Should your contractor website have a Spanish page?

When a Spanish page helps

• You already get calls or messages in Spanish.
• You or someone on your crew speaks Spanish well enough to explain a job, a price and a schedule.
• You work in neighborhoods where many households speak Spanish at home.
• Your referrals come through Spanish-speaking families, churches or community groups.

If none of those are true, a Spanish page is probably not your next job. Get the English site right first.

The rule that comes first

Only offer Spanish if you can serve the customer in Spanish. A line that says "Hablamos español" is a promise. If the homeowner calls and nobody can talk with them, you've wasted their time and started off badly. Think through the whole job: who answers the phone, who writes the estimate, who explains the contract, who handles a complaint. If only part of that can be done in Spanish, say so plainly on the page.

Rules about contracts and the language a sale was made in vary by state. This is general information, so check with a lawyer for your situation.

Have a fluent person write it

Machine translation is a useful first draft, but raw output can get trade words wrong, and a fluent reader can usually tell. Words like flashing, bid or punch list don't translate word for word, and the usual term can differ by region. Have a fluent speaker write the page, or at least check it, ideally someone who knows the trade. Then read it to a Spanish-speaking customer or crew member and ask if it sounds like a person wrote it.

What to put on it

You don't need to translate the whole site on day one. Start with one good page:

• What you do and where you work
• Your phone number, and when a Spanish speaker is available
• A short request form with Spanish labels
• A few of your own job photos
• What happens after they call

Later you can add Spanish versions of your main service pages. Don't publish pages that are half English and half Spanish.

How to link the two languages

• Give the Spanish page its own address, such as yourcompany.com/es/, not a pop-up that swaps the words.
• Put a plain text link at the top of every page: "Español" on English pages, "English" on Spanish pages. Use the language's name, not a flag.
• Link each page to its own translation where one exists, not just to the home page.
• Ask your web person to mark each page's language in the code (the lang attribute) and add hreflang tags. These tell browsers, screen readers and search engines which language a page is in and which page is its match.
• Don't switch visitors to a language automatically based on their phone settings. Let them choose.

Keep both versions current

When you change your hours, services or phone number in English, change the Spanish page the same day. If an answering service or an AI receptionist covers your phone, ask which languages it handles before you advertise Spanish service by phone.