract and retain more visitors.
• Improved user experience and conversions: Fast, functional websites reduce friction. HubSpot reports that 88% of users are less likely to return after a poor online experience.
  
• Lower risk of security incidents: Regular patching of CMS cores, plugins, and dependencies reduces exposure to cyberattacks.
• Extended site lifespan: While most websites are redesigned every 2–3 years, consistent updates and optimizations can significantly extend their useful life.
  

Why Start Early

It’s important to begin discussing website maintenance with your agency during the planning stages of a new site, as it can influence technical decisions and long-term requirements. Maintenance packages vary depending on your team’s resources, and a trusted agency partner can help define core tasks, expectations, and responsibilities. For organizations with tighter budgets, we’ve also seen success with automated solutions that handle routine updates.

Maintenance as Business Insurance

Website maintenance is more than applying updates—it’s business insurance.

Organizations need to uphold security, performance, accessibility, SEO, GDPR compliance, and other standards that directly affect user experience and, in many cases, legal obligations. Working with Oomph ensures these processes are streamlined, proactive, and aligned with your business goals. If you’re looking to protect your digital investment, let’s explore a maintenance approach tailored to your team’s needs. Learn more about our maintenance services.

As a digital services firm partnering with destination marketing organizations (DMOs) across the U.S., we’re helping teams navigate what’s already proving to be a volatile 2025—especially on the inbound side. Analysis from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) projects a stark reality: the U.S. economy will miss out on $12.5 billion in international visitor spending this year, with inbound spend expected to dip to just under $169B, down from $181B in 2024. Even more concerning, the U.S. is the only country among 184 economies in WTTC’s study forecast to see an inbound-spend decline this year.

While external market forces remain largely beyond control, we’ve identified three strategic areas where DMOs can focus their digital platforms to weather this storm and continue demonstrating measurable demand to their partners.

1. Transform Content Into Action-Driving Experiences

Why this strategic shift matters now

With inbound spend shrinking by $12.5B and key feeder markets weakening, undecided travelers need clarity and confidence to choose your destination. Content that reduces uncertainty and highlights immediate value converts better than generic inspiration.

Strategic implementation approach

Activate “Go Now” signals. Combine always-on inspiration with time-sensitive reasons to visit—shoulder-season value, midweek deals, cooling weather breaks—strategically mapped to the soft periods your analytics reveal. 

Elevate discovery through intelligent architecture. Curate SEO-optimized content hubs organized by Themes (outdoors, arts, culinary) and Moments (fall colors, winter lights). Implement structured data (FAQ, Event, Attraction) with strategic internal linking architecture so travelers find relevant options fast.

Deploy micro-itineraries for immediate conversion. Design 24–48-hour “micro-itins” featuring embedded maps, transit and parking guidance, and seamless handoffs to bookable partners. Partnering with platforms like MindTrip reduces content team effort while accelerating output—a strategy that’s proven particularly effective for our DMO clients facing resource constraints.

Authority-driven event content optimization. Event pages generate the highest intent traffic. Enhance them with rich media, last-minute planning resources, and strategic “if sold-out, try this” alternatives.

Transparent value communication. Feature free experiences prominently, implement intuitive budget filters, and deploy “Best Time to Visit” calendars comparing crowds and pricing by week and month. Transparency builds trust, and trust drives conversion.

2. Build Your Competitive Moat Through Data-Driven Audience Cultivation

Your first-party data represents your most defensible competitive advantage. As platform targeting becomes increasingly constrained and inbound spending softens, DMOs that build and activate their own audience will capture attention far more efficiently than those relying solely on paid channels.

Strategic audience development

Implement high-intent capture everywhere. Deploy contextual email and SMS prompts across high-intent templates—events, itineraries, trip planners, partner directories. Offer valuable micro-perks like exclusive maps and early event alerts. 

Master progressive profiling. Collect visitor preferences—season, interests, party type, origin market—over multiple touchpoints rather than overwhelming users with lengthy initial forms. 

Create actionable audience segments. Develop cohorts around 2025’s market realities: last-minute planners, shoulder-season seekers, road-trippers, value hunters, family weekenders, and meetings planners. 

Future-proof attribution systems. Combine GA4 with server-side tagging and standardized UTM schemas for every partner handoff. Track outbound clicks, partner session quality, itinerary saves and usage, offer redemptions, and newsletter-driven sessions. This comprehensive approach ensures you maintain visibility into conversion paths as third-party cookies disappear.

Deploy trend-driven editorial strategy. Develop weekly dashboards blending organic query trends, on-site search terms, partner click-through rates, and feeder-market signals. When interest dips in one market, pivot homepage modules and paid social toward value and itinerary content targeting more resilient markets.

3. Transform Partner Relationships Through Measurable Value Delivery

In a softening inbound environment where domestic spending carries approximately 90% of the economic load, your partners need two critical elements: qualified attention and proof of conversion. Your website should function as the region’s premier meta-directory and conversion engine.

Experience optimization strategies

Enable one-click handoffs with context preservation. Pass user filters—dates, neighborhoods, price ranges—directly into partner sites and booking engines while preserving state if travelers return. 

Deploy persistent trip planning tools. Allow users to save places and generate shareable itineraries with intelligent handoffs: “Book these two hotels,” “Reserve rentals,” “Get festival passes.” 

Create compelling partner storefronts. Develop rich partner profiles featuring availability widgets, authentic reviews, social proof, and clear calls-to-action. 

Implement strategic co-op modules. Design paid placements that provide value rather than feeling like advertisements: “Local Favorites” carousels, sponsor highlights, seasonal deal tiles—rotated by audience cohort and season. This generates additional revenue while maintaining user experience quality.

Establish closed-loop reporting systems. Standardize UTM tracking, monitor outbound events, and where permitted, implement partner pixels and offer codes to report assisted conversions by category and campaign. Partners need proof of ROI, and data-driven reporting builds stronger, more profitable relationships.

How Oomph Can Accelerate Your Success

If you’re experiencing softer international interest, shorter booking windows, or declining partner satisfaction, you’re facing the same challenges as DMOs nationwide. The organizations pulling ahead aren’t waiting for market recovery—they’re strengthening their digital platforms through strategic content optimization, systematic audience cultivation, and demonstrable partner value creation.

Our proven methodology transforms these challenges into competitive advantages.

We’ll conduct a comprehensive audit of your digital platform against these three strategic pillars, quantify immediate optimization opportunities, and provide your partners with what they need most: qualified, measurable demand. The market headwinds are real, but the right strategic approach can help you maintain resilience and emerge stronger when conditions improve. Let’s navigate these challenges together.

When you’re responsible for your organization’s digital presence, it’s natural to focus on what’s visible: the design, the content, the user experience. But beneath every modern website lies a complex ecosystem of technologies, integrations, and workflows that can either accelerate your team’s success or create hidden friction that slows everything down.

That’s where a technical audit becomes invaluable. It’s not just a diagnostic tool—it’s a strategic opportunity to understand the foundation of your platform and make informed decisions about your digital future.

It’s Like a Home Inspection for Your Website

Think about buying a house. You walk through focusing on the big picture—does the kitchen work for your family? Is there enough space? But a good home inspector looks deeper, checking the foundation, examining the electrical system, and spotting that small leak under the bathroom sink that could become a major problem later.

A technical audit takes the same comprehensive approach to your digital platform. We examine not just what’s working today, but what might impact your team’s ability to execute tomorrow. The goal isn’t to find problems for the sake of finding them—it’s to give you the complete picture you need to plan strategically.

Creating Shared Understanding Across Your Entire Team

One of the most powerful outcomes of a technical audit is alignment. Whether you’re managing internal developers, partnering with an agency, or preparing to issue an RFP, having a clear baseline allows everyone to ask better questions and make more accurate decisions.

A strategic technical audit delivers:

Proactive Problem-Solving: Surface technical issues before they become roadblocks to important campaigns or launches.

Performance Optimization: Identify specific improvements that will measurably enhance user experience and conversion rates.

Workflow Enhancement: Reveal friction points that slow down content updates, campaign launches, or day-to-day management tasks.

Vendor Enablement: Provide partners and potential vendors with the context they need to scope work accurately and ask intelligent questions.

Strategic Planning: Create a foundation for long-term digital strategy decisions, from infrastructure investments to editorial tooling.

The organizations we work with often tell us that a technical audit helped them transition from reactive maintenance to proactive digital platform management—a shift that pays dividends across every initiative.

What We Typically Discover

While every platform is unique, certain patterns emerge across industries and organization types. Technical audits frequently reveal:

Security and Maintenance Opportunities: Outdated software, plugins requiring updates, or access configurations that can be strengthened with minimal effort. This often includes ensuring accessibility compliance meets current standards.

Performance Enhancements: Specific optimizations in areas like image compression, caching strategies, or database queries that directly impact user experience. Modern audits also examine search visibility and performance optimization.

Scalability Considerations: Code or architectural decisions that work fine today but could limit growth or flexibility as your needs evolve. This includes evaluating search infrastructure and international expansion capabilities.

Process Improvements: Gaps in version control, deployment workflows, or change management that create unnecessary risk or slow down development cycles.

Editorial Workflow Optimization: Content management processes that feel cumbersome or inconsistent, often because they evolved organically rather than being designed strategically. For global organizations, this includes reviewing translation and localization systems.

Many of these findings aren’t urgent fixes—they’re strategic insights that become incredibly valuable when you’re planning a redesign, launching a major campaign, or evaluating new partnerships.

When a Technical Audit Delivers Maximum Value

You don’t need to wait for problems to emerge. Technical audits are particularly valuable when:

Taking Over Digital Responsibility: You’ve inherited a platform and need a comprehensive understanding of what you’re working with and where the opportunities lie.

Planning Major Initiatives: Before investing in a redesign, platform migration, or significant feature development, understanding your current foundation prevents costly surprises.

Preparing for Vendor Selection: Whether you’re issuing an RFP or evaluating agencies, giving potential partners accurate technical context leads to better proposals and more realistic timelines.

Developing Digital Strategy: When you’re ready to create a roadmap for digital growth, grounding decisions in technical reality rather than assumptions leads to better outcomes. This is especially important when considering AI integration or generative engine optimization strategies.

Our Approach to Technical Audits

We design our audits to build clarity and confidence, not overwhelm you with technical jargon. Rather than simply delivering a report, we walk through findings with your team, prioritize recommendations based on your specific goals, and translate technical insights into actionable business language you can share with stakeholders.

Our methodology goes beyond code analysis. We examine how your platform supports your current workflows, aligns with your organizational objectives, and positions you for future growth. This combination of technical depth and strategic perspective ensures you get insights that drive real business outcomes.

The audit process focuses on partnership, not judgment.

We’re not looking for flaws to criticize—we’re identifying opportunities to help you and your partners make smarter decisions. The result is visibility into the hidden layers of your digital platform and a foundation for more strategic planning, better technology investments, and sustainable long-term success.

Ready to understand what’s really happening under the hood of your digital platform? Let’s talk about how a technical audit could support your goals and strengthen your team’s ability to execute on your digital vision.

THE BRIEF

THE APPROACH

Multiple color themes

Site authors choose from five color themes, each supporting light and dark mode viewing. Every theme was rigorously tested to conform with WCAG AA (and sometimes AAA), with each theme based on a palette of 27 colors (including grays) and 12 transparent colors.

User preferences

Site visitors can toggle between light or dark mode or use their own system preference, along with adjusting font sizes, line height, word spacing, and default language.

Mobile first

Knowing that many site visitors will be on mobile devices, each design component treats the mobile experience as a first-class counterpart to desktop.

Examples: The section menu sticks to the left side of the view port for easy access within sections; Downloads are clearly labelled with file type and human-readable file sizes in case someone has an unreliable network connection; galleries appear on mobile with any text labels stacked underneath and support swipe gestures, while the desktop version layers text over images and supports keyboard navigation.

High Accessibility

Every design pattern is accessible for screen readers and mobile devices. Color contrast, keyboard navigation, semantic labeling, and alt text enforcement all contribute to a highly accessible site. Extra labels and help text have been added to add context to actions, while also following best practices for use of ARIA attributes.

Performance aware

Each page is given a performance budget, so design components are built as lightly as possible, using the least amount of code and relying on the smallest visual asset file sizes possible.

THE RESULTS

THE CHALLENGE

OUR APPROACH

THE RESULTS

The U.S. is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. While English may be our official language, the number of people who speak a language other than English at home has actually tripled over the past three decades. 

Statistically speaking, the people you serve are probably among them. 

You might even know they are. Maybe you’ve noticed an uptick in inquiries from non-English speaking people or tracked demographic changes in your analytics. Either way, chances are good that organizations of all kinds will see more, not less, need for translation — especially those in highly regulated and far-reaching industries, like higher education and healthcare.

So, what do you do when translation becomes a top priority for your organization? Here, we explain how to get started.

3 Solutions for Translating Your Website

Many organizations have an a-ha moment when it comes to translations. For our client Lifespan, that moment came during its rebrand to Brown Health University and a growing audience of non-English speaking people. For another client, Visit California, that moment came when developing their marketing strategies for key global audiences. 

Or maybe you’re more like Leica Geosystems, a longtime Oomph client that prioritized translation from the start but needed the right technology to support it. 

Whenever the time comes, you have three main options: 

Manual translation and publishing

When most people think of translating, manual translation comes to mind. In this scenario, someone on your team or someone you hire translates content by hand and uploads the translation as a separate page to the content management system (CMS).

Translating manually will offer you higher quality and more direct control over the content. You’ll also be able to optimize translations for SEO; manual translation is one of the best ways to ensure the right pages are indexed and findable in every language you offer them. Manual translation also has fewer ongoing technical fees and long-term maintenance attached, especially if you use a CMS like Drupal which supports translations by default.

“Drupal comes multi-lingual out of the box, so it’s very easy for editors to publish translations of their site and metadata,” Oomph Senior UX Engineer Kyle Davis says. “Other platforms aren’t going to be as good at that.” 

While manual translation may sound like a winning formula, it can also come at a high cost, pushing it out of reach for smaller organizations or those who can’t allocate a large portion of their budget to translate their website and other materials. 

Integration with a real-time API

Ever seen a website with clickable international flags near the top of the page? That’s a translation API. These machine translation tools can translate content in the blink of an eye, helping users of many different languages access your site in their chosen language. 

“This is different than manual translation, because you aren’t optimizing your content in any way,” Oomph Senior UX Engineer John Cionci says. “You’re simply putting a widget on your page.” 

Despite their plug-and-play reputation, machine translation APIs can actually be fairly curated. Customization and localization options allow you to override certain phrases to make your translations appropriate for a native speaker. This functionality would serve you well if, like Visit California, you have a team to ensure the translation is just right. 

Though APIs are efficient, they also do not take SEO or user experience into account. You’re getting a direct real-time translation of your content, nothing more and nothing less. This might be enough if all you need is a default version of a page in a language other than English; by translating that page, you’re already making it more accessible. 

However, this won’t always cut it if your goal is to create more immersive, branded experiences — experiences your non-English-speaking audience deserves. Some translation API solutions also aren’t as easy to install and configure as they used to be. While the overall cost may be less than manual translation, you’ll also have an upfront development investment and ongoing maintenance to consider. 

Use Case: Visit California

Manual translation doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Visit California has international marketing teams in key markets skilled in their target audiences’ primary languages, enabling them to blend manual and machine translation. 

We worked with Visit California to implement machine translation (think Google Translate) to do the heavy lifting. After a translation is complete, their team comes in to verify that all translated content is accurate and represents their brand. Leveraging the glossary overrides feature of Google Cloud Translate V3, they can tailor the translations to their communication objectives for each region. In addition, their Drupal CMS still allows them to publish manual translations when needed. This hybrid approach has proven to be very effective.

Third-party translation services

The adage “You get what you pay for” rings true for translation services. While third-party translation services cost more than APIs, they also come with higher quality — an investment that can be well worth it for organizations with large non-English-speaking audiences.

Most translation services will provide you with custom code, cutting down on implementation time. While you’ll have little to no technical debt, you will have to keep on top of recurring subscription fees.

What does that get you? If you use a proxy-based solution like MotionPoint, you can expect to have content pulled from your live site, then freshly translated and populated on a unique domain. 

“Because you can serve up content in different languages with unique domains, you get multilingual results indexed on Google and can be discovered,” Oomph Senior Digital Project Manager Julie Elman says. 

Solutions like Ray Enterprise Translation, on the other hand, combine an API with human translation, making it easier to manage, override, moderate, and store translations all within your CMS. 

Use Case: Leica Geosystems

Leica’s Drupal e-commerce store is active in multiple countries and languages, making it difficult to manage ever-changing products, content, and prices. Oomph helped Leica migrate to a single-site model during their migration from Drupal 7 to 8 back in 2019. 

“Oomph has been integral in providing a translation solution that can accommodate content generation in all languages available on our website,” says Jeannie Records Boyle, Leica’s e-Commerce Translation Manager. 

This meant all content had one place to live and could be translated into all supported languages using the Ray Enterprise Translation integration (formerly Lingotek). Authors could then choose which countries the content should be available in, making it easier to author engaging and accurate content that resonates around the world.  

“Whether we spin up a new blog or product page in English or Japanese, for example, we can then translate it to the many other languages we offer, including German, Spanish, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Brazil Portuguese, Italian, and French,” Records Boyle says.

Taking a Strategic Approach to Translation

Translation can be as simple as the click of a button. However, effective translation that supports your business goals is more complex. It requires that you understand who your target audiences are, the languages they speak, and how to structure that content in relation to the English content you already have. 

The other truth about translation is that there is no one-size-fits-all option. The “right” solution depends on your budget, in-house skills, CMS, and myriad other factors — all of which can be tricky to weigh. 

Here at Oomph, we’ve helped many clients make their way through website translation projects big and small. We’re all about facilitating translations that work for your organization, your content admins, and your audience — because we believe in making the Web as accessible as possible for all. 

Want to see a few recent examples or dive deeper into your own website translation project? Let’s talk.