Redesigning a website in another language for your customers

If a good share of your customers are more comfortable in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Polish or another language, a bilingual business website can be worth more than any design change. The setup that works best for a small business is simple: a full English site, a matching set of pages in the second language at their own addresses, a switch at the top of every page, and a translation checked by someone who speaks the language. A redesign is the right moment to build it that way.

First, decide whether you need it

A second language is worth the effort when you can serve customers in it. Ask yourself:

Do customers already call or walk in speaking that language?
Does someone on your team answer the phone, write quotes or explain the work in that language?
Do people in your area search for your kind of business in that language?

If the answer to the second question is no, be careful. A Spanish website that leads to an English-only phone line disappoints exactly the people it invited. In that case, a short section in the second language can be more honest than a full site: a few lines saying what you do, and "Text us in Spanish and we will reply" if you can manage that.

Separate pages, not a translate button

There are three common ways to add a language, and they are not equally good.

An automatic translate widget. A button that runs your English pages through machine translation as the visitor reads. It is cheap and quick, but the words are often wrong for your trade, it can mangle names and addresses, and search engines do not see the translated text as a page of your site. Customers can usually tell.

Both languages mixed on every page. English paragraph, Spanish paragraph, English, Spanish. It doubles the length of every page and makes both versions harder to read. It can work on a one-page flyer site, rarely on anything bigger.

A separate page for each language. Your English home page lives at one address and the Spanish home page at its own, for example yourbusiness.com/es/. Each page is written fully in one language. This is the setup most bilingual small businesses settle on, because it reads naturally, it can be found in searches in each language, and you can update one without touching the other.

Ask whoever builds your new site to do it the third way. The technical part, which tells search engines that the Spanish page and the English page are versions of the same thing, is a standard tag called hreflang. You do not need to understand it; just ask whether the builder sets it up. Google's own explanation is on developers.google.com.

What to translate first

You do not need every page in both languages on day one. Translate in this order:

Home page. What you do, where, and how to reach you.
Your main services. One page per service your second-language customers ask for most.
Contact page and form, including the button labels, the confirmation message and any error messages. These get forgotten more than anything.
Hours, area served and prices, if you list them.
FAQ, especially questions about payment, insurance, warranties and how the job works.

Blog posts, long histories and news can wait or stay English-only. If a page exists only in English, the language switch on it should lead to the second-language home page, not to an error.

Getting the translation right

Machine translation tools are a fine first draft. They are not the finished text. Common problems:

Trade words. "Drywall", "gutter guards", "root canal" and "brake pads" have several translations, and the one people in your area use may not be the dictionary one.
Regional differences. Spanish in Miami, Texas, California and New York differs in everyday words. Write for the customers you actually have.
Formal or friendly. Many languages have a polite and a familiar "you". Pick one and use it throughout; for most businesses talking to the public, the polite form is the safer choice.
Names and numbers. Your business name, street names, phone numbers and license numbers should not be translated.

If you pay for a professional translator, give them your English text plus a short list of trade terms and how your customers say them. For more on writing the words themselves, see website text for a bilingual customer base.

Put the switch at the top of every page, where people look first. Write each language in its own words: "English" and "Español", not "Spanish".
Do not use flags. A Mexican flag for Spanish is wrong for a customer from Puerto Rico or Colombia, and a US flag for English is odd on a US business site.
The switch should take the visitor to the same page in the other language, not back to the home page.
Do not switch language automatically based on the visitor's location or browser. Let people choose.
Phone and email: say on the second-language pages who answers in that language and when. "Llame y pregunte por Ana" is more helpful than a general number with no clue.

Google, your profile and the rest

You keep one Google Business Profile, not one per language, but you can write posts and answer reviews in either language. If you have printed material in both languages, a QR code pointing to the right page can send Spanish readers straight to the Spanish home page.

Adding a second language does not guarantee anyone finds you in searches in that language; nobody can promise that. What it does is give search engines real pages written in the language people type, which is the part you control.

What to do this week

List who on your team can answer calls, texts and emails in the second language, and when.
Write down the ten trade words your customers use in that language.
Decide which five pages to translate first.
Ask a bilingual customer or employee if they would read the draft and mark anything that sounds off.

If you are rebuilding anyway, you can see your site rebuilt first in English, then decide which pages should get a second-language version.