Creating a website in Belgium: bilingualism changes everything

Belgium looks like France from a distance and nothing like it up close. Three regions, two main languages and an officially bilingual capital where half your potential customers search in a language your website does not speak.

That is the characteristic that determines everything else, and the one French providers handle least well.

Three markets, not one

• French-speaking Wallonia: Liège, Charleroi, Namur, Mons and Tournai. A French-language website is enough; the logic is the same as in France.
• Dutch-speaking Flanders: Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Leuven. A French-only website does not exist there. It is the country’s wealthiest market and the least accessible to those who do not speak its language.
• Officially bilingual Brussels: searches happen in both languages, with a substantial share in English because of the European institutions and expatriates.

What bilingualism really costs

A second language is more than a translation; it is a second website version. You need to translate, but also manage separate URLs, implement hreflang tags that tell Google which version to serve to whom, optimise each version separately and maintain both whenever something changes.

The .be domain

Open to everyone, with no residency requirement, for around €15 per year. As elsewhere, Google favours the national domain in local searches, and a Belgian customer instinctively trusts it more than .fr.

One Belgian habit: many businesses register both .be and .com, with the second redirecting to the first. It is an inexpensive precaution when selling across two language communities and wanting to prevent a competitor registering the other domain.

Mandatory information: stricter than in France

Belgian law requires the enterprise number, the ten-digit identifier from the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, to appear on the website and business documents. It must be visible and accurate.

The VAT number, full legal name, registered office address and contact details are also required. For online sales, terms and conditions must be accepted before payment, and the fourteen-day right of withdrawal applies as throughout the European Union.

A privacy policy copied from a French template goes down badly: it cites the CNIL rather than the Belgian Data Protection Authority, which is noticeable and undermines everything else.

Where French-language demand is found

Brussels dominates by a wide margin, followed by Liège, Namur, Charleroi and Mons. As elsewhere, searches almost always combine the service and city, but with one distinction: competition is substantially lower than in France at comparable volumes.

The observations show this clearly. The French query ‘création site internet Belgique’ is searched several hundred times a month with very low ranking difficulty. Medium-sized cities such as Namur show volumes comparable French cities do not reach, with much less competition.

What changes in the business relationship

The Belgian market is pragmatic and direct. People expect a clear figure, a deadline that is met and little theatre. Decision cycles are often shorter than in France, and recommendations between businesses carry considerable weight.

A French provider is perfectly welcome, on one condition: showing an understanding of the language question. That is the unspoken test at every first meeting, and many fail by simply offering translation.