Toronto · Web development
Web development
agency in Toronto
The most expensive decision in a Canadian build is usually made in week one, silently, by assuming the site will only ever be in English. We would rather you made it deliberately.
Get a free site reviewWhat does a web development agency in Toronto do?
A web development agency in Toronto designs, builds and maintains the site your business sells from. In Canada the job carries one structural decision the rest of the world can defer: whether the site is built to hold a second language, because retrofitting that later is close to a rebuild.
the number of languages a Canadian commercial site may need — and the number almost nobody builds for until the day they suddenly must
Quebec language legislation imposes French requirements on commercial communications, and enforcement has been strengthening rather than relaxing. Even setting the law aside, an English-only site concedes a large domestic market to whoever bothered to translate. The cost difference is entirely about timing: designing templates, routing, URLs and the CMS to hold two languages from the start adds modest effort, while adding a second language to a site built for one usually means reworking the routing, the templates and the content model at once. We would rather you decided this in week one, including deciding not to.
What we build and why
Four requirements. The first is the one that is cheap now and expensive later; the rest apply wherever you are.
Structured to hold a second language
Language-aware routing, URLs, templates and content model, with the correct markup telling search engines which version serves whom. Building this in costs a little; adding it afterwards means unpicking the architecture. Even if you never publish French, the option stays open at almost no cost.
Cheap now, expensive laterSpeed measured on real visits
Core Web Vitals are scored on the real devices and networks your visitors arrive on. Most slow sites are slow through accumulation — scripts, tags and embeds added over years, individually justified and never collectively reviewed.
Usually a subtraction problemAccessible from the first template
Keyboard operation, visible focus, sufficient contrast, semantic markup and real alt text. Ontario’s accessibility legislation sets explicit expectations for many organisations, and beyond compliance an inaccessible site turns away customers who intended to buy.
Legislated in OntarioA CMS your team can maintain in two languages
Publishing without a developer ticket, and without the second language becoming a permanently out-of-date copy of the first. Bilingual sites fail in practice far more often through neglected translation workflow than through technical shortcomings.
Workflow, not just build
How a build runs with us
Review and decide on language first
Field performance, accessibility, structure and conversion path — and an explicit decision about whether French is in scope now, later, or never. That answer shapes the architecture more than any other requirement.
Templates first, pages second
Get the templates carrying the site right on speed, accessibility, structure and language handling, then populate. Templates are the thing that keeps quality steady as pages accumulate.
Launch, then measure
Redirects mapped, language and regional markup verified, analytics and search console confirmed from day one, and performance judged on real visits rather than a lab score.
If you have no Quebec customers and no plan to acquire any, building bilingual is a cost with no return and we will say so. The point is not that every Canadian site needs French — it is that the decision should be made once, deliberately, at the start, rather than discovered as a constraint two years in.
Questions
- Do we legally need a French version of our website?
- It depends on where and how you sell. Quebec language legislation imposes French requirements on commercial communications directed at Quebec, and enforcement has been strengthening. If Quebec is not a market for you, the legal pressure is limited — but the commercial argument for reaching a large domestic market in its own language remains.
- How much more does a bilingual site cost?
- Considerably less if it is designed in from the start than if it is added later. Building language-aware routing, templates and content model at the outset is a modest increment. Retrofitting the same thing into a single-language site usually means reworking routing, templates and content model together, which approaches the cost of a rebuild.
- Can we just use automatic translation?
- For a site that represents your business commercially, no. Machine translation is improving but it produces text that reads as translated, which undermines exactly the credibility a French-language site is meant to build. It also cannot make the judgement calls that marketing copy requires. Use it for a first draft, not for publication.
- Does accessibility have legal force in Ontario?
- Ontario’s accessibility legislation sets explicit web accessibility expectations for many organisations, with obligations that have phased in over time. The practical standard referenced is WCAG. Beyond the legal position the commercial case stands on its own — an inaccessible site excludes customers who arrived ready to buy.
- Will moving to a new site cost us traffic?
- Yes, where redirects and content are treated casually. That is how most rebuilds lose money. Done carefully — URLs mapped, structure kept, content moved intact — rankings normally hold and frequently improve, because what sits underneath them is better.
Sources
- Semrush CA database, September 2026 — the 1,600 monthly search volume cited above.
- Office québécois de la langue française guidance on the Charter of the French Language and commercial communications.
- Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act information and communications standards.
- Google Search Central documentation on hreflang and managing multilingual sites.
Related
Find out what your site is costing you
A free review: how it performs on real connections, whether it could hold a second language without a rebuild, and where visitors give up before contacting you.
No obligation, and the language recommendation is included.