A bilingual website in Laval or Montreal: what the law asks and what customers expect

When I built the site for Sayara Auto, a garage in Laval, the owner’s first question wasn’t about design. It was: does it have to be in French, and can it also be in English. Yes and yes. Here’s what that means in practice.

What the rule is

Quebec’s Charter of the French Language covers commercial publications, and a website is one. A business operating in Quebec has to make its site available in French, and the French version can’t be harder to find or less complete than any other language. English is allowed, as long as French is there on equal terms. Recent changes to the law raised the penalties and gave the Office québécois de la langue française more room to act on complaints.

I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. If your case is unusual, ask the OQLF or a lawyer. But for a garage, a boutique or a service business, the practical rule is simple: build it in French, offer English, and make both easy to reach.

Two ways to do it, and which I use

A toggle on one page. One address, a button that swaps every string. It’s fast to build and feels smooth. The downside: search engines mostly index one language, so your French page never shows up for French searches, or the other way around.

Two sets of pages. The French site lives at one address and the English site at another, for example /fr/ and /. Each page tells Google where its twin is with a small hreflang tag. Both languages get indexed, both rank, and a visitor who searches in French lands on French.

For a local business that wants to be found, I use the second. This site works that way. The Sayara Auto site uses a toggle because it is one page and bookings matter more than search, and I’ll move it to two sets of pages when the blog goes in.

What customers expect, beyond the law

• Quebec French, not translated French. People notice. It’s “pneus d’hiver”, “réserver ma place”, “on vous rappelle”. A translation tool gives you sentences that are correct and slightly off, and slightly off costs trust.
• The same content on both sides. If the French page has five services and the English page has three, the English reader wonders what else they’re missing.
• Titles and descriptions translated too. The text Google shows under your link is written in the page’s head, not the visible page. Most bilingual sites forget it, so the French result shows an English title.
• Forms and confirmations in the right language. The booking confirmation that arrives in English after a French form is a small thing that makes a business feel careless.

A checklist for your current site

1. Open your site in a private window. Is French there, and is it the first thing you see, or one click away?
2. Search your business name on Google in French. Is the result in French?
3. Read your French pages out loud. Would a neighbour write it that way?
4. Send yourself a form or a booking. What language does the reply come in?

If two or more of those fail, the fix is usually a few days of work, not a rebuild. Message me and I’ll tell you which it is for your site.