WEBSITE DESIGN PROJECTS

Looking for a Kelowna web design company? We’ll spare you the long and boring sales pitch about how great we think we are. These days, new technology makes building a website much easier than it used to be. Website design certainly isn’t rocket science, but because you’re reading this, chances are you still find the thought of building one on your own a daunting task.

We promise not to make any of those painful faces when estimating your next project in an attempt to inflate our rates. As all of our past clients will tell you, we’ll over-deliver on all of your expectations, and portray your brand messaging the right way. Our websites are simple, elegant and very affordable. We’re a locally owned and operated Kelowna web design company and we love helping small Okanagan businesses succeed.

All of our website design projects come backed with an unconditional 60-day warranty. Our warranty ensures that your site is compatible across the many platforms your visitors will utilize to access it, that all pages will load quickly, all menus and links are functional, and the many systems on your website are running as smoothly as they were the first day of launch.

Website Design Process

Our free consultation will ensure we aren’t guessing at your needs. We want to know why you’re developing (or re-developing) a website and what you have planned to get maximum return on investment. We can help provide a plan that makes sense for your specific business while working within your budget. Selling a product or service through e-commerce? Looking to generate leads or promote brand awareness? A good website should generate revenue and not just look pretty.

The development stage is where we stitch together your action plan and ensure you have the best chance at success. A new site may require several critical elements, such as written content, useful custom design elements, or images that help illustrate your product messaging. Above all else, we’ll want to optimize your website for keywords (SEO) that will help potential customers find your business. A website void of good content and visitor traffic is a waste of kilobytes.

Now that we understand your goals, strategy and action plan, it’s time to bring your vision to life. Depending on your specific needs, we’ll be able to conceptualize your design goals through innovative mockups and design revision rounds. Your new website should be everything you dreamed it would be while portraying your brand image in the best possible light.

With tears in our eyes we christen thee! But before any of that exciting launch stuff happens, our team will conduct several usability tests, ensuring your website is compatible with the many screen resolution settings and mobile web browsers. Post launch, we sit down with you and give you “the rundown,” ensuring that you understand how to modify and update your website’s content all by yourself.

Once we get the nod from you to start on your project, we will have specific questions around your online goals and expectations. Understanding what role your website will play in your day-to-day business will be a good place for us to start. All of our website designs are mobile friendly and are fully compatible across all current and popular internet browsers, such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, or pretty much any other browser in the known universe. While not all businesses are cut from the same cloth, our web design portfolio page is a great place to get some inspiration for layout ideas, content and colour schemes.

Search Engine Friendly

Web crawlers, spiders and bots -oh my! We know a great website is nothing without traffic. All of our website designs are automatically constructed using the latest search engine optimization (SEO) structure at launch date, based on marketable keywords you provide us during the content implementation process. Don’t know what keywords you should be targeting? We can help with that too, just ask.

Whether you’re marketing your website locally in Kelowna, the Okanagan or worldwide, if you suspect your industry is unusually competitive and are launching a brand new website, you may find it tougher reaching top ranking positions for specific product keywords. In some cases, we recommend investing in a Google AdWords campaign until your site gains more natural authority and begins to climb the ranks. You can customize Google AdWords campaigns to target specific geographical areas, followed by keywords, for example, “Kelowna web design,” or choose broadly searched and more generic keywords. Your Google AdWords pricing will depend on competition level, in addition to your website’s own keyword relevancy for each search query, therefore, good content and a well optimized website design will play an important role for this type of internet marketing activity.

Mobile & Responsive Designs

Here’s an interesting statistic that may (or may not) surprise you. As of 2012, Canada exceeded 20-million cell phone users aged 13 and older, and 8-million of those were smartphones. When we combine this with the large number of tablets already in use (1 in 4 Canadians now own a tablet), not to mention how affordable tablets have become, we can certainly understand how mobile internet browsing has grown exponentially over the last few years.

Still, many businesses overlook these statistics when planning their web design projects, and often consider mobile compatibility a secondary priority, if it’s even on their radar at all. Understanding how mobile users will interact with your Website on a 3.5″ screen, for example, should be a critical design planning element, and we recommend asking your web designer specifically about mobile compatibility or responsive layouts.

WordPress Orientation & Support

So you finally have your website built, it’s everything you dreamed of, but wait – you want to make a few changes to some of the content, or perhaps you feel inspired enough to add a couple of pages -how do you do that? Managing and regularly updating content on your website will go a long way in improving your user experience and ensuring that you are using your site as an effective web marketing tool.

For this reason, all of our projects include a 30-minute CMS (content management system) orientation and a 60-day warranty period, designed to help beginners understand how to interact with their website’s back end. After all, simple updates and content changes shouldn’t be met with long waits and costly hourly rates.

Does Every Business Need a Website?

Every web developer will tell you the answer to that question is easily “yes”. Yet, a website won’t make or break every business model and there are many examples in Kelowna of thriving businesses that don’t have a web presence at all. Think of all of the shops you frequent and products that you purchase, without ever having looked these up online.

In some other cases, a business can certainly get by or do reasonably well without having a website, but may be missing additional revenue opportunities that are significant. Having a website is a great way to make contact with new clients, generate leads, and ultimately sales. Whether your site is old and doesn’t convert browsers into buyers, or you have no online presence whatsoever, strengthening this marketing arm is a big plus and if executed the right way and can be a huge competitive advantage.

Consider a website as a means to retain your existing clientele, at very minimum. According to Statistics Canada, the average business will lose 15% of its customer base each and every year. Some of your clients decide they’ve had enough of you and go to your competitor; some leave your coverage area; while others have a change in lifestyle and no longer need your product or service, and yes, some even pass away. Because Canadian business owners are constantly battling to minimize this inevitable loss, paddling upstream to show revenue growth beyond this gap can be that much tougher. Opening new doors for new and existing clients to access your business and information becomes even more critical.