Red Comet is an independent studio that designs and develops websites on both sides of the Ottawa River. For a Gatineau business, that means French and English pages planned together, service pages built around the questions customers actually ask, and a straightforward way to get in touch.
Discuss your websiteMost Gatineau businesses are small: an owner, a few staff, and a site that was built years ago or never built at all. The job is similar across sectors. Explain what you do, show where you do it, and make the first contact easy in the language the visitor chose.
Plumbers, electricians, dental and physio clinics, accountants, and legal offices: in each case a customer has to understand the offer before calling. We write service pages around real questions and real services, not filler.
Hours, menus, reservations, and what is on this week, kept current without calling a developer. Our Nash portfolio demo shows this approach for a Gatineau music venue, with show listings fed by Hedliner.
Some businesses have only ever had a social media page; others have a site that no longer reflects what they offer. We start with the content you already have and decide what the first build needs.
The City of Gatineau describes its territory as five sectors: Aylmer, Buckingham, Gatineau, Hull, and Masson-Angers. People still search and give directions by sector name, so we plan page titles, service-area wording, and contact details around where your customers actually are.
Neighbourhood storefronts and professional offices in the west of the city, many serving customers who commute across the river.
The downtown core and the busiest commercial streets, with businesses that serve office workers, residents, and visitors.
The central sector along boulevards Gréber and Maloney, home to the venue in our Nash portfolio demo.
A town centre of its own in the east, where a local business often serves the surrounding rural area as well.
The easternmost sector, where a website often does the work of a storefront for customers spread over a wide area.
Quebec’s Charter of the French Language applies to commercial publications regardless of the medium. Section 52 requires that catalogues, brochures, commercial directories, order forms, and other documents of the same nature available to the public be drawn up in French, and that no other-language version be made available unless the French version is available on terms at least as favourable. The Office québécois de la langue française applies this to business websites and social media: they must be available in French, and they may also be available in another language. See the Charter of the French Language, CQLR c. C-11, s. 52 and the OQLF guide Charte de la langue française : mythes et réalité, question 4.
That is how we build. French is not a translated afterthought. Each language gets its own URL, page title, description, and hreflang link, so a visitor who chooses French gets the full site. The French content is written for Gatineau readers, and we ask for a fluent reviewer on your side before anything goes live.
Other parts of the Charter have their own rules, such as section 58 on public signs and commercial advertising, which must be in French and may be bilingual only where French is markedly predominant.
This is a summary for planning purposes, not legal advice. Verify your own obligations with the OQLF or a legal advisor.
Tell us what your business does, who it serves, what your current site does well or badly, and the action you want visitors to take. We use that to propose pages, languages, and functionality before any design work begins.
A conversation about your services, your customers, the sectors you serve, and the questions people ask before they call.
Decide which pages need French and English content, who writes what, and who reviews the wording.
Confirm content, functionality, and project scope before development starts.
A bilingual French and English website for a Gatineau music venue on boulevard Gréber. The original site combined live show listings powered by Hedliner with the menu and reservations. The preserved showcase is a portfolio demo of that design.
View the preserved showcase Fictional website concepts / Three sectorsThree bilingual concepts that show how we plan contact paths and search foundations for service businesses. They are fictional and not client projects.
Explore the showcaseShort answers to what owners usually ask before a first conversation.
Yes. We design and develop websites for businesses in Aylmer, Buckingham, Gatineau, Hull, and Masson-Angers, and we meet in person when it helps. What changes from one sector to another is the service-area wording and the local details on your pages.
The Charter of the French Language requires commercial publications available to the public, which the OQLF says includes websites, to be available in French, with any other-language version offered on terms at least as favourable. A site can be in English as well as French. This is not legal advice; confirm your obligations with the OQLF or a legal advisor.
Yes, and that is how we plan them. Each language gets its own pages, titles, and descriptions, with a visible switch between them. We write the French for Gatineau readers rather than translating the English word for word.
A short description of your services, your customers, and the sectors you cover, plus a link to your current site or social media page if you have one. You do not need finished text or a logo to start.
That depends on what changes often. During scoping we decide which parts, such as hours, menus, or event listings, should be editable without a developer. The Nash portfolio demo, for example, took its show listings from Hedliner.
Share your business, the sector you work from, your current website if you have one, the languages you need, and what visitors should be able to do. We can use that to discuss fit and scope.
Prefer email? support@redcometmedia.com