How to Build a Translation Agency Website Without Code
A translation agency website without code starts with one description: your language pairs, your specialisms, your turnaround, and how a client requests a quote. Zugo turns that text into a working site, verifies it opens in a sandbox, and publishes it to a live address. A five page site bills at 18 credits.
Buyers of translation compare on three things they can rarely find on an agency site: whether you cover their pair, whether you know their subject, and how fast you reply. Put those three on the first screen and you are ahead of most competitors.
What does a translation agency site need on the first screen?
Four facts. The language pairs you actually work in. The fields you specialise in. Your usual turnaround for a standard document. And a quote request that takes under a minute.
The word "professional" does none of that work. Every agency site claims accuracy, quality and native speakers, which means those words carry no information and a buyer skips them. "Legal and medical translation between English, German and Polish, sworn translations accepted by German courts, standard documents in 48 hours" is specific enough to be checkable, which is why it converts.
Decide who the site is for before you write it. An agency selling to corporate localisation managers needs process, certifications and scale. One selling certified personal documents to individuals needs price, turnaround and a clear "yes, this is accepted by that authority". Trying to serve both on one homepage produces a page that persuades neither.
How should language pairs and services be presented?
As a matrix, not as a paragraph. A client wants to see their pair and their document type intersect, and a list of thirty languages in a sentence forces them to read the whole thing.
Separate your services rather than blending them. Document translation, certified or sworn translation, interpreting, subtitling, website localisation and proofreading have different prices, different turnaround and often different buyers. One page each, with its own price basis, beats a single "services" page listing all six.
Be explicit about the price unit. Translation is billed per word, per line, per page or per hour depending on the market and the service, and a buyer who cannot tell which you use assumes the expensive one. Publishing a "from" rate with a note that the final quote depends on the source file is honest and still specific.
What should the prompt say for a translation agency?
The description has to carry the facts a client would otherwise email to ask about.
Build a website for a translation agency based in [city / country].
Language pairs: [list], with [pairs] as our core specialisms.
Services: document translation, certified translation, interpreting,
subtitling, website localisation, proofreading.
Pricing basis: [per word / per standard line / per page], from [amount]
in US dollars, with a note that the final quote depends on the file.
Turnaround: standard [N] hours, express [N] hours.
Credentials: [ISO 17100, sworn translator registration, association memberships].
Sections:
1. Hero: what we translate, core pairs, turnaround, request a quote button.
2. Language pairs: a table of source and target languages by service.
3. Services: one card per service with price basis and typical turnaround.
4. Certified translations: which authorities accept them and in which countries.
5. Industries: legal, medical, technical, marketing, with what changes in each.
6. Process: how a job runs from file to delivery, including who reviews it.
7. Quote request form: name, company, pair, service, deadline, word count.
Tone: precise and factual. No claims about quality that cannot be checked.
The certified translations section is the one that earns enquiries, because it answers a question that is genuinely hard to research: whether your document will be accepted by a specific court, university or registry office.
How should quote requests and document uploads work?
Carefully, and this is where a translation site differs from every other agency site. Four options with their trade-offs.
| Quote flow | What you connect | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Form with pair, deadline and approximate word count | Resend, so the request reaches your inbox | Fastest to build, needs a follow-up email to see the file |
| Form plus a link to a file you host elsewhere | Resend | Client uses a service they already trust |
| Direct document upload on the site | Supabase storage under your own account | Convenient, and it makes you the custodian of confidential files |
| Deposit paid on a fixed-price service | Stripe | Fits certified documents with a standard price |
The third row deserves a deliberate decision rather than a default. The moment a client uploads a contract or a medical report, you are storing somebody else's confidential material, and your retention rules, access controls and deletion schedule become real obligations rather than paperwork. If you take uploads, put them in your own Supabase project, restrict who can read the bucket, and delete files on a schedule you actually follow.
Whichever flow you pick, submit the form yourself after publishing and confirm it lands. The contact form guide covers the wiring.
What does a translation agency site cost to build?
Zugo bills per action in credits rather than per month of site. A single page is 6 credits. A multi page site bills as a platform: 12 credits for the first three pages, then 3 for each page after. Editing costs 3 credits.
| Build | Pages | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| One page: pairs, services, quote form | 1 | 6 |
| Home, Services, Contact | 3 | 12 |
| Home, Services, Pairs, Certified, Contact | 5 | 18 |
| The five above plus Industries and Process | 7 | 24 |
| One edit, such as adding a language pair | n/a | 3 |
Hi-Fi mode doubles the basics: 12 for a build, 6 for an edit. Spend it on the page your paid search points at, which for most agencies is certified translations rather than the homepage.
Free includes 5 credits, less than one build costs, so treat it as a look around. Pro is $25 a month for 200 credits. Business is $99 a month, and hosting for the published site is included. The pricing guide has the detail.
How do you prove quality when your work is confidential?
This is the hard problem of translation marketing, and generic testimonials do not solve it. Most of your best work sits under an NDA and cannot be shown.
Three things can be published honestly. Credentials that are verifiable: ISO 17100 certification, a sworn translator's registration number, membership of a national association. Process that is specific: whether every job gets a second linguist, what your terminology handling is, what happens when a client disputes a term. And anonymised scope: "we translate roughly 40,000 words a month of pharmaceutical documentation" says something real without naming anyone.
What not to do is invent a case study or a client logo. It is checkable, it is the fastest way to lose a corporate buyer who does the check, and on this site it also undermines the confidentiality you are selling. The same discipline applies to any professional agency site.
What will an AI builder not do for a translation agency?
Four limits worth planning around.
No CAT tool or TMS integration. There is no connector into memoQ, Trados, Phrase or XTM. Your production system stays where it is, and the site hands enquiries to it manually.
No automatic word count from an uploaded file. Counting words inside a PDF or a DOCX, then pricing it, is real logic that arrives through several rounds of edits rather than one prompt, and it will still struggle with scanned documents.
No live translator availability. Showing which linguist is free this week means a database plus somebody keeping it accurate. Buildable behind Supabase, as a project rather than a page.
No substitute for your own compliance work. Confidentiality agreements, data retention and, for medical or legal material, sector specific rules are yours. Zugo generates the pages and does not make an agency compliant.
What is the first version worth building?
Three pages: a homepage with your pairs and turnaround, a services page with the price basis, and a quote form that reaches your inbox. That is 12 credits and an evening, and it answers more buyer questions than most ten page agency sites.
Add the certified translations page next, because it is the one that pulls search traffic with intent behind it. Describe your pairs, your specialisms and your turnaround in a paragraph at zugo.dev, and publish a rate you are willing to stand behind.