Now we’re growing again, in a new way.

On February 15th, Logix will be moving to a new space at 67 King Street West where we will be sharing space with two other fantastic web companies, CIK Marketing and Potensia Corp. CIK is the force behind the local co-working project called The Perch which up until recently was located in DeKoKo’s on Fourth Street.

Our move also offers us opportunity to participate in some new and exciting initiatives. In the meantime, we’re excited for this new step, and look forward to working with our past, present, and future clients in our new workspace.

Stay tuned for more from 67 King St. just around the corner!

The cost of a website varies with the options you choose and the size you want to make it. In this way it’s similar to buying a car. You don’t go to a dealership and ask them how much a car costs because the price ranges based on style, size and features. You can buy the Porsche of websites with all the options and fancy features or you can buy a base-model Ford. Now, there’s no problems with a Ford, I own one myself. It all comes down to needs and budget. A basic website with a custom design and five pages of content might start you around $1,200-1,500 whereas a large corporate site with dozens of pages and custom features could get up into multiple thousands.

So what goes into the cost of a website?

There are many factors in determining the cost of a website.  Some of the most common factors are:

• Number of pages
• Is a custom design needed or will a pre-designed template be used?
• Are they static pages or is a content management system needed?
• Target market and competition research
• Features needed other than basic content (forms, newsletters, e-commerce, etc)
• Are stock photos or photography services needed?
• Is all content supplied or are copywriting services needed?
• Is the logo and brand identity in place or does this need worked on?

As you can see, there are a lot of decisions to be made, and this is just a few of the things that need considered.

When hiring a web design company, just like any other business, they have to take other expenses into consideration as well. Things like time, rent, utilities, employee wages and other operational costs always have to be factored in. This is why you’ll often see individuals offering website design for a very low rate compared to a web design company. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. You just want to make sure that whomever you hire has the experience and reliability to create an effective online presence for your business.

At Logix, our custom websites generally start around the $1,400 mark and increase from there based on client needs. We always aim to be flexible to suit any project and budget so we have a number of options available.

For new businesses just starting out or businesses that have a small budget there are always other options as well. We run a service called ckBusiness.ca for local businesses of Chatham-Kent. In an effort to promote local small business within our community we launched this service as a cost-effective way to get an online presence. A business can get a website for as little as $29.95. The cost here is greatly reduced because there is no custom design work involved. A design is chosen from several pre-designed layouts and then customized to include the client’s logo and colours. It doesn’t offer quite as much flexibility but it’s an easy entry in a time when all businesses should be online.

Hopefully this gives you a little insight into what a website costs. I know it’s not a definitive number like you may have been hoping for but it should give you a good idea of what to budget for.

If you’re interested in finding out more about having a website developed for your business, contact us. We’ll gladly answer any questions you might have.

There is no lack of public engagement when it comes to speaking out online about municipal affairs. With easy access to things like Facebook, more and more people are stepping up on their virtual soapbox to announce their displeasure of their city’s actions. From casual political debate to the downright nasty and negative, we’re seeing an era of social media discourse that’s quickly evolving and presenting our city officials with a new problem. Everyone is getting their 15 minutes.

Unfortunately the comments through Facebook almost always lean towards negative criticisms, which feel more like virtual shouting matches and name-calling. Spurred by our current economic turmoil, it’s hard to avoid. People are emotional beings and anger is one of the easiest feelings to convey. They feel abandoned by their municipal counterparts. Opinions are often left on deaf ears.

Or are they?

We would be silly to assume that in all of our time spent complaining about the state of our poor city that no municipal official has had our concerns brought to their attention. They aren’t all dinosaurs plodding through town stepping on the little townsfolk. While that may seem like a confusing analogy, its not far off from what many envision.

The truth is, many municipal staff are online (yes they own computers), and a large percentage of them are on Facebook and most likely even reading your comments. As a municipal employee, responding to comments can be a scary thing, and there tends to be red tape involved which prevents a lot of it.

Does the city really need a Facebook page?

In an article earlier this year, the mayor of New York discussed the potential of building a Facebook page for their city. He realized that social media isn’t going anywhere so he feels the city should get on board. He already runs his own Facebook page with over 30,000 likes. He comments on recent news articles and events, no different than you or I. Now I’m sure that an official of his stature in a city the size of New York doesn’t update his own Facebook page all of the time but it makes him appear more accessible to the general public.

Another example of a city establishing a Facebook presence is the city of Takeo in Japan where they switched from a standard website to Facebook entirely. Their reasons were slightly different but make great sense. They wanted to interact with citizens on Facebook because it presents a little more accountability. People can anonymously comment on news sites very easily, but when you’re name is attached to that comment like on Facebook the comments tend to be a bit more reserved and thought out.

So how can the municipality take part?

The reason for the Facebook pages, in both cases above, are to communicate with citizens, respond to concerns, and provide an outlet for local events supported by the city. It provides a more real-time method of getting in touch with the people. The wall could be used to post important notices and welcome comments from the people. Custom tabs and applications can be used to provide a range of features. A simple discussion section can act as an open forum for municipal affairs. It’s a lot easier for someone to voice a concern there rather than attending a once-a-month council meeting. Photo galleries can be used to show pictures of around the community, including events that have taken part there. Municipal department info can be easily organized and displayed for quick access. I would urge local council members to take part as well. The opportunities are massive and their are a great number of examples of successful Facebook pages out there. Most are businesses like McDonalds and Coke, but similar efforts can be translated for municipal use. Yes there will be the usual red tape and policies that have to be followed but that shouldn’t dissuade the city from doing it.

While all of this may not fend off all of the negativity online, it will make the city more accessible to those who live in it and let them know that someone is listening.  It won’t turn around the economy and it won’t answer all our questions but it will make the citizens feel like they are a part of their city and have a connection with those who run it.

It will build community.

We’re looking forward to using this on more projects down the road and are on the lookout for anyone that needs custom labels. The labels themselves are available in various sizes and come in high-gloss, semi-gloss and matte finishes. They’re highly water and scratch resistant. They work great on beer bottles and wine bottles as well as have a wide range of applications in other industries like gourmet foods, personal care and natural products.

If you have any questions or are interested in samples feel free to call 519-358-6649 or email me at bhouston@logixstudios.com

As an example, let’s say you’re Ford dealer with a website that gets 10,000 visits a month for the keyword ‘car’. Fantastic, right? But how many of those visits converted into actual sales? Of those 10,000 visits, 2,000 of them were people looking for car repairs which you aren’t focusing on, 3,000 were looking for car reviews or information about their own car, and 1,000 of them were trying to find toy cars for children. That leaves 4,000 visits that were potentially looking for car sales. Of that 4,000 only 1,000 of them were interested in Ford vehicles. Of that 1,000 only 30 were within three hours of your location. Out of those 30 you sold 1 car.

See what I’m getting at? You sold 1 car in a month out of 10,000 visits to your website. That’s a 0.0001% success rate.

Quantity doesn’t trump quality.

If you were to focus your keywords more effectively you could increase your success rate enormously.

Let’s try a different example. Instead of focusing on the single word ‘car’ as a keyword you try a few variations:
‘Ford car sales Toronto’
‘new Ford car Toronto’
‘Toronto Ford dealer’

After changing your keywords and using those more specific phrases your visits decreased to 3,000 visits a month, but of those 3,000 visits 2,500 of them were people in Toronto looking for a new Ford car. If we were to take the same 1 in 30 from the previous statement, that would translate to 83 car sales in that month.

While those numbers may not be realistic, it points out an important fact to search engine optimization. Quality of quantity. So next time you think about the number of visits your website is getting per month, consider the keywords you’re using on your site and consider re-evaluating them and see how much of a difference they make in your success rate.