Why every Ghent website starts with a choice of audience
The city has two centres of economic gravity that sit far apart. To the south runs the knowledge axis: UGent, the Ardoyen science park in Zwijnaarde and the biotech cluster around Tech Lane. Its spin-offs often live on a funding round and need a credible, English-language story online in a hurry.
To the north, the canal zone stretches towards Terneuzen: steel, assembly, chemicals and cargo handling. It is a world of established family firms and subcontractors whose margin lives in order tracking and scheduling, not in a pretty homepage. Between the two sits a third pole: the agencies, hospitality and retail of the centre and The Loop. A Ghent website project therefore starts by working out which of those three logics you operate in.
Language matters too. Daily business runs in Dutch, yet researchers, investors and industrial buyers often expect English. So a Ghent website usually picks a main language for its core audience, then adds the others with correct hreflang tags. In addition, the usual Belgian basics apply: your enterprise number in the legal notice and GDPR-compliant cookie handling.