A visitor who lands on a site that is not in their language does not struggle through it. They leave — politely, silently, in about four seconds. In a country where the next town over may speak another language, that is not an edge case. It is the client base.
Who this actually concerns
Not everyone. If every client you want speaks your language, one language is the right number, and adding more is busywork. But the cases where it matters are common and concrete: a physiotherapist in Biel/Bienne, a fiduciary with German-speaking clients in Fribourg, a craftsman near a language border, anyone serving expats who search in English. For them, the second language is not polish — it is the difference between being an option and not.
Why it usually does not happen
Because on most platforms, a second language means a second site: every page duplicated, every edit made twice, and within six months the versions disagree — old prices in one language, new hours in the other. An agency will maintain it for you, at agency rates. Most independents, reasonably, decide it is not worth it.
How it works here
The site is multilingual in its structure, not by duplication. You choose
your languages — up to six: French, German, Italian, English, Spanish,
Portuguese — and each text field in your console simply has one input per
language. One page, one form, the translations side by side. Visitors get a
language switcher, and each language is a real address
(/fr/, /de/) that search engines index separately —
so you are findable in German by people searching in German.
This is included in the subscription. It is not an add-on, because we think in a multilingual country it should not be a luxury.
Doing it without an agency
- Start with two languages, yours plus the one your missed clients speak. Six are possible; two done well beat six done badly.
- Translate the pages that convert first: home, services, contact. The blog can wait or stay in one language.
- Write like you speak. A short, slightly imperfect translation from a machine, corrected by you or a bilingual client, serves better than a perfect one that never gets done.
- Keep prices and hours in one place — the point of the side-by-side fields is that an edit in one language reminds you of the other.