Your website is often the first real impression your audience has of your organization. Associations, companies, charities, unions, NGOs, and coalitions like yours trust spark* to design, build and maintain their websites everyday. Because we build websites that are actually easy to use, help you organize, improve reputation, increase awareness, change minds, and activate your audience.
50
milliseconds
Number of milliseconds it takes for people to form an opinion of your website.
73%
of people trust the information on a website over other sources.
54.8%
of global website traffic occurred on mobile devices in just Q1 of 2021.
48%
of people say "web design" was the number one way they determine the credibility of a business.
42%
of consumers say they’ll leave a website that poorly functions.
Beautiful
+ Functional
Our websites are designed to delight and deliver.
We also develop them to provide what you need today and to grow with you over time. A website is an important investment that should be able to scale. We focus on bringing together the best visual elements and best in class technology so that your website looks and acts the part yet is easy to edit.
Your website is a critical tool for communications, advocacy and engagement, we get that, and have the experience to help you elevate it.
Websites that grow with you
A good website is one that delivers value today. A better site is scalable enough to meet your needs tomorrow.
That's our philosophy when it comes to websites. We're not fans of just simply "re-skinning" your old site to make it look fresh, we want to work closely with you to build site that is truly functional and forward looking. Even if all you need is just a new look, our goal is always to build your site into something that you can do more, better things with today and into the future.
Ease of Use
Our websites are designed to be easy to use, without needing a computer science degree.
You are busy. Your web team might be a team of two... or one. You have a comms team but no one is a coder. Don't worry, we totally get you. We build websites using industry best practices and modern Content Management Systems (CMS) to deliver a web experience that is rich, effective and easy to edit, without the need for special developer skills (...or any dev skills really). If you know how to use a word processor, you'll love using our websites.
From simple interfaces and helpful features like automatic photo cropping and text formatting, to giving you the creative flexibility to layout pages the way you want without having to pick every colour or font, and still maintain your brand. We build websites that are easy to use, and easy to keep up to date.
And for those rare situations where you could use an extra hand (maybe you are away on a conference or vacation) and you need us to make an update, we're happy to help. We take pride in our work, and stand by it over time.
We build with the best tech.
Wordpress, CraftCMS, Drupal, we've built with them all, and for us the best tool is the one that best meets your needs.
We have extensive experience with legacy platforms like WordPress and Drupal, and even more expertise with modern solutions like CraftCMS. We have built sites using turnkey solutions like SquareSpace and Webflow, and we have developed custom applications built from scratch for some really effective and unique solutions.
We've designed and built sites of nearly every scale — from massive corporate solutions and robust applications to one-page wonders that activate audiences, we've done a tonne, and we're always up for a challenge.
At the end of the day what we recommend and build always stems from our experience and understanding of your needs. You’ll always get our best tech, and best advice.
Our Process
Building a new site or refreshing an old one can be daunting. That's why we've designed a process that builds confidence and delivers results.
From old content that has to be wrangled and multiple stakeholders each with their own vision, to target audiences that are hard to define, or members who are begging for more value. Our process is designed to be inclusive yet very strategic. At each stage you will have what you need to satisfy your stakeholders so that you can lead them through the website project like a champ.
Our process unpacks complexity and makes every step achievable so that everyone around the table supports and feels empowered by the new website.
Maintenance + Hosting
Welcome to flexible, hassle-free, hands-off hosting!
We know that hosting is complicated and yet absolutely critical. We know that websites are also very technical and need to be maintained — from updating and patching to security checks and reliable backups.
We also know that you don't have time to worry about any of that. So we developed spark*hosting. When you build your site and host with us, we take care of all of that technical stuff for you, effectively and reliably.
In fact, we're so confident you are going to love our hosting, every website we build comes with one free year of hosting, and with our hosting comes all the technical support your website needs to keep it humming along safely and securely.
And if you already have your own hosting provider or IT infrastructure, that's no problem. We will never hold your website hostage — we'll help facilitate the transfer of your site to a 3rd party host if you require, or give you the files and database (if applicable) so that you can host that site somewhere else.
Just a few websites we've built:
(Because we've literally designed and built hundreds of them!)
Native Women's Association of Canada
The Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) was looking to take an old Wordpress website and completely rethink and revamp it. spark* worked closely with project leaders and internal stakeholders to understand the needs of the organization and the goals they had as an organization. The resulting site was designed and built from the ground up to be highly and easily editable with minimal to no coding expertise.We worked closely with the NWAC comms team to develop a novel way to display the depth of material on their site in a clever and engaging way. The site is hosted with spark* and handles hundreds of visitors per week, and at peak times handles hundreds of visitors per day, without issue.
Canadian Chamber of Marine Commerce
The Canadian Chamber of Marine Commerce (CMC) needed a new website that not only simplified and focussed their advocacy message but also had a member-only section where CMC members could access customized dashboards with internal content and messaging. Today the website which is hosted with spark*, handles hundreds of visitors per week and helps CMC build the relationship with their member organizations.
Ottawa Board of Trade: "Build Up Ottawa"
The Ottawa Board of Trade (OBOT) was looking to develop a campaign the help raise important issues for Ottawa businesses during the municipal election. spark* helped create an advertising campaign around “Build Up Ottawa” — part of this campaign was to quickly built a website that could house the campaign materials, but also be responsive to candidate announcements and the needs of the business community during the course of the election. The site was designed, built and deployed very rapidly and was robust in handling strong traffic during the election and is hosted with spark*
Mark Sutcliffe Campaign Website
spark* was the solve provider of web services to the successful campaign to elect Mark Sutcliffe as Ottawa’s newest mayor in 16 years. With speed and flexibility, spark* designed and built a website that was easy to navigate, edit and update, and displayed information in a logical and engaging way. The site evolved as the campaign progressed, and saw immense traffic over the course of the election. Hosted with spark*, the site at peak was easily handling several thousand visitors per day (several hundred per hour) to deliver critical information to the electorate, while providing critical services like supporter engagement and online campaign donation management.
