Web design in Brussels

The companies in the region are not a typical European mix. Professional and technical services are by far the largest group, and information and communication makes up 8.5 percent of all firms, half again as much as across Flanders.

In 2025, 14,659 new companies registered in the region and 11,364 stopped. That is a market where a new firm has to stand out from day one, in more than one language.

There is no single right answer, but there is a right order for your business. Look at who already contacts you and in which language, then use this:

• Choose French and Dutch ifyou serve local residents or the public sector. The region expects both, and a Dutch-speaking customer notices when the Dutch version is a thin translation.
• Choose French and English ifyour clients are international organisations, expats or other companies working in English. Many B2B firms in Brussels add Dutch later, for Flemish clients.
• Choose all three ifyou sell across Belgium and to international clients. Then every page exists three times, each with its own title and description.

Whichever you pick, a translation button is not a language version. Google does not index the text a browser plugin translates, so someone searching in Dutch never finds the Dutch your visitors see. How to build real versions without maintaining three sites is covered on our page on multilingual website development.

Google needs to know which version belongs to which reader. That is what hreflang does: every version lists itself and its siblings, so a French speaker in Ixelles sees the French page and a Dutch speaker in Jette the Dutch one. Three choices make or break it.

Then there are the details people forget: the language switch should lead to the same page in the other language, not the homepage; forms, error messages and confirmation emails need translating too; and your Google Business Profile should match the language of the name your customers search for.

A second or third language is mostly translation and a second set of titles, descriptions and forms. The ranges below are what the market in Belgium asks, excluding VAT, for the base site.

For a Brussels site built by us, the starting point is 1,500 euros, and the quote after our first talk is one fixed price covering the languages you chose. To see how your own choices add up, use the website cost calculator; for the full breakdown read how much a website costs.

Read the conditions as a checklist before you sign anything. Your company must be an SME with at least one operating site in the Brussels Region, active in an eligible sector, with its annual accounts filed, and it must not have received more than 300,000 euros in de minimis aid over the current and previous two tax years. The mission must solve a one-off problem your team cannot handle in-house; ongoing maintenance does not count. And the provider must meet the consultant profile above.

We do not promise that a project with us qualifies: that is for the region to decide, case by case, on the provider's profile and the mission. If you want to apply, check your eligibility with the region's own tool first, then ask any provider, including us, to show how they meet each condition. Belgium's other regions have different rules; the Flemish side is covered in our guide to Flanders digitalisation grants, and the general question in are there website grants in Belgium.

• A Dutch version that stops after the homepageA Flemish customer clicks a service and lands in French. It reads as an afterthought.
• One page with three languages stackedGoogle cannot tell which language the page is in, and none of the three ranks well.
• An English site for a local tradeA plumber or a hairdresser in Anderlecht mostly gets calls in French. English can come later.
• No price signalIn a city with this much competition, a visitor leaves for the firm that shows a starting price. Check what visitors see with our SEO checker and website speed test.

We built sites in Dutch, French, English and Turkish for three Belgian firms: K&A Law, FK Boekhouding and Business Centrum. Each language has its own addresses, titles and search terms, and one place to edit prices and opening hours. For Business Centrum, the site was shown 46 times as often in Google within five weeks, going from 220 to 10,200 impressions a day, with 1,593 non-brand search terms on page one where there had been 13. Across all our clients, more than 1,700 such pages are online today.

None of those firms is in Brussels, and we say so. Our office is on the Sint-Baafsplein in Ghent, 57 kilometres and about 50 minutes by car from the Grand-Place, and 35 to 40 minutes by train. We do the first meeting at your office or online, and we come over for photos. The way we work is described under website design. If you need a client portal or internal tool next to the site, read software development in Brussels.