Most people haven’t given it a name yet, but there is a subtle change taking place on the internet. Ask about their website when you walk into a dental office in Toronto, a boutique hotel in Marrakech, or a small bakery in Houston. Now, an increasing number of them respond in the same manner. They say, almost casually, that we have it in two languages. As though it were just like having a phone number.
This wasn’t always the case. English would do the heavy lifting and everyone else would have to figure it out, according to an unwritten web rule for a long time. That presumption is deteriorating. Approximately 75% of consumers say they would rather make purchases in their mother tongue, and many won’t even click “buy” if the checkout page appears to have been translated for free at three in the morning. The previous “English-only” strategy might have been effective back when the internet was smaller. Obviously, it no longer does.
In its most basic form, a bilingual website is exactly what it sounds like. One website, one brand, two languages. However, what distinguishes the successful ones from the unsuccessful ones are the minor details. Tucked neatly into the upper corner is a language switcher. URLs that smoothly transition between versions. fonts that do not abruptly break when an Arabic letter or accent mark appears. Last summer, I saw a sign in the window of a small Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that directed patrons to a QR code with both Spanish and English menus. After adding the second version, the owner reported an increase in lunch traffic. He had busier tables, but no data.
Most business owners are unaware of how important the technical foundation is. For example, hreflang tags instruct Google which version of a page to display in which nation. If you ignore them, you run the risk of Google ignoring your translated pages completely or displaying a French page to a New Yorker who speaks only English. SEO experts believe that this one mistake accounts for half of the unsatisfactory outcomes bilingual websites typically report during the first half of their existence.
Philosophical issues arise during the translation process. Some companies use machine translation exclusively, and even though the results are getting better every year, they still have a hint of automation. Idioms fall apart. The tone becomes flat. In Spanish, a clever tagline turns into a stiff English sentence that no one would actually say aloud. Mixing is the wiser strategy, which is employed by companies that take this seriously. Expert translators take care of the product pages, the homepage, and anything persuasive or legal. The 2019 blog archive, which no one reads but search engines still index, is managed by automated tools.
The aspect that most businesses undervalue is cultural fit. In some places, writing the date as 4/1/2026 means April 1st, while in others it means January 4th. Measurement units, currency symbols, and even the text’s flow all require attention. There’s a reason Dubai hotels redesign their booking pages instead of just translating them. To be honest, the quickest way to appear unprofessional in two languages at once is to simply copy and paste a homepage into Google Translate and label it as bilingual.
As this trend develops, it’s difficult not to believe that companies that recognized this early on will control the web for the next ten years. Not because it’s glamorous to be bilingual. Because the most underappreciated kind of online customer service is still being understood in the person’s native tongue during their initial visit.
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