Lighthouse score of 98 for a bilingual compliant site — how we do it
Lighthouse score of 98 for a bilingual compliant site — how we do it
Open Chrome. Go to your website. Press F12, click the Lighthouse tab, then click Analyze page load. Wait 30 seconds.
You just ran the tool Google uses to grade your site on four criteria: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Each criterion gets a score out of 100. A green score (90+) means your site meets Google's standards. A red score means your visitors — and Google — are having a bad experience.
Most Quebec professional firm websites score between 40 and 70. Ours score 95 to 100 across all four categories. Here's what that changes, and how we get there.
What Lighthouse scores measure
Performance (0-100): loading speed. Does your page appear in under 2 seconds, or are your visitors staring at a blank screen?
Accessibility (0-100): can all your visitors use your site? People with visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities. Color contrast, image alt text, keyboard navigation.
Best Practices (0-100): HTTPS security, no JavaScript vulnerabilities, correct permissions policy.
SEO (0-100): can Google read, understand, and index your site? Titles, meta descriptions, named images, semantic structure.
These scores aren't a vanity contest. Google uses Core Web Vitals — a subset of Performance metrics — as a direct ranking factor. A slow site is a site Google buries in search results.
Why bilingual compliant sites are rarely fast
Building a fast site is straightforward. Building a bilingual, accessible, Quebec-law-compliant site that stays fast — that's the real challenge.
Bilingualism doubles the content. Every page exists in French and English. Every hreflang tag must point to the correct language version. Every meta description must be written in both languages. That doubles the data weight if it's poorly implemented.
Accessibility adds complexity. To meet WCAG 2.1 AA, you need correct heading hierarchy, alt text on every image, sufficient color contrast, full keyboard navigation. Every technical shortcut you might take for speed becomes off-limits.
Legal compliance adds scripts. Quebec's Bill 25 requires a cookie consent mechanism. Most off-the-shelf solutions — Cookiebot, OneTrust — inject 200 to 400 KB of JavaScript. A consent banner that slows your site by 2 seconds is ironic but common.
Most agencies resolve this trilemma by sacrificing speed. They stack WordPress, a heavy theme, WPBakery or Elementor, WPML for bilingualism, a cookie plugin, a forms plugin. Result: 3 to 5 MB per page and a Lighthouse score of 45.
Our technical approach
We don't compromise. Here's how.
Static site generation (SSG)
Our sites are built with Next.js in static generation mode. Every page is pre-built at deploy time — not generated on each visit. When a visitor lands on your site, they receive a ready-made HTML file, not a request to a PHP server querying a MySQL database.
The result: server response time under 50 ms, compared to 800 ms to 2 seconds for a typical WordPress site.
Image optimization
Every image is automatically converted to AVIF (the lightest available format) with WebP fallback. Images are sized to the visitor's screen: a phone gets a 400 px image, not a 2000 px photo scaled down by CSS. Lazy loading ensures only visible images are downloaded.
Minimal JavaScript
No jQuery. No heavy plugins. No animated carousels loading 300 KB to scroll through three photos. Every kilobyte of JavaScript must justify its presence. Our Bill 25 consent banner weighs under 5 KB — not 400.
Semantic HTML
We use the right HTML tags for the right elements. <nav> for navigation, <main> for primary content, <h1> through <h6> in the correct order. This serves both accessibility (screen readers understand the structure) and SEO (Google understands the content hierarchy).
Security headers
HSTS, Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options. These HTTP headers protect your visitors and your Best Practices score.
Proper bilingual SEO
Every page has hreflang tags pointing to its French and English versions. Google knows which version to serve to which user. French is the default language — Bill 96 compliance.
The business impact of speed
The numbers are clear.
Google ranks fast sites higher. Core Web Vitals have been a ranking factor since 2021. All else being equal, the faster site wins.
A one-second delay reduces conversions by 7%. This is documented by Google and Akamai. For a professional firm, a conversion is a filled form, a phone call, a signed engagement.
Mobile users leave after 3 seconds. 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if the page takes more than 3 seconds to load. In 2026, over 60% of web traffic is mobile. If your site takes 5 seconds to load, you're losing most of your visitors before they even see your homepage.
What this means for your firm
Go to your three main competitors' websites. Run them through Lighthouse. Note their scores.
If you're like most Quebec professional firms, you'll see scores between 40 and 70. WordPress sites built in 2019, never optimized, with 3 MB images and plugins fighting each other.
That's your competitive advantage. A site that loads in 1.2 seconds versus 4.5 seconds. A site Google favors in search results. A site your visitors don't abandon before seeing what you offer.
When someone searches "CPA Montreal" or "family lawyer Quebec," Google chooses between your site and your competitors'. Speed, accessibility, and technical compliance are part of that choice.
See for yourself
Our free website health check includes a full Lighthouse analysis of your current site, with scores across all four categories and concrete recommendations to improve them.
18 checks. 6 dimensions. Delivered in 24 hours. No strings attached.