WordPress website development for a logistics company

CREATING.LV built a multilingual WordPress website for the international freight transport company AGlobal Logistics: this logistics company website included the design, service sections in Latvian, English and Russian, and a contact form for enquiries. The project was handed over in 2018.

AGlobal Logistics provides international freight transport and logistics services. Its clients and partners are in different countries and look for information in different languages. The company needed a website that clearly presents its services and suits work in an international market.

Visitors need to understand what transport services the company offers and be able to send an enquiry or question straight away — whichever language they opened the site in. The range of logistics services is wide, so the second requirement was to organise them so that each service can be found and read separately.

In this project CREATING.LV did all the work — from the visual design and structure to the contact form — and also entered all the translated texts. The result is a WordPress website for a logistics company that brings together four main parts:

• web design and the user journey;
• a multilingual structure in Latvian, English and Russian with the same layout;
• descriptions of logistics services and types of transport in separate sections;
• an integrated contact form for enquiries and questions about services.

The website was set up so that the company manages the content itself in WordPress and updates information about its services on its own. The site footer says “Made by Creating.lv”.

The website works in three languages — Latvian, English and Russian — and the language versions were built with WPML. All versions have the same structure: visitors who switch language find the same sections in the same place, and the company presents its services in the same way in every language.

WPML is a WordPress plugin for multilingual sites. It links the language versions, so each Latvian page has a matching page in English and Russian, and the language switcher leads to the same content in another language rather than to the home page. A client who has opened, for example, the customs services description and switches language does not have to start searching again.

We entered the translated texts in all languages on the website ourselves, so the site was handed over with full content rather than empty language versions the company would have had to fill in itself. A uniform structure also makes further maintenance easier: if a service description changes, it is clear which page needs updating in each language. When planning a similar project, it is worth approving the list of service sections before translation: a multilingual WordPress website with a uniform structure has to be updated in all languages, so each section added later means work in three languages. We wrote about choosing the tool in the article WPML or Polylang for a multilingual WordPress website.

The main emphasis on the website is on the service descriptions. Each service and type of transport is described in its own section rather than in one long text. At handover, the website had sections on:

• road transport;
• rail, air and sea transport;
• oversized cargo and temperature-controlled cargo;
• customs services;
• warehousing services.

This division matches how clients think about their cargo. A cargo owner usually already knows whether they need road transport, temperature-controlled transport or customs clearance, and opens exactly that section rather than reading through the company’s entire offer. Alongside the service descriptions, the website also has information about the company and its approach to work.

Oversized and temperature-controlled cargo have their own requirements for vehicles and transport planning, so it is important for cargo owners to see on the website that the company transports such cargo and to read about it separately.

Customs and warehousing services are described separately from transport, because clients may need them together with transport or on their own — for example, if cargo has to be stored in a warehouse or cleared through customs before being sent on.

An important part of the project was an integrated contact form. It lets potential clients send an enquiry or ask a question about a service directly from the website, without looking for an email address. The form was kept simple so that there are no unnecessary steps: someone who has just read a service description can ask about their cargo straight away.

A potential client’s journey on the website is short, and each step has its own part of the website:

• the client opens the website in Latvian, English or Russian and sees the same sections as in the other languages;
• they choose the service or type of transport they need and read its description in a separate section;
• they send an enquiry or question about the specific service using the contact form.

This way the website serves as the first contact with a new client: before enquiring, they already know what transport the company provides and can write in the language that suits them.

The visual design and the user journey are our work. The website is responsive and adapted for use on both desktop and mobile devices: clients can also open a service description or the contact form on a phone, and the content stays easy to read. The language versions have the same structure on every screen, so visitors find their way in the same manner regardless of device.

The website is built on WordPress. In the WordPress admin, the company updates service descriptions and adds information in all languages itself, without having to contact the developer for every text change. So that a WordPress website for a logistics company gives the same information in all languages, WPML lets you open the translations of an edited page in the other languages and update them in the same admin environment. More about our work with this platform — on the page WordPress website development.

This kind of structure suits a service company that works with clients in several countries — a carrier, a freight forwarder or a company that provides customs and warehousing services. A logistics company website built on this model means three things: each service is described separately, all language versions are the same, and an enquiry can be sent directly from the website. For another carrier’s website — with timetables and bus hire requests — see the project WordPress website for a transport company.

• Website development

agloballog.com

This portfolio entry reflects the solution as delivered at handover. The current website may have changed.