If you’re an American business looking to expand to Canada or a Canadian business whose website is only available in English, you can be doing more to reach non-English speaking customers. One of the easiest ways to expand your market is by creating a bilingual or multilingual website. In Canada, a bilingual website refers to a website that is available in both official languages–English and French. 

In this article, we will explain the advantages of having a bilingual website in Canada and share five awesome bilingual website examples to inspire your own.

Why is a bilingual website important in Canada?

22.8% of Canada’s population speak French as their first language. That’s nearly 8 million potential customers for your business. While the majority of francophones live in Quebec, there are French speakers across the country. Other provinces with sizable French-speaking populations include Ontario, New Brunswick, British Columbia, and Alberta. 

Canada also has a growing immigrant population. Depending on your target markets, you should consider implementing a multilingual website strategy to reach even more Canadians. Some other common languages spoken in Canada include Punjabi, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, and more. Several Indigenous languages are spoken in Canada as well.  

As you will notice on the bilingual website examples below, proper translation helps maintain the layout and flow of your website. It also ensures correct grammar, terminology, and culturally appropriate wording. Plus, presenting a bilingual or multilingual website shows non-English speaking consumers that you care about them and value their business. Just think–if you went to a website that didn’t have an English option, would you be more or less likely to give them your business? 

Now that we’ve convinced you of the importance of bilingual websites, let’s look at some inspiring bilingual website examples.

The best bilingual website examples for businesses in Canada 

#1 – Sage Natural Wellness

Saje Natural Wellness is a Canadian retailer that sells 100% natural wellness products. When the brand began expanding across Canada, it hired LAT Multilingual to help implement a localized communication strategy. Part of that strategy was creating a bilingual website. 

Saje-Natural-Wellness

Saje is a beautiful bilingual website example. As soon as you enter the site, you are prompted to choose French or English. You can also change the language any time using a convenient pull-down menu in the top corner. All of Saje’s slogans, product information, and educational content are translated into French. 

For this kind of website content, word-to-word translation simply isn’t enough. If Saje had relied on an AI translator like Google Translate, they would have lost the proper meanings, SEO, nuance, and humour of their website copy. 

#2 – Club House 

Club House, a subsidiary of the McCormick company, sells iconic seasoning and condiments, including French’s, Billy Bee, and Thai Kitchen. Their products are available in grocery stores throughout the country. Club House’s bilingual website includes product information, recipes, and meal inspiration, all of which are available in French and English. They hired LAT Multilingual to make sure that their communication and marketing material could reach a broad Canadian market. 

#3 – Destination Ontario

Destination Ontario, the province’s official tourism website, is a great bilingual website example for any business in the tourism industry. Canadians love to travel within their own country, so if your business caters to tourists, your website should definitely have French and English versions. Users on Destination Ontario’s Canadian site can easily switch between French and English versions. 

Destination Ontario has even gone a step further with its multilingual marketing, creating custom international websites in several languages. For example, Japan, Mexico, and Germany. 

#4 – Nature’s Path

Check out the organic food producer Nature’s Path for an example of a multilingual website. Nature’s Path’s website content is available in English, French, and Spanish. Nature’s Path sells its products in Canada and the United States, and although the US is not officially bilingual like Canada, brands like Nature’s Path are smart to include a Spanish translation. Why? Because 13% of the US population speaks Spanish at home!  

#5 – Mission Hill Winery

This bilingual website example is a little bit different. Mission Hill is a beautiful winery located in the Okanagan. One of Mission Hill’s main target demographics is Chinese Canadians. To help attract this market, the winery hired LAT Multilingual for translation and adaptation services in Mandarin. Mission Hill’s translated marketing materials, including their new bilingual website, helped increase brand visibility amongst the Chinese Canadian community.

How to create a bilingual website

We hope that your business will take inspiration from these bilingual website examples. The best way to create a bilingual website is by partnering with an expert translation firm. We use WPML, a convenient WordPress plugin that helps streamline the whole process. 

Ready to create your bilingual website? Partner with us today.

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