French-speaking Belgium (Wallonia) can now also order on bol.com
Posted on 17 August, 2020
From August 31, 2020, selling through bol.com will become more lucrative, because from then on, the Walloons will be able to order products via the bol.com app, from, among others, sales partners that offer its products in Belgium. This article takes a closer look at this expansion and also explains how you can capitalize on it.
Is it worth responding to this and what action steps can I take?
Is it worth it? Definitely. The Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders) includes about 6.5 million people and the French-speaking part of Belgium (Wallonia) includes about 4.8 million people. If you already sold in Flanders, your products will automatically be offered in Wallonia. Did you not yet sell in Belgium? In your sales dashboard under 'settings' you can set the border so that your products are also offered in Belgium. Please note that if you ship your products yourself, the costs are higher than the shipping costs for shipping in the Netherlands.
The spoken language of the Walloons is mainly French. They therefore speak little or no Dutch, so it makes no sense to add, for example, Dutch infographics to your product page. The title, product specifications and product description are translated directly for you by bol.com via their automatic translation tool, so the Walloons get to see a kind of ''Google Translate'' text when you don't provide a text and title to bol.com yourself.
You can choose to gain competitive advantage and provide SEO optimized product information yourself. You can do this through the content API and/or email the product information to: [email protected]
Don't forget to change the language attributes of the relevant product in the bol.com dashboard. This way you can be sure that your products will also be shown in Wallonia. Make sure the product manual is in both French and Dutch in the listing. These 2 manuals can be put in 1 file and linked to the product page.
What about French-speaking customer service?
A special French-speaking customer service has been set up by bol.com to deal with French customers both by phone and e-mail. So for now, you don't have to do anything with this.
Want to take advantage of the expansion right away? Then use our French Translation Tool!
We have assembled a team of experienced French translators ready to translate your entire product page(s) into French! How it works. It works like this:
1. Log in to FiveX
2. Click on: ''Management'' in the sidebar
3. Click on: ''Translate Products'' as shown below:
4. Select the product page(s) you want translated, and voila.
After this, our native French speakers will immediately get to work translating your product page(s)!
