Multilingual websites: how to do them right

A second language can double the number of people who find your business online — or quietly do nothing at all. The difference is rarely the translation itself. It’s how the languages are set up. Here is what we’ve learned building multilingual sites for our clients, and our own site, which now speaks English, Spanish, Romanian and Hungarian.

1. Choose languages by your customers, not by habit

Look at who actually calls, books and buys from you, and where your reviews come from. Which languages are the baseline depends on your market (for example, Spanish and English for a business selling in Spain, German and English for one selling in Germany); other languages, Dutch, French or Scandinavian languages make sense if those customers already come to you. For an online business the same logic applies worldwide.

Add a language only if you can answer enquiries in it. A beautiful page in a language nobody on your team speaks creates frustrated customers, not sales.

2. Give every language its own address

Each language needs its own URL, such as /es/ or /en/, not a button that swaps the text on the same page. Google recommends separate URLs for each language version, because a search engine indexes a page as one language. If your translations only appear after a click, the other languages are effectively invisible in search.

Then connect the versions with hreflang tags, which tell Google and Bing that example.com/es/diseno-web and example.com/en/web-design are the same page in two languages. That way a Spanish speaker sees the Spanish page in their results, and an English speaker the English one.

3. Translate what people search for, not word for word

People don’t search in translations; they search in their own words. English speakers type “web design”, Spanish speakers “diseño web”, Romanians “creare site” and Hungarians “weboldal készítés”. Your page titles, descriptions and headings should use the words each audience actually types.

Machine translation is a fine first draft. For sales pages, prices and anything legal, have a native speaker review it; small mistakes cost trust quickly.

4. Translate the whole journey

Visitors notice every place where the language breaks: menus, buttons, form errors, confirmation emails, your WhatsApp greeting, the privacy policy, dates and currencies. An error message in Spanish on an English checkout is often where the sale is lost.

The language switcher should take visitors to the same page in the other language, not back to the home page, and it should be easy to find on a phone.

5. Tell search engines and AI assistants

Make sure your sitemap includes every language version, and keep your business name, address and phone number identical everywhere: on the site, on your Google Business Profile and in directories. Structured data can list the languages you speak, and an llms.txt file gives AI assistants such as ChatGPT a clean summary of your business to cite.

6. Plan how you’ll keep languages in sync

Every price change, new opening hour or new service has to reach every language. Choose a setup where each text sits next to its translations, so nothing is forgotten, and plan the time for it. A second language that is six months out of date does more harm than no second language at all.

Where to start

If you’re not sure which languages are worth it, start with the one most of your customers who don’t speak your main language already speak, do it properly, and measure what happens. If you’d like a second opinion on your site, talk to us: we work in English, Spanish, Romanian and Hungarian, with clients around the world, from the US to Australia and in Spain.

Building a new site or shop? See how we approach website design and online shops in several languages, and run through our website checklist for small businesses before you launch.