Quick answer

A bilingual website needs two useful customer experiences, not one design with text swapped out. Decide whether both languages cover the same services and whether the forms, emails, search and downloadable files must also be bilingual.

Practical scope

Write pages in the terms your customers use. A literal translation may miss local expressions or the way buyers describe their problem. Keep each page at a separate, crawlable URL and make the language switch easy to find. Give each version its own page title and description. Ask the developer to connect equivalent pages with the appropriate language annotations.

Plan for maintenance: when a price, policy or product changes, who updates both versions? Test forms and confirmation emails in each language. If one language has less content, make the missing material explicit rather than sending users back to the homepage unexpectedly.

What to define before requesting proposals

  • Language coverage for pages, forms, emails and downloads
  • Local terminology and translation ownership
  • Separate crawlable URLs and an obvious language switch
  • A process for keeping both versions current

Questions to ask service providers

  • Will equivalent pages have correct language annotations?
  • How are missing or unequal translations handled?
  • Who checks forms, search and emails in both languages?

How to assess the answers

Review each language as a complete customer journey. Translation quality and maintenance ownership matter as much as the initial technical setup.

Related planning guides

Next step: Put these decisions into one project brief, then ask providers to respond to the same scope.