Web developer in Vancouver: a site that takes the weekly admin off a small team
What I hand over as a web developer in Vancouver is a site that does a small team's repeat work. It answers the questions your inbox gets every week. It books appointments without a phone call, and it checks each form before it reaches you. I build it with my team in Kolkata, India.
Overview
A week of your inbox, counted
Before any design, I ask you to keep a tally for one ordinary week.
Every email asking something you've answered before gets a mark. So does every call made only to settle a time, and every form that comes back with a gap in it. At the end of the week, the marks are your page list. A question with five marks gets its own page. One with a single mark waits.
At handover, someone on your team changes a price and closes a booking date while I watch. If either one needs my help, the job isn't finished.
Share the tally early
A week's tally gives me enough to draft your page list. It's fine to send it over WhatsApp, and I'll bring the draft to our first meeting.
Side by side
What each repeated job turns into
A booking form and a price page are the two I'd build first for a small team, because each one removes a call every time it's used.
The same few questions by email
- What the site does
- A short page answers each one, linked from the menu and the contact form
Calls made only to arrange a time
- What the site does
- Online booking shows open slots and confirms by email
The price list someone asks for
- What the site does
- A price page your team edits from the dashboard
A form that comes back incomplete
- What the site does
- Required fields are checked before the form can be sent
What moves the number
What grows a booking build
Online booking is the largest single line, and the calendar it connects to sets its size.
- How many repeated questions need a page of their own
- Whether the booking form connects to a calendar your team already uses
- Deposits or payment taken when a customer books
- How many forms need their fields checked before sending
- How much of the current site's wording carries over
What a scope from me looks like
The ledger for a three-person office
Included
- A written scope: every page and feature as its own line, agreed before work starts
- Design to build, reviewed on a staging URL that stays open the whole project
- Mobile first — checked on a real phone
- Domain, hosting and every account created in your name from day one
- Online booking connected to the calendar your team uses, with email confirmations
- Basic on-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, Search Console connected
- A runbook at handover: how to edit it, what renews and when
Phase two
- Reminder emails before each appointment
- Deposits taken at the time of booking, if you want them
- Ongoing SEO once the site has traffic to read
- A maintenance plan once the site is live
- Logo and brand design, quoted separately from the build
Not doing
- Guaranteed rankings
- Answer pages published without your team's sign-off
Where this comes from
Reviews you can check
Five Canadian businesses agreed to have their reviews published on the projects page.
I lead every build myself, remotely from Kolkata, India, and every screen waits for your approval before it's published. The team works on your schedule, in your time zone.
Nearby
Related pages for Canadian businesses
Contractor and supplier sites with every account in the owner's name are the Calgary page's subject; neighbourhood and language pages are Toronto's.
FAQ
Running the site with a small team
Online booking sends a confirmation to the customer and a copy to your inbox.
How can a small team tell whether the site is saving time?
- Count the repeat emails and time-setting calls for one week before launch and one week after; fewer on the second count is the measure. If one question keeps arriving, its answer page needs rewriting, and that's a small change.
Is online booking worth setting up for two or three people?
- Online booking earns its place for two or three people when calls to fix a time come in every week. For a team that takes a handful of bookings a month, a clear booking form that emails you may be enough, and I'd tell you so.
How much weight does design get on a booking site?
- Design gets as much weight on a booking site as anywhere else, because the booking screen is where a customer decides to commit. Website design for a booking site is done by the designer on my team, who lays out the booking screens, the price page and the confirmation emails. You'll approve each one on staging.
Can the booking form take a deposit?
- A booking form can take a deposit through a payment provider such as Stripe, with the money paid straight into your own account. I'd hold it back for phase two because a deposit brings a payment account and refund rules, and they're both for your team to settle before the form goes live.
Which calendars can online booking connect to?
- Online booking can connect to Google Calendar or Outlook, so a slot taken on the site disappears from your team's calendar as well. If you already use a booking service, I'll check whether it can sit inside the new site instead of being replaced.
Does anyone on staff need coding skills to keep the site running?
- Nobody on staff needs coding skills to keep the site running. Prices, booking dates and answer pages are edited in a dashboard, in plain fields, and I'll walk your team through each edit on a video call before the site is handed over.
Next step
Which booking calendar does your team use now?
Its name tells me how online booking will connect, and whether your current setup can stay. If you've got the login handy, we can look at it together during our meeting.
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