Website Design Services

Web design and development services for brand new websites or re-building your existing website.

Whether you are looking to have a new website built for your local business or you wish to have your existing website further optimized, we can help.

With over 20 years experience in creating, building and managing a variety of websites online, we're able to craft a solution that works for your business.

Should you wish to further extend the capabilities of your site with on-going marketing or promotions, you and your team will have the ability to grow your site with new web pages, blog postings, landing pages and other lead generation tactics.

All our websites are built with WordPress, the world's most popular websites content management system, that allows for instant publishing and self-management as required.

We build websites that are optimized for content, speed and performance.

What is web design?

Web design is the process of planning, creating and presenting content, or information, about your business online.

In addition, web designers take your ideas, goals and desired visitor outcomes and make them happen on a website.

The process involves gathering information about your business, determining who the website speaks to (your audience) and deciding what outcomes (goals) you wish from your website visitors.

More than just pretty picture and images, web design is the process of crafting presentable information that your visitors can engage and act upon.

Everyone talks about content - what is content?

In simplest terms, content is the digital information or media related to your business or website.

Common examples of website content would include:

• Writes-up, summary or overviews about your business. This could include information about your business, company history, the services you provide and your service areas: locally, nationally or globally.
• Photos and images related to your business. Ideally, original or professionally-shot photography is best.
• Videos that could product training or product overviews.
• Branding assets such as logo designs, color palettes and branding suite that a professional graphic designer would have provided for you.
• Any additional digital media related to your business that could also include press releases, testimonials, industry certifications or local business associations.

What type of website do you need?

Types of websites we can build for your business or organization:

• Association & non-profit websites
• Brochure or landing page websites
• Informational websites to best present your company online
• eCommerce websites for generating sales and processing transactions
• Event-based websites
• Membership websites
• Personal or corporate blogs
• Portfolio websites
• Small business websites for local trades & services

Website Design Process

Developing a website or re-building an existing website is a process that involves a number of steps, a variety of information and information sharing to put together web pages that are reflective of your business.

Very often we get asked about our website design process or where we are at in the process of building a website.

Having a general understanding helps bridge the gap with the development or re-build of a website.

Our development process will include:

1. Digital asset discovery
2. Defining of website goals & objectives
3. Identifying your audience and who you wish to reach
4. Content inventory
5. Website develpment strategy
6. Website roles & responsibilities
7. Website analytics & metrics
8. Website marketing
9. Website management

Digital Asset Discovery

One of the very first steps in our web design process is to explore what type of online assets you may currently have.

This could include online services that you may have already signed up or registered for:

1. Domain name registatration - you may already have a domain name that is currently in use for your business. In addition, you may also be using the email address on the domain name.
2. Website hosting company - most commonly we see website hosting and domain names already registered through companies like GoDaddy, SiteGround, BlueHost or other. This is important to know because if you are targetting customers in Canada, we advise on having your website served up by a Canadian website hosting company. If your customers and clients are located in the United States, having your website hosted on an American web server is acceptable. It gets a bit more complicated if you are collecting personal or sensitive information - this can be further explored as part of our services.
3. Social media properties - if you have already set up social media accounts such as Facebook pages, Twitter handles or LinkedIn profiles, this additional information will come in handy.

Website Goals

Here we want to find out what you wish to achieve with your website - what are your business goals and how can the website help get to these goals.

Knowing your website goals and objective will help both parties quantify what success looks like.

Common website goals could include:

• More inquiries about your products or services via contact forms
• Subscriptions to your mail list
• Online sales and orders with your e-commerce website
• Higher visibility in the search engines for particular search terms (SEO)
• Better conversions from your paid ad campaigns (PPC)
• More phone calls and leads for your business

Identifying your audience

In this area we set up your ideal visitor personae; the people you wish to connect with yoru website.

Your business made be business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C), therefore having an targetted understanding of who you wish to communicate with.

An example here would be; business owners in the oilfield industry in the state of Texas or internet phone subscribers in the state of Florida, or local consumers for home renovation services throughout the Fraser Valley in British Columbia Canada.

With your website over time, we will be able to track and measure demographic data as to where your visitor are coming from with Google Analytics.

Content Inventory (Digital Assets)

The content inventory is where some business owners are challenged with.

Content could include:

• Information about your business; who you are, what products or services your provide, where you do business.
• Photographs and images related to your business. This could be photos of machinery that your manufacture, equipment you have to produce the service you provide and photos of your team or staff members.
• Videos
• PDF documents

In the content inventory stage, we review what digital assets you currently have about your business.

If you currently have a website, we will review to see what content gaps may exist based on information on your website or what you have communicated to us.

Website Development Strategy

Basically this is the plan that includes timelines and a scope of the project or statement of work (SOW).

Should there be a lot of content and information, a sitemap would be generated and if we're working with specific design directions, wireframes and mockups would be produced.

For simple websites, a website development strategy would look like:

1. Create a sitemap
2. Build web pages based on content provided
3. Attached images and photo's to web pages
4. Build functionality (contact forms, embeds, membership, etc)
5. Apply design based on branding
6. Launch to web hosting company online
7. Attach 3rd party services such as Google Anlytics, Google Search Console, Mailchimp or applications related to your business.
8. Finesse & fine-tune

Roles & Reponsibilities

This area has 2 parts and defines who does what:

1. Who is responsible for tasks related to development
2. Who will manage going forward once the website goes live online.

It could be your staff or team members that will be responsible for provide content for the website.

Once the website has launched to the web, who will manage and maintain going forward for web page content updates of changes.

Website Anlaytics

We connect all websites we build with Google Analytics immediately upon launch.

This provides key data and information over time that help you make future marketing decisions.

Website analytics provides you with:

1. Where your visitors are coming from. Sources for website traffic could include organic sources such as the search engines, paid advertising on search or social media or referral from industry related websites or blog postings.
2. User bahaviour to see if visitors have engaged with your website. Metrics here would include bounce rates, time of page and landing/exit pages.