Journal
Notes on rebuilds, local-business websites, and what we’re learning as we ship.
Short essays from the studio. Published when we have something to say, not on a schedule.
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Electrician pages that sell panel upgrades and EV chargers
Homeowners researching an EV charger, a panel upgrade, or a knob-and-tube rewire read for weeks before they call, and most electrician sites hand them a list of services and a phone number. The pages that answer their questions, and the licence details that earn their trust.
The plumbing pages that book jobs between emergencies
Burst pipes make the phone ring, but water heaters, backwater valves, and drain work keep a plumbing company busy the rest of the year. The pages that win that steady work, and how to build them without burying the emergency call.
What a website redesign costs you in time
The invoice is the part of a redesign everyone plans for. The hours it takes from you are the part that decides whether it launches on time: where they go, which ones only you can spend, and how to keep them small.
Freelancer, agency, or studio: when each is the right call
The three usual ways to get a website built fail in three different ways. What a freelancer, an agency, and a studio are each good at, where each one tends to break down, and the questions that tell you which one your project needs.
WordPress vs a custom build in 2026
WordPress still runs a large share of small-business websites, and for some of them it is the right tool. What it is good at, what it costs to keep running, and when a custom build is the better call for a business that lives on leads.
Squarespace alternatives when you've outgrown the template
Squarespace is a good place to start and an awkward place to grow. The signs a business has outgrown its template, the four real alternatives, and how to move without losing the search traffic the old site spent years earning.
Wix vs a custom website for a business that needs leads
Wix is rarely what costs a business its leads. The four places where it starts to, what a custom build changes for a business that lives on calls and quote requests, and what you give up when you leave the editor behind.
Why your furnace page should be live in July
A page published the week the cold snap arrives has no ranking history and loses to one that has been live since summer. Seasonal content and seasonal publishing are not the same thing, and confusing them costs contractors their best weeks.
The service area page most trades sites get wrong
One page listing forty towns ranks for none of them. A page per neighbourhood gets flagged as spam. The level in between is where local rankings actually live, and almost nobody builds it.
Do Ottawa businesses need a bilingual website?
No law requires it, which makes this a market decision rather than a compliance one. How to work out from your own data whether French pays for your business, and what building it properly actually involves.
What an accounting firm's website needs before tax season
The searches happen in February. The pages have to be live by September to rank for them. What to build, why full-service accounting firm ranks for nothing, and the intake step that decides how the season actually goes.
What a realtor's website should do that the brokerage template cannot
Your brokerage page looks like four hundred colleagues' pages, ranks for nothing, and disappears the day you change firms. What an agent's own site is actually for, and the four pages that do the work.
What happens to your website if you stop paying your agency
Four assets decide whether you can walk away from a web agency: the domain, the hosting, the site itself, and your analytics. How to find out who holds each one, and what a clean handover actually looks like.
Do you have to pay monthly for a website?
Four different things get bundled into a monthly website fee, and only two of them are unavoidable. How to tell which one you are paying for, and how to spot the arrangement where you never stop paying and never own anything.
What actually drives the cost of a small business website
Why two quotes for the same website can differ by a factor of ten, which decisions actually move the number, and the four questions that tell you what a quote really includes before you sign anything.
Your menu PDF is costing you tables
The menu is the most-wanted page on any restaurant website, and most restaurants serve it as a file built for a kitchen printer. Here is what that costs, and what a menu page should be instead.
What a med spa website needs before it can book consultations
Med spa clients research harder than almost any other local customer. Most med spa websites are built like salon brochures and lose them in the first minute. Here is what the ones that book actually do.
Will ChatGPT recommend your business?
More customers are asking AI assistants who to call instead of scrolling Google. Whether your business gets named comes down to a short list of things you can control.
Should a Canadian business use a .ca domain?
Whether a .ca domain helps you rank, what it signals to Canadian customers, when .com still makes sense, and how to own both without splitting your search authority in two.
Hiring a web designer in Calgary
What a Calgary small business should actually look for in a web studio, what local-versus-remote changes, and the five questions that separate a studio worth hiring from one that bills its time.
Do you need a bilingual website in Quebec?
If your business has a presence in Quebec, your website needs a real French version, not a Google Translate toggle. Here is what the language rules actually ask for, what counts as compliant, and how a French-first build changes the work.
Why your website isn't getting leads
If your small-business website gets visits but no calls, the cause is almost always one of nine things. Here is the order to check them in, with a plain-English test for each.
Why your business isn't showing up on Google
If you type your business name or your service into Google and you can't find yourself, the cause is one of seven things. Here is how to figure out which, in order.
Hiring a web agency in Vancouver when you're remote
Most Vancouver business owners can afford to hire any web agency in Canada, not just the ones with a Granville Street address. Here is how to evaluate a remote studio, what the time-zone gap actually costs, and which on-site visits are worth paying for.
Should a Toronto business hire a Toronto agency, or any Canadian one?
Does a Toronto small business actually need a Toronto branding agency, or will a Vancouver shop do? Here is when proximity matters and when it does not.
Hiring a web agency in Toronto: what to ask before you sign
Five questions to ask a branding agency in Toronto before you hire them. What separates a real shop from a deck-and-dashboard operation, and what the contract should say.
What converts on a dental homepage in 2026
Most dental websites lead with a stock photo of a model smiling at a dentist. Here is what actually moves new-patient bookings on a Canadian dental site, with the four homepage changes we make on every rebuild.
What a working website does for a Toronto trade business in 2026
Web design for Toronto trades in 2026: load fast on a phone, surface the call, prove the work, and feed numbers the owner actually reads. Here is what changed.
The lead-gen audit checklist for a small-business website
The exact checklist we use to audit a small-business website's lead-generation performance in five business days. Eleven questions, plain English, the same ones a working site has to answer in 2026.
Webflow versus a custom build for a Toronto trade business
Webflow is good. It is also a subscription with a ceiling. For a Toronto roofer, HVAC contractor, or paving company, here is when Webflow makes sense, when a custom build makes sense, and what owners get wrong about both.
Why most law-firm sites bury their case results
Most law-firm websites lead with adjectives and bury the case history three clicks deep. For personal-injury and immigration practices, that is the costliest mistake on the site. Here is what to put up front and how to do it within ethics rules.
HVAC sites that win the emergency call
An HVAC emergency happens at eleven on a January night. The homeowner calls the first contractor they reach. Here is what a Canadian HVAC website needs to do to be that contractor, and why most sites lose the call before the homeowner has finished scrolling.
How a roofing site should handle storm-damage calls
Storm season is the year for a residential roofer. Most roofing websites are not ready for it. Here is what a site needs to do in the seventy-two hours after a hailstorm to keep the calls landing on you, not the next roofer in the search results.
Five things a bad website quietly tells your customers
A bad small-business website doesn't just look bad. It tells the customer five specific things about whether you'll show up for the job. Most owners cannot read the signal.
The quote form tax
Every field on a quote form costs you somewhere between seven and ten percent of the submissions you would have gotten. Most small-business forms have six too many.
Rebuilds beat builds
For most small-business owners, the website doesn't need more features. It needs to actually work.
Your logo is not your brand
Small businesses hiring a branding agency often confuse a logo with a brand system. The logo is the cheap part. Here is what the rest is, and what it earns.
What a phone number is worth
For most service businesses, the phone is still where the job gets booked. The website's job is to make calling the obvious move.
Reporting at 30 and 90 days
What we measure after a rebuild ships, which numbers actually move, and what we change when the numbers do not.
Why your Wix site is fine
Most of the time, the platform is not the problem. Replace the platform first and you will ship faster. Rewrite the argument first and you will ship better.