What Makes a Website Actually Convert
Your website’s job is to make it obvious, quickly, that you understand your customer’s problem and can solve it. That means clear positioning, and content and design that actually speaks to what someone’s looking for, not just a list of what you offer.
The best-converting websites get three things right:
- Technical foundation. Fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and the backend structure search engines and AI tools need to find and understand your site.
- Considered design. You’ve got seconds to make a first impression, and design is what people notice first. A dated or unpolished site sends visitors elsewhere.
- Content that builds trust. Your words need to establish authority and answer the questions a visitor has, so they’re ready to buy by the time they reach your contact page.
Why Web Design Matters to Your Business
As the centrepiece of your online presence, your website is expected to be the authority on your business, your story, and what you offer. Most people research a company online before buying from or contacting them. If they can’t find you, or find something outdated when they do, that’s ground lost to a competitor.
Get Your Free Website AuditOur Web Design Process
We start with discovery: your company’s story, goals, and current online presence. From there, we audit your existing site, talk to stakeholders and users where useful, and put together a detailed scope so you know exactly what’s included before work begins.
From there, we move into design: mood boards or style concepts to establish the look and feel, wireframes to map out layout and structure, then full visual design mockups. You review and give feedback at each stage before we move into development, so there are no surprises when the site actually gets built.
Curious what that looks like in practice? Take a look through our website gallery to see the range of sites we’ve designed and built for clients.
Every engagement follows our four-step approach: Discovery, Strategy, Implementation, and Measure and Optimise.
Our Web Design Services
Whether you need a first website or a redesign, our process is user-centred and includes the custom content and functionality your site needs to attract and convert visitors. You can see examples of the results in our website gallery. A typical project includes:
- Website discovery. You walk us through your company story, goals, and existing online presence.
- Full site audit. We assess what’s working and what’s missing.
- Stakeholder and user interviews. We find out what real users think of your site’s usability.
- Detailed scope of work. A project proposal covering every deliverable, so there’s no ambiguity later.
- Domain and hosting setup. We help purchase or transfer domains and hosting.
- Mood boards and wireframes. We establish the look and feel, then map out layout and information architecture, before any visual design begins.
- Keyword research. Using our SEO tools, we build the keyword foundation your content will be written around.
- WordPress development, built to current standards. We follow best practices and technical requirements to meet accessibility and legal standards.
- SEO-optimised content. Our copywriters write and optimise your content so customers, and AI tools, can find you.
- Ongoing SEO and marketing. We can develop a strategy for what comes after launch, or run it for you.
Why Choose Out-Smarts for Web Design
Designing Websites Since 2008
Vancouver-based, we’ve been building websites for clients across Canada since 2008, working primarily in WordPress and staying current as design standards, accessibility requirements, and AI search all evolve.
SEO First, Not Second
We build your search foundation before we build the site around it, not the other way around, so your new site doesn’t lose the visibility your old one had.
Accessibility Is Standard, Not an Add-On
We build every site to WCAG standards from the start, so it works properly regardless of how someone accesses it, not as a checkbox added at the end.
A Full Approach
Performance depends on many moving parts. We test all of them, design, function, accessibility, and technical setup, before your site goes live.
Fanatical Customer Service
We believe a job worth doing is worth doing right, and we build relationships that outlast a single project.
Budget-Scoped, Not Fixed-Tier
Every website package is scoped to what you actually need, not a one-size template, so you’re not paying for functionality you’ll never use.
Frequently Asked Questions About Web Design
Do you only build in WordPress?
It’s our primary platform and where most of our experience sits, but we’ll tell you honestly if a different platform is a better fit for what you need.
Will a redesign hurt our search rankings?
Not if it’s planned properly. We build SEO into the redesign process from the start specifically to prevent the traffic drop that happens when a site is redesigned without it.
We need our site to meet accessibility requirements. Can you help with that?
Yes, this is one of our core areas of experience. We build to WCAG standards as standard practice, not as a separate add-on service.
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What Our Clients Say
Out Smarts has been great to work with. Friendly, professional and affordable. Could not ask for more. Mhairi in particular is a joy to work with.
Creating a website that was more accessible to the people we serve was extremely important to us. Mhairi and her team were incredibly helpful in supporting us to realize this vision, guiding us through the process and translating the technical aspects of website accessibility so we could make informed decisions.
Working with Mhairi and her team at Out-Smarts made our web redesign process super low-stress. Their approach was thorough, they were very responsive, and they really understood what we were looking for and delivered.