Web Design | Milton Ontario

Hi, I am Steve Bonin and I run a web-design company in Milton Ontario. I have been offering graphic design services since 1989 and been a website designer since 1999. I started offering web design services to the public in 2009. As previously stated, I do most of my own web-design work in-house, I control the process and the quality of the finished website. I believe my clients get a better-designed, higher-functioning, more customized website because of this.

I have many clients locally and some long-standing clients around the world. I have wide experience in web design for many industries. I have built websites or redesigned websites for clients in the automotive, medical, education, industrial equipment, construction, restaurant, clothing, senior-care, financial, real estate and cannabis industries. I connect with my clients and help them connect with their customers. I have worked on websites of all sizes from a single page to 100's of pages in size.

Website Designers

Your website deserves serious attention by a serious website designer. Web design is more than pretty pictures with a few keywords scattered about. A serious website design requires planning, attention to detail, a knowledge of Search Engine Marketing, colour theory, typography, human psychology and the ability to write for the web. As a web designer I am experienced in all these areas of web design.

A Web Design displayed on 4 sizes & shapes of screens - website design | HarrisWeb Creative

Reviews

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Our Clients Drive Our Business

Here's what they have to say:

Reviewer Published: 2024-04-16
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Pause or Play Reviews

Paul Dibattista 2020-05-01 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Village Developments Inc. would like to thank the team at Harris Web Creative for the wonderful Web Site created by Steve Bonin. The site attraction is professionally designed to reach out to our potential investors and most important interested renters in the Milton area. Steve’s attention to detail and steady pace to completion made this experience of setting up a web site a pleasure to deal with, we appreciate your involvement in elevating Village Developments Inc. and putting us on the web map.
Thank You
Tom Dusmet 2019-02-14 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I contacted Steve at HarrisWeb Creative to develop a new website for me. My experience with Steve was notable in that he was very responsive to my questions and my ideas. He quickly understood what I wanted and brought it to life on the website with a flourish. I was very impressed with the finished product and would highly recommend Steve as a website designer to anyone looking to contract a local developer for their next web project.
Bobbijo Chumley 2012-03-10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Steve, I just wanted to make sure that you knew how much I appreciated your work on the new website design as well as my business cards and flyers. Your clarity in communication and understanding of my needs were tremendous. I appreciate your insights, suggestions and most of all your work. Thanks very much... above and beyond expectations."
Carlo Giangrande 2014-04-05 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I contacted Steve to do many things for me, from website design, google maps, business cards, signs and printed forms. Steve is always professional, fast and competitively priced. I have recommended Steve to many of my business associates who have used him happily. I am happy to recommend Steve and HarrisWeb Creative for any website or printing work. Thanks Steve.
Ron Base 2011-10-08 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I came to him because I liked the look of what he had designed for his website and e-mails, and asked him to put together something for me — not knowing quite what to expect. Well, Steve more than exceeded my expectations. He got me onto Mail Chimp, created an e-mail list for me, and most importantly created an eye-catching logo template that I've been able to use on my blog, website, and in my Mail Chimp e-mails. Working with Steve was a pleasure--he was fast, professional, knowledgable, has great creative instincts, and was always available and patient with a sometimes demanding author. Thanks to his efforts, the traffic on my blog has more than doubled. Next, I'm going to get him to redesign my website. I can't recommend him highly enough!"

Considerations in Website Design

programmer writing new code - web design | HarrisWeb Creative

Main Considerations in Website Design

There are many considerations when starting out to build a website. These are must-have considerations in web design:

SEO Optimized pages - so your pages can surface in the search engine results page
Mobile Friendly Design - roughly 50% of website access is done via smartphones these days
Fast Load times - for those accessing your website via mobile networks
A good hosting company - bad hosting companies come with problems that just confound good website design

Other considerations that affect the website design are:

Do you require custom coding or a CMS like WordPress - this is discussed below
Do you require an eCommerce website?
ECommerce websites require payment gateways
Do you require logins and user access control

Custom Coded vs. WordPress

How WordPress Works

WordPress is an environment that renders roughly 35% of all the websites on the web today. WordPress is free to use. To use WordPress you must either build or install a Theme.

WordPress Themes

There are 1000's of themes available, some are free, some cost money. Many themes are less than $100. Themes are often developed to serve an industry, like real estate, pet sitters or photographers. These themes offer a great template to quickly do your web design — just upload your images and write some content - et voilá - you have a website. Other themes are developed to be more versatile. In general, these themes cost more, but give you the ability to further customize your website. I use the Divi Theme which has great versatility and dozens of built in features

Responsive Design

Another advantage of WordPress Themes is that they are automatically responsive, and will render well on different sized and shaped screens. This is very important today since website are accessed roughly 50% of the time from a smartphone.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins further extend the functionality of a theme. A plugin usually performs one function like, speed up the website, perform automatic backups, test security or create better contact forms.

How Discrete Coded Websites Work

Custom Coded Websites consist of an HTML document, CSS stylesheets, some javaScript and possibly some other web applications desired by the client.

Advantages of Custom Coded Websites

CSS & HTML concept - custom coded websites | HarrisWeb Creative

First and foremost custom coded website are completely custom. They can function in any way you wish. Secondly, they are fast. Without having to load the WordPress environment before rendering, a custom coded website is off the starting line right away. Another consideration is that custom coding can be made very secure. Hackers usually target known vulnerabilities of themes and plugins and since custom coded sites don't use these, hackers move on to easier prey. That being said custom coding can also include custom security. Custom code requires very little maintenance.

Disadvantages of Custom Coded Websites

Custom websites take a long time to build. There are few off-the-shelf solutions that can be copied and pasted into a custom website.

Conclusions: WordPress vs. Custom Coding

For most businesses there are WordPress solutions that will do the job, they are faster and cheaper than custom coding. The downside to WordPress is that the WordPress Core, the themes and plugins need constant attention and updating to ensure they continue to work properly and remain secure - Custom needs little maintenance once it is working properly.

Custom websites do serve a purpose for businesses that require specialized web applications, who need their sites to be lean and fast and for those that want their websites to look different than the norm - to stand out from the pack.