cgWerks

cgWerks offers a range of services focused on the needs of real businesses and organizations.

If you are already familiar with managing a web site, but need occasional technical assistance and would like better web hosting, we provide the support and training necessary for a robust and successful Website. We also help you understand and approach online marketing opportunities with which you might not already be involved.

We use WordPress to maximize flexibility and ease of use, while decreasing maintenance and implementation time. Most people familiar with word-processors can make updates to the content of the site with just a little training.

If you would rather keep your focus on your business and your clients (or feel you lack the above expertise), we pride ourselves in providing full-service web design, site management, and Internet presence guidance. We handle as little, or as much, as your needs require. Notice a desired Site change on your way to the airport? Call or e-mail and we’ll take care of it.

But, full-service means more than this in the context of your Web presence. We’re always thinking of ways you can increase your influence in the online world: be it better connecting through social media, new Website features, or starting a podcast, we’ll suggest a strategy and guide you through the process.

As mentioned above, we typically use a content management system known as WordPress to construct and maintain your website. Many believe WordPress is just for bloggers, but this is a misperception. It is actually the world’s leading content management system, or CMS. WordPress offers many advantages over a set of static web pages.

Dynamic content – Probably the most important advantage is that the content is not static. WordPress makes it easy keep content fresh and change the layout or structure as needed.

User empowerment – WordPress makes it relatively easy to involve end users in the process. It provides a word-processor like interface to edit or create content. Even structural site changes become greatly simplified with WordPress.

Responsive design – This is a term for a type of web design and web-serving technology which adapts the content to the device it is being viewed on. In other words, whether people are viewing your site on their home computer, a tablet, or a smart-phone, they will get an optimized view of your site on their device. A good responsive WordPress theme helps maintain this highly desired characteristic across your entire Site.

Extendability – WordPress has an impressive collection of ‘plugins’ available to extend its capabilities. Whether it is some custom way of displaying content or an e-commerce shopping system, chances are there is an off-the-shelf solution available, dramatically reducing implementation time and cost.

SEO (search engine optimization) – For your site to be found, it is important that it appear near the top of the list on popular search engines such as Google for relevant search terms. Think about your own web-browsing… how many times do you go beyond the first few pages of search results, if even past the first page? WordPress increases your probability of achieving this by making the creation of new content easier (relevant content is king for SEO), but also assists in adding the proper data (called meta-data) to your site that the search engines look for. We implement the best SEO plugins and guide you in optimizing your content.

SMO/SSO (social media optimization) – With the proliferation of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc., it has also become very important that appropriate content from your site be posted and linked to your social media presence on the Internet. We also utilized special WordPress plugins to assist in this task, as well as guide you in how to utilize social media sites in your overall on-line presence. This includes coaching on using technologies such as video (YouTube and Vimeo, etc) or podcasting to support existing clients or reach potential new ones.

Maybe you don’t have a website yet, or want to redesign the one you have. We’ll work with you to make that happen, including:

• proper planning for site structure
• user experience
• visual appearance of the site
• assistance in gathering content
• transition (technical and logistical)

This is what we are talking about when we speak of web design. It is more than just how the sites looks.

That said, we realize the look can be subjective, and that there are designers out there with more or differing talents from our own. We think our work is pretty good, but if you want something different, we’ll happily work with your artists and designers. ⁽⁵⁾So long as they are tech-savvy enough to realize that sometimes technology needs to constrain artistic freedom.

Web hosting is typically overlooked or under-appreciated. That’s probably because it is the invisible aspect (most only think about the web design aspect, until something goes wrong with the hosting), but also due to the number of inexpensive solutions being advertised. You shouldn’t have to understand all the details… that’s probably why you are here. But, we do think you should understand that not all hosting is equal, and that it does affect your site and business.

First, it needs to be fast. Customers quickly leave slow sites! ⁽⁸⁾I recently heard that for every second of load time, you lose 7% of your audience. Podcast Master Class -What Would You Change If You Started Again?

It needs to be reliable. This includes the site being there when your customer is (site monitoring, protection against attacks, etc.), as well as good backup and testing functionality (ie. you don’t want your clients to see when that new e-commerce plugin trashes your front page).

It needs to be robust. You don’t want your site to choke up right when you’re finally getting exposure through some major media outlet.

We’ve found a solution we feel perfectly meets these requirements, and we’re happy to share the details (in fact, we encourage you to look!)… or you’re welcome to just trust our expertise and enjoy.

Some businesses and organizations just need a simple website – some pages and maybe a blog section – at the very start; most soon need more. It might be adding forms to collect information or make requests. Maybe you need a price estimator for your services. How about a map to display all your locations or provide directions? Then you decide to put your product catalog online and setup a customer-service portal or a membership site.

We decided to start including some of these common features and add-in tools with our service. This ends up saving you quite a bit of money.

Our current collection of included tools delivers an initial savings of over $800 USD ⁽⁹⁾We display these amounts in USD because most of them are services or products sold in USD. However, we bill clients in CAD, so the savings are even greater for Canadians., and annual savings of almost $700 USD. For details, see our premium web hosting page, features and tools section.

Our goal is to keep your road to online success simple and affordable. All of our plans include our Premium Web Hosting ⁽¹⁰⁾Hosting includes up to 25,000 ‘visits’ per month (with an additional charge of $1 per 1000 additional visits) being billed to you on your monthly invoice. Please see our Premium Web Hosting page for more details on how this is calculated, or contact us for other options if you feel this won’t meet your Web traffic needs or budget. (this would cost you over $400 /yr. alone, and is loaded with valuable features), site maintenance, and an included amount of time for content updates or site changes (or training, marketing advice, etc.). We offer the following plans:

Marketer level plan

$1200 /yr. (CAD) | ~$933 /yr. (USD) ⁽¹¹⁾USD rate is based on current currency conversion and will vary. Billing is done in CAD, so the final USD price is determined at the time of billing.

• Premium website hosting (over $400/yr. value)

• up to 2 hours of service included each month. ($1440/yr. value.) ⁽¹²⁾Does not roll-over or store-up from month to month. Some portion of this time each month will be used for technical site maintenance; typically 15-30 minutes. It will be listed on your monthly invoice along with other time and expenses.

• collection of included plugins and tools delivers an initial savings of over $800 USD ⁽¹³⁾We display these amounts in USD because most of them are services or products sold in USD. We bill clients in CAD. , and an annual savings of nearly $700 USD.

This is our recommended plan for the average business or organization. It provides a realistic amount of time to help keep your website fresh and begin to engage social media. Of course a lot more can be accomplished if you (or we) put in extra time, but this plan enables us to get and keep you on the right path to a successful online presence.

Don’t think of this as simple hosting and technical maintenance – this is more like a “keep your business awesome on the Web” fee. We want to spend our time optimizing your online communication with your current and potential clients, not chasing after the next sales call. This win-win scenario so important, we designed our business model around it.

Maintenance level plan

$800 /yr. (CAD) | ~$622 /yr. (USD) ⁽¹⁴⁾USD rate is based on current currency conversion and will vary. Billing is done in CAD, so the final USD price is determined at the time of billing.

• Premium website hosting (over $400/yr. value)

• up to 1 hour of service included each month. ($720/yr. value.) ⁽¹⁵⁾Does not roll-over or store-up from month to month. Some portion of this time each month will be used for technical site maintenance; typically 15-30 minutes. It will be listed on your monthly invoice along with other time and expenses.

• collection of included plugins and tools delivers an initial savings of over $800, and an annual savings of nearly $700.

This is our recommended plan for a business or organization that has internal Website ‘know-how’ or dedicated staff to manage and update your online presence. It provides enough time for us to preform maintenance and give your staff guidance.

This plan can also work for the business that wants a well-maintained Website, but doesn’t intended to change it often or engage social media. (ex: a small local restaurant on a tight budget) While we strongly encourage everyone to keep the content fresh and engage social media, we understand that not everyone is going to do this. This is a plan for those folks.

Charity / non-profit plan

We offer a discounted rate for charities and non-profits. ⁽¹⁶⁾Note:  We don’t necessarily require that you are a registered charity (aside from tax implications), if you can demonstrate, to our satisfaction, your benefit to the community. You do a lot for our community; we want to help you do it at the best rates we can. We reserve the right to determine if we are able to do so based on our workload. Please contact us for more information.

Hourly pricing

Our hourly rate for site work beyond (or outside of) the above plan is $60/hr (CAD) | ~$47/hr (USD). ⁽¹⁷⁾USD rate is based on current currency conversion and will vary. Billing is done in CAD, so the final USD price is determined at the time of billing. ⁽¹⁸⁾If a particular project requires 3rd-parties to be involved, the hourly or project rate will be determined by that 3rd party, and may be different from the above hourly rate. Note: Our hourly rate to charities is also reduced. Please contact us for details.

Project pricing

We can also provide project-based pricing for a clearly defined project. Contact us for details.