Business websites in Quebec: the complete guide

Before talking about colours or platforms, write in one sentence the action you expect from an interested visitor: call, request a quote, book, visit the store or buy online. That action becomes the common thread of the site. Every service page ends with it, the button stays visible on phones, and your measurement counts those inquiries first.

Next, specify who you want to reach and in what territory. A landscaper serving three regional municipalities, a clinic that welcomes patients on site and a shop that ships across Canada don’t need the same website. The first will highlight its service area and past projects, the second its services, hours and booking, the third its catalogue, shipping and returns.

Finally, list the questions customers ask before buying: timelines, prices or price ranges, steps, warranties, territory, maintenance. Reread your latest emails and call notes. These questions are the raw material of your pages; a page that answers them beats a page that describes the company in general terms. The guide on digital marketing for Quebec businesses places the website among your other channels.

The following table is a starting point. Begin with the rows you can’t check off today.

The domain name is your website’s address and often your email address too. It must be registered in the company’s name, in an account you can access, with a recovery address you control. ICANN (new tab) points out that only the registered name holder, the administrative contact or someone explicitly authorized by them can start transferring a domain to another registrar. Keep that contact information up to date: it is your proof of ownership the day you change providers.

Do the same check for every account that touches the website: hosting, site administration, DNS, Google Business Profile, Search Console, analytics tool, newsletter platform. Note where each account lives, who has access and who can add or remove users. A provider can receive access in their own name, but the main account remains the company’s. When someone leaves the team or a contract ends, remove their access the same day.

Also separate the roles, because they often change hands: the domain registrar, the DNS that points to the server, the website hosting and email. The guide on business website hosting details these four elements and how to change hosts without cutting off the site or email.

For a service business, the foundation often fits in a few pages: a home page that says what you do and where, one page per main service, a page about the team and how you work, past projects or examples, a contact page and a privacy policy. A store adds its categories, product pages and shipping and return terms. Start small: one complete page beats three empty ones.

Each service page answers a few questions in a simple order: what you do, for whom, how the work unfolds, what the customer should plan for (usual timelines, price ranges if you share them, preparation), examples and the next step. Links between pages matter: a service page points to related projects and to the contact page; the home page points to each service.

Choose simple, durable addresses, for example /services/landscape-maintenance rather than a number. An address that changes later requires a redirect, and every forgotten redirect loses visitors. If you serve several cities, avoid copying the same page and changing only the city name: write pages that bring information specific to each territory instead, or a single page that clearly describes your service area.

Finally, plan the pages that the law or trust requires: the privacy policy, the contact details of the person in charge of protecting personal information, and terms of sale if you sell online. The guide to preparing a website redesign offers a method for taking stock of pages and their content.

Visitors skim. Put the answer at the top of the page, in one or two sentences, then the details. Use your customers’ words rather than your industry’s, and prefer verifiable facts (usual timelines, territory, steps, warranties) over phrases that could describe any competitor. Photos of your real work, with the consent of anyone visible, convince better than generic images.

Language is regulated. The Government of Quebec reminds businesses that they must make their catalogues, advertising and websites available in French (new tab). According to the Office québécois de la langue française checklist (new tab), another language can be added, provided French appears at least equivalently and the French version is accessible on terms at least as favourable. An incomplete French version, or an English version that is easier to reach, is therefore a problem.

Google recommends creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (new tab) and does not favour any word count. Your experience is your advantage: explain how you really work, what can delay a project and what the customer should prepare. To get accurate text the first time, the guide to preparing a content request explains which facts, images and approvals to provide.

Name the person who confirms the facts before anything goes live: services offered, prices, contact details, hours. A site that advertises a discontinued service or an old phone number creates frustrating inquiries.

Google’s SEO starter guide (new tab) is clear: there is no secret that automatically ranks you first. The basics remain simple. Each page covers one topic, carries a title and description that summarize it, uses clear subheadings and descriptive links to other pages. Images have alternative text that says what they show.

Google mainly indexes the mobile version of pages. According to its mobile-first indexing best practices (new tab), it uses the mobile version of the content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking, and it recommends responsive design. Important content must therefore be present on phones, not only revealed after a tap.

Open Google Search Console (new tab), a free service that shows how your site appears in search: queries, pages, clicks, indexing issues. If you serve local customers, also verify your Google Business Profile. Google says local ranking is mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence (new tab), and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. Keep the name, address, phone number and hours identical on the profile and the website.

Judge results over several months. Some fixes take effect within days, others over months; for relevant searches, improved visibility is often seen over three to six months, with no guarantee. For a first review, the guide to preparing an SEO audit lists the observations to gather.

Test your key pages on an ordinary phone, on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi. Text should be readable without zooming, the call button reachable with a thumb, the form usable with the phone keyboard, and the confirmation message should appear. Run the test yourself at least once a quarter and after every significant change.

Speed can be measured. Google describes three Core Web Vitals metrics (new tab): display the largest visible element within the first 2.5 seconds (LCP), respond to interactions in under 200 milliseconds (INP) and keep the layout stable, with a CLS score below 0.1. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console shows these results for your pages. The usual causes are well known: oversized images, too many plugins, third-party scripts loaded everywhere, undersized hosting.

Accessibility is part of quality. According to the W3C (new tab), web accessibility means websites are designed so that people with disabilities can use them. The WCAG guidelines (new tab) are the international reference. For a business, a few habits cover a lot: enough contrast between text and background, structured headings, alternative text for useful images, labelled form fields, keyboard navigation and captioned videos. These habits also help older visitors, people reading in the sun, and Google.

A website must stay online, load quickly and be restorable after a mistake or an attack. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (new tab) recommends, among other things, HTTPS, a patching strategy, limited and protected access with multi-factor authentication, and monitoring. For backups, it advises backing up your information and testing recovery (new tab): a backup that has never been restored is still an assumption.

Ask your host or provider for precise answers: where the site is hosted, how often it is backed up, how long backups are kept, who applies updates, how you will be notified of an incident and what happens to form data. Keep a copy of your content and images somewhere other than with the host.

Outdated plugins and themes are a common way in. Remove what you no longer use, limit administrator accounts and turn on two-factor authentication wherever possible. The guide on business website hosting offers a full checklist, from HTTPS to migration, with the questions to ask before signing.

As soon as your website collects personal information, through a contact form, a newsletter or an analytics tool, Quebec’s Law 25 applies. The Commission d’accès à l’information (new tab) reminds businesses that they must publish on their website the title and contact information of the person in charge of protecting personal information, as well as information about their governance policies and practices. A privacy policy written in clear and simple terms must be published when collection happens through technological means.

For a form, ask only for what you need to answer the request, say what the information will be used for and know where it ends up: an email inbox, a third-party tool, a provider located outside Quebec. For cookies and tools that can identify, locate or profile a visitor, the Commission specifies that these functions cannot be turned on by default: the person must activate them. List the tools installed on your site (audience measurement, advertising pixels, chat, embedded videos and maps) and check what each one sets.

The guide Law 25 and your website details what a business must display and where, with a one-hour checklist. The complete guide to Law 25 for businesses covers the rest of your obligations: confidentiality incidents, consent, providers and transfers outside Quebec. If you send a newsletter, Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (new tab) also applies: you need consent and an unsubscribe mechanism in every message. This guide is not legal advice.

A complete redesign is not always the right answer. If the structure holds and the problem comes from vague pages, a broken form or heavy images, targeted fixes often solve most of it, faster and for less. A redesign is justified when the site can no longer be edited easily, displays poorly on mobile despite fixes, runs on a platform that is no longer updated, or when your offer has changed enough to need a new organization.

Either way, start from what exists. Take stock of the pages, note which ones bring visits and inquiries in Search Console, and keep their addresses when possible. If addresses change, Google recommends mapping old addresses to new ones (new tab) and redirecting each old address to its new one. It also warns that rankings can fluctuate for a few weeks or more after a significant migration, and advises against changing everything at once: domain, platform and layout are better changed in separate steps.

The guide to preparing a website redesign before the design explains how to define visitor journeys, gather content, name the people who approve, prepare addresses and check the result before launch. Also plan for after launch: who fixes a typo, who adds a page, who keeps an eye on the form.

The cost of a website depends mostly on four things: the number of pages and templates, the features (booking, e-commerce, client area, integrations), the share of content to produce and the level of polish expected. Always separate the site’s creation, its hosting, its maintenance and its later changes: they are distinct items with different recurring costs. A very low price that includes “everything, forever” often hides a limit.

The company’s time is the most frequently forgotten cost. Even with support, you provide the facts, photos and approvals, and that step often delays a project. Block review time in your calendar from the start and name a single person who makes the call.

Before signing, ask any provider a few simple questions:

• Will the domain, hosting, website and Google accounts remain in the company’s name?
• What exactly does the price include: number of pages, revisions, content, training, launch?
• Who hosts the site, who updates it, and how does an exit work, with which files handed over?
• How will forms, cookies and the privacy policy be handled?
• What checks will be done before launch, on phones and on computers?
• What promises are made about Google? Be wary of any guaranteed position.

Then measure what matters: the number of inquiries the site brings and where they come from. Add “How did you hear about us?” to your form, check Search Console every month and compare equivalent periods.

At Serafex, a website project can include scoping, page architecture, screen-adaptive construction, content integration, checks and launch. Creation is quoted for your project. Hosting is a separate service for each site, with HTTPS and site transfer; it does not cover creation, and domain names are not part of the offer. Maintenance and changes after launch are also defined: no future change is included without limit. In the Workspace, approving a mockup does not put the site online: tracking distinguishes what is approved, published, verified online and indexed. The offers and plans page separates these items.

Tell us about your website project.