Web developer in Ghent

Most sites I am asked to look at in Ghent are not badly built. They are badly prioritised — enormous effort on the parts nobody reads and none on the parts that decide whether someone gets in touch. The fix is rarely more work; it is the same work pointed somewhere else.

One thing worth knowing about building for Belgium

Belgium is genuinely trilingual and a single-language site quietly excludes a third of the market. Deciding Dutch, French and English scope before the build starts is cheaper than adding a language later.

Accessibility on a Ghent build, and why it is not optional

Keyboard navigation, real contrast ratios, form labels that are actually associated with their inputs, and alt text that describes rather than repeats. None of it is expensive when built in from the start and all of it is expensive to retrofit, which is the entire argument for doing it in the first pass.

The commercial case is simpler than the legal one: a site that a screen reader can navigate is a site that a search engine can parse, because both are reading the same semantic structure. Accessibility work and technical SEO overlap far more than either discipline usually admits, and in Ghent the same build serves both.

Retail and e-commerce in Ghent

A store is judged at the checkout, not the homepage. For Belgium that means the payment methods have to match what people actually use — Bancontact, Mollie, Stripe and SEPA Direct Debit — and the cart has to survive a slow connection and a page refresh. Most abandoned baskets are not indecision; they are a checkout that broke and gave no reason why.

The second issue is stock truth. A product page saying "in stock" when it is not costs you the sale and the customer, and the fix is unglamorous plumbing between wherever your stock actually lives and the storefront. That is worth a day of work far more than the product photography carousel is.

A mobile layout nobody tested on a real phone

Desktop-first builds fail in predictable places: a navigation menu that cannot be closed, a table forcing the whole page sideways, tap targets too close together, and a sticky banner sitting over the button. Each one is invisible on a laptop and each one loses customers.

Most visitors to a Ghent small business site arrive on a phone, so I design at phone width first and widen from there. That ordering is not a stylistic preference — it is the only way the small screen gets the attention the majority of your traffic deserves.

Hiring a developer who is not in Ghent

Currency is worth being blunt about. Quoting a Belgian client in EUR and then invoicing something else at a rate that moved is a way of raising the price quietly, and it is common enough that you should ask any overseas supplier about it directly. The number agreed at scoping is the number invoiced, and exchange-rate movement is my problem rather than yours.

What I am not claiming about Ghent

A location page is the easiest place on a website to imply something untrue, so here is the other side of it plainly:

• I have no office, postal address or phone number in Ghent
• I cannot meet you in person, and if that is a requirement you should hire locally
• I am not claiming existing clients in Ghent specifically — my live work is listed on the work page and you can check it
• Nothing on this page is a guarantee of search rankings, which no developer can honestly offer

Ghent web development — common questions

What payment methods can my Ghent checkout accept?

For Belgium: Bancontact, Mollie, Stripe and SEPA Direct Debit. The right combination depends on your average basket and your customers, and picking wrong is expensive — the payment method a buyer expects but cannot find is one of the most common reasons a checkout is abandoned at the final step.

How do you handle our customers' data under EU GDPR?

Your customer data is governed by the EU GDPR, and sending it to a developer in Pakistan is a restricted transfer. That is resolved by a DPA with EU Standard Contractual Clauses, published on this site and pre-signed before you send an enquiry — not drafted after you ask about it.

What hours will you be available to us in Ghent?

My working day lands at 06:00–15:00 in your time, which is roughly 6 hours inside a normal Ghent working day. In practice you can raise something in the morning and have it answered the same morning, and a scheduled call is easy to place at a civilised hour for both of us.

How long does a Ghent project actually take?

Three days for a business site, seven for a store, ten for a custom application. That holds because the process is fixed rather than improvised and because your content exists on day one. What stretches a build is almost never the code — it is waiting for copy, logos and photographs, so those are requested before the clock starts.

How much does a website cost in Ghent?

A business website starts from €75 and goes live in about three days. An e-commerce build starts from €140 in around seven days, and a custom application from €180 in ten. Those are starting figures — the exact number is fixed in writing once scope is agreed, and it does not move after that.

Do you actually work with businesses in Ghent?

Yes, remotely. I work with Belgian clients from Islamabad, quoting in EUR and invoicing in EUR. I have no office, address or phone number in Ghent and will not pretend otherwise. If your project needs someone physically present, hire locally — I will say so in the first reply rather than after a deposit.

Who owns the website when it is finished?

You do, completely. The domain is registered in your name, hosting sits in your account, the code lives in a repository you control, and any payment provider account is opened in your business name. Credentials are handed to you as they are created rather than at the end, so you are never locked out of your own site.

Where this page sits

This page covers Ghent. Every other town in Belgium is listed on the Belgium coverage page, and the full worldwide list is at all locations.

Before you enquire: pricing is published rather than quoted on request, how I work covers the process end to end, the work page lists live client sites you can open, and vendor information answers the procurement questions.