In Switzerland, Luxembourg, Brussels, in any city where two languages meet, a single-language site sees only part of its customers. But a machine-translated site loses as many: the reader notices by the second sentence. Here is how I do it, and what it costs.
A German-speaking customer and a French-speaking customer do not search for the same thing with the same words. “Webdesign” on one side, “création de site internet” on the other; “Treuhand” and “fiduciaire”; “Praxis” and “cabinet”. A word-for-word translation misses the other language’s searches and sounds wrong. Each version has to be written for its reader, with their words, their examples, sometimes their arguments.
That is what I do: I write the French, German and English from what you tell me, and you review each version. No machine translation, no plugin that “translates” your site in one click and fills it with sentences nobody would say.
French at the root, German under /de/, English under /en/. Every page has its address in every language, with a translated keyword in the address itself.
Every page declares its equivalents in the other languages. Google serves the right version to the right reader, and does not count the three as duplicates.
A Swiss traveller in Berlin must be able to read the site in French. The language choice is visible and free; nothing is decided by IP address.
A site whose English version has three pages and whose French version has twenty is not multilingual. Every language in the package includes every page.
Every address in every language, with its equivalents, in a site map Google reads.
You choose the package’s languages: one in Minimum, two in Visible, three in Conquête. An additional language costs CHF 500.
I write the first language, you review. Then the others, which you also review, or which a trusted person reviews for you if you do not read the language.
The contact form records the visitor’s language, so your reply is in the right one. Legal pages exist in every language. The Google profile is configured in the main language.
Multilingual is not an option: it is in the packages. Visible, at CHF 5,800, includes two languages across fourteen pages. Conquête, at CHF 9,500, includes three across twenty pages. One more language costs CHF 500, written.
Copy, pages, photos, form, speed, security. No redesign, no commitment, with an estimate in hours before starting.
Additional language CHF 500 · Page beyond the package CHF 120 · 50% deposit on signature. The amount is the same in every country; invoices are in Swiss francs.
French, German and English. Italian and other languages are not languages I write; I say so from the start, and we see how to handle them if your site needs them.
Swiss by default (“ss”, « » quotation marks), German or Austrian if your market is in Germany or Austria. The vocabulary is adapted to the market: nobody says “Offerte” in Munich.
Yes, CHF 500, at the same price as before signature. The addresses and markup are built for it.
It costs less and it shows. For a site that has to convince a customer to trust you with money, it shows too much.
The rest fits in a thirty-minute call: your business, your competitors, and what a website can change. Or by phone, on +41 26 420 00 86.