1. We always suggest beginning with a brief (up to one hour) phone or video consultation (which you can book online). This is to make sure we’re a good fit for working together and go over any questions you may have.
2. Once we decide we’re the right company to help you accomplish your marketing goals the process varies depending on what it is we’re doing for you. For a corporate branding or website project we’ll have you complete a questionnaire followed by an interview via video conferencing to help us get “in your headspace”. For a video or other marketing project we’ll have a video meeting to discuss and plan the project.
3. We have simple contracts that spell out exactly what you’ll pay and what and when we’ll deliver. We ask for a 50% deposit, with the remainder due in tranches according to milestones that are met. In the case of Website-as-a-Service plans, you will create a user account and register a credit card to use for the monthly subscription. We’ll charge the first month’s payment when we begin building your site.

There are the obvious benefits that come with our Website-as-a-Service all-inclusive plan that scales as your business grows, takes care of everything related to your website and doesn’t require a huge capital expenditure. Beyond that, it’s our experience in many aspects of traditional and digital marketing that give us an edge. Especially when it comes to copywriting, and distilling complex messaging down to its simplest form so it’s easily digestible and highly impactful.

Copywriting is an essential element of effective marketing. It’s the art and science of strategically delivering words to get customers to take action.

When we create your website, we don’t require you to supply all content and take it verbatim as we build it into your website. Rather, we become your in-house marketing consultants, helping you tell your story with over 25 years of branding and copywriting experience. You supply the core story elements (we’ll help by extracting it from you and your team) and we’ll shape it into hard-hitting content that will help you get the results you’re looking for.

Having this multi-disciplined experience is what you get with an agency rather than a freelancer. As a “virtual agency” we provide this, but without the expensive overhead of an agency, which gets our customers great bang-for-the-buck.

Here are seven more good reasons to consider working with us. You can also take a look at some client testimonials and peruse our portfolio for the kind of work we do.

No—just the first month’s payment. The cost of everything is included in the monthly rate. For example, if you want us to design, build and maintain a 5-page website, your monthly payment is CA$235, and you’ll pay that in advance.

Your monthly WaaS cost depends solely on the size of the website.

A two year minimum commitment is required.

If you cancel prior to the two-year term expiration, then (just like a cellular service plan) you’ll need to buy out the contract (pay the remaining payments that you committed to).

If you cancel after the two-year term, you just need to provide 30 days notice.

In any case, we’ll provide you an archive of your website so that it can be installed on a different web server, and you’ll now be responsible for the cost of any premium plugins used, if you want to keep them licensing them.

Only if you want to add any features that aren’t included in the WaaS plan. The WaaS plan includes everything to design, build, launch, and maintain a modern, fast, SEO-friendly, future-proof website. You’ll only pay your quoted monthly rate, which varies only by the number of pages that make up the site.

Custom development, custom integration with external systems, or functionality that requires a plugin costing more than $30/year. We’ll always try to find the most cost-effective solution, and even these do not necessarily require extra charges (but probably). Talk to us about what you have in mind.

This is a big point of differentiation between WaaS and sites built by other companies. You don’t need just a beautiful website, you need a professionally branded site that connects with your target audience and converts visitors into prospects and leads into sales.

Typically creating the website content is a collaborative effort, as you know your story better than anyone, and you likely have copy that’s been created in the past that makes a good starting point. But we’re experts at simplifying your message and distilling the value you provide your customers so they “get it”. To that end, we’ll take your content and offer suggestions to maximize its impact.

If you don’t really have your story and your value (other than in your own head) in written form or feel it could benefit from professional analysis and revision, we can spearhead the development of your key messaging to ensure your unique value really shines and that you get the results you’re looking for, prior to designing your website or developing other marketing programs. This a a separate, fixed-rate service.

No problem! The monthly cost will increase as soon as we begin design of the new page and your next payment will reflect the new page. If you add any new pages during the last 6 months of the 2-year term, the term is extended by 3 months for every page added.

It’s possible that we’ll increase the price at some point, but your monthly per-page rate is guaranteed to stay the same for a minimum of two years.

Sure, we can do that.

• Initial website design and development for a custom, professional, corporate website depends on many things, but $3,000 to $5,000 for a small business website is typical.
• Stock images $10 to $250 each (one-time)
• Domain name registration and renewal – $15 annually
• Software plugins and themes – $200 to $600 annually
• Hosting, maintenance and security – $150 to $500 annually
• Content & design updates – $400 to $2,500 annually

We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express for monthly plans. We also accept Interac e-transfer payments if you’re pre-paying for a whole year.

We limit the clients we take on per month to give your project the time and attention it deserves. It typically takes 3-4 weeks, including a full quality assurance review and testing on multiple devices and browsers. E-commerce sites generally take longer, so figure 6-8 weeks.

We use Wordpress almost exclusively (as does 42% of the public Internet!). Other website platforms have their place, especially for solopreneurs and freelancers who want to develop their own websites (and have the marketing skills to develop a great looking and high-performing site), but for the clients that we generally work with, Wordpress is a better option for several reasons (cost, flexibility, SEO performance are just 3 of them).

For e-commerce sites, we combine Wordpress with Woocommerce (again for cost and flexibility reasons), but occasionally work with Shopify if and when it makes sense for a customer’s goals.

Our monthly pricing model allows us to manage our own infrastructure and software solutions. This keeps our reliance on third-parties to an absolute minimum and allows for a true end-to-end solution. You’ll never get a random bill from a company you didn’t know about (seriously, this happens a lot!) We’ll try not to tell you “the problem isn’t on our end” and point the finger elsewhere (unless it absolutely, truly is!) We can address just about every issue within a single phone call or email.

All you need to do is book a phone or video call online so we can discuss your project and see if we’re a good fit for each other. There’s no charge for this initial consultation.

The cost for websites ranges wildly, from $1,000 to $10M+. Crazy but true.

Many of the marketing websites you visit everyday cost $100k or more.
The best high-performing, lead generating websites take hundreds of hours to plan, design and build.

Many people asking about the true cost of a website have been surprised in the past by unexpected invoices from other web design firms.

Predictable WaaS monthly payments means no surprises.

And because of our low overhead “un-agency” model, the net value is extremely competitive, providing you large agency results for small freelancer prices.

No, and most likely your ranking will improve as we build a better website infrastructure and make your site easier for search bots to index.

A search-driven redesign includes the following:

• Careful preservation of keyphrase relevance on top organic pages
• A documented strategy for URL structure and redirects
• A solid technical SEO foundation

Some businesses are slow to act and it shows. The average lifespan of a website is 2 years and 7 months, and while It’s possible a website will still accomplish your goals for 4 or more years, you don’t want to be the last in your industry to redesign your site.

Design has a dramatic impact on your visitors’ impression of your business. It drives their perception of the value (and price) of your services. Look at your competitors’ websites. Now, look at your site.

Keep you website fresh and competitive. A redesign positions your brand for the future. A website is not a static entity—it should continually evolve as your company grows, and there should be no barriers to this.

With our Website-as-a-Service plan, your website is always current, without the expensive redesign cost. We include all changes, from minor content and layout changes to full redesigns in the plan.

A blog is extremely important for several SEO-related reasons:

Keeps Your Website Fresh

A blog allows you to consistently update your website with new and pertinent information about your business or the industry that you are in. Google favours sites that are fresh and current, and continually updated websites are an important indicator to Google of relevance when ranking your site in search results. It also gives the search engine algorithms more reason to index your website more often, keeping it more on their radar over time.

Increases average time spent on pages

The time people spend on a website page is another SEO ranking factor. Google’s priority is to provide users with the information they’re looking for (so they’ll keep coming back to use Google again). When someone who does a search clicks on a link, finds it unhelpful and immediately leaves to go back to the search page, this indicates to Google that this result wasn’t as helpful.

Blog articles, being largely text-based with upwards of 500 to 1,000 words on average, will typically keep visitors on the page for longer than other pages. Someone who comes to your website from a blog post that shows up in the search results is going to have more reason to stick around for a while and read the whole thing than someone who lands on a page with less text or information.

And that becomes even more the case with longer, more comprehensive posts. SEO researchers have found that longform blog posts tend to perform better than shorter ones—the average first-page result on Google is nearly 2,000 words long.

Helps you target SEO optimized long-tail keywords

In building your main website, our focus is on selecting keywords most pertinent to your business. For instance, if you’re in the electric bicycle market, we strive for a page one ranking for “electric bicycles.”

But since there are hundreds of ebike brands, achieving a top-ten spot is challenging due to intense competition in SEO. A more viable approach for most brands is to identify and target more detailed, niche-specific keywords that potential customers are searching for.

These are called long-tail keywords and they’re extremely important for any SEO strategy – half of all searches are for terms that are four words or longer.

These specific, often longer phrases are known as long-tail keywords and are vital to an effective SEO strategy since they make up half of all searches, typically extending to four words or more. Integrating them seamlessly into product pages can be tricky, but they are ideal for targeting in blog posts. For example, a store specializing in ebikes might feature blog content on “best bikes for cold weather” or “which ebike offers the longest range?”

Targeting these less trafficked, but more focused searches may not pull the same volume as “electric bikes,” yet they attract a more defined demographic of cycling enthusiasts. Achieving a first-page ranking for these niche topics can significantly boost traffic compared to a lower ranking for more generalized, competitive keywords.

Provides opportunities for internal linking

A significant aspect of SEO involves link building, and internal links are the most accessible type because you can create them yourself. Not incorporating internal links that guide users from one page to another is a basic yet common SEO oversight.

While your website’s main pages may offer some opportunities for internal linking, the real potential unfolds with regular blog post publishing. As your site grows with additional pages covering various related topics, you create numerous chances to interlink these pages naturally.

Each time you establish such a link, you have the opportunity to use specific anchor text, helping to clarify for Google the content and context of the linked page. This strategy enhances the page’s relevance to your target keywords as perceived by the search engine’s algorithm.

Helps you connect with your audience

Blog articles give you the opportunity to show that you are an expert in your specific industry by posting articles about specific topics that are related to your business.

When your audience engages with a compelling post, they’re likely to share it, increasing traffic, revisiting for more content, and potentially subscribing to your email list. High traffic and returning visitors signal to Google that your site is valuable, enhancing your authority in its algorithm.

This not only benefits your SEO but is fundamentally crucial for your website’s success. Having visitors from your target demographic who connect with your site and become loyal followers holds more intrinsic value than securing the top position on Google. After all, the primary aim of vying for that coveted spot is to attract and retain such an engaged and dedicated audience.

Absolutely! The core of web design is brand messaging (communicating your brand’s values) paired with user experience needs (what your customer expects from your website). An agency skilled in developing brands has the closest connection to your values and understands what your customers need to be satisfied.

If the agency designed your brand, they’ve done the work to help you discover your brand’s essence and who it best serves. Because of this deep understanding, a brand agency will be able to make strategic decisions about how to best bring your business to life in your website in a way that properly represents you and supports your customer’s needs.

Sometimes businesses choose to hire one firm to design their brand, another to manage their advertising, and yet another to design their website. The problem with this approach is that everyone will focus only on their individual project with no one looking out for your overall brand consistency. The more firms you work with, the more fragmented your brand will become. This results in confusing your customer base and potentially decreasing sales. Customers are drawn to clarity and not confusion.

We are brand specialists and your website design is a huge part of your brand’s identity. It is also likely to be the first introduction a potential customer has with your services or products. If you already have a brand, are refining one, or are starting new, your web design is where you can convey that brand. It’s an opportunity to show your customers how you do business, what makes you different, and, above all, a place for your customers to be delighted with their initial experience with you.

We wrote an article on this topic here.

For the purposes of counting the pages which contribute to the monthly price, a “page” is any unique layout that a website visitor could see. Often many pages share the same layout, with different content dynamically swapped in (good examples are blog article pages or e-commerce product pages).

All pages sharing the same layout contribute only one page to the count. For example, ALL blog pages on the same site together contribute only one page to the total count. So as to encourage having a blog (to obtain great SEO benefits) we don’t count the main blog archive page.

For example, a website with a Home page, About Us page, Services page, Contact Us page, and a blog with 28 articles would count as a 5-page site: Home (1) + About Us (1) + Services (1) + Contact Us (1) + Blog Archive (0) + 28 blog articles (1) = 5.

Yes! Royalty-free stock photography from our licensed library of over 12 million images is included, and so is the time to find the RIGHT images to best convey your story (this is a far larger expense than the images themselves, and one which many web developers cheap out on).

It doesn’t include the cost to license from ultra-premium vendors (ex. Getty or Stocksy).

It also doesn’t include custom photography, but if needed, we have a professional photographer on our team and can definitely handle this for you.

Never, ever. Basing a website on a pre-made theme, even if it’s tweaked with your brand colours and typography, is the easiest way to get a bland website that looks just like thousands of others. That’s just not our style. We want you to stand out, So we’ll always custom design your site to reflect your true brand. We’ll develop every aspect of it to best tell your story and ensure the value of your offer is conveyed most efficiently.