Services

Website Development

A website can be a company’s greatest asset. Is yours?

Let Rank 1st build a new website for your business, or create a better version of the one you already have.

How Rank 1st builds websites

A good website has many different elements, and therefore requires a multitude of educated perspectives. Our team consists of professional developers, SEO pros, UI & UX designers and writers, so that every pixel, every word and every line of code, is optimized to create the best experience for each and every user.

Our team works closely with yours, so that we understand the foundational purpose of your site; what you want to get from the site, who your audience is, how you want to be represented, and which pages are the ones that make you money.

Once we understand your vision, we create a site that looks great, is easy to use and is completely optimized for search.

Websites for every type of user

A website should be eye-catching and provide a good experience for visitors. But that’s not all it should do.

Websites are interacted with by different “users” in different ways, and a good website performs optimally for each types of user without compromising the experience of others.

Who Rank 1st builds websites for

Visitors

UX design: A well-designed website should look nice and be easy for visitors to navigate. Visitors should be able to intuit how to find the information they seek, and should be able to get almost anywhere with two clicks or less. If visitors cannot easily find what they’re looking for, they'll quickly leave, and become someone else’s visitor.
Purposeful intent: Most websites encourage visitors to take an action - e.g. buy something, download something, make contact, etc. A successful website will ensure there are no barriers that visitors must overcome to complete these actions. The easier it is for a visitor to engage with your site, the more value you’ll derive from it.
Content: Clear. Succinct. Honest. These traits should define the text, images and videos on your website. Great content finds the balance between prompting action providing valuable information. Visitors should be able to understand what you do, the benefits of working with you, and how they can engage with your organization.

Site owners

User-friendly: Not everyone that contributes to a website is a computer engineer, and that means simplicity is crucial. Rank 1st emphasizes front-end usability so that writers, marketers, execs and designers understand how to use their own website.
Adaptable: The companies that thrive are the companies that evolve. The same is true of websites. As your company grows and begins to offer new services, your website needs to reflect your growth. New website functionality shouldn’t require a complete teardown; it should be a quick and easy process that causes zero disruption to your existing infrastructure.
Customizable: Rank 1st is familiar with several types of CMS. If your team is used to Wordpress, or Drupal, or anything else, we’ll use the CMS you’re comfortable with when developing your website. This flexibility minimizes the learning curve that admins and contributors face when your new site goes live.

Search Engines

Speed: How quickly your pages load is important to search engines. Load times are a major factor when determining the ranking of your website in Google, and being able to maintain lightning-fast page speed without sacrificing design and content elements, or custom functionality, is one of our signature abilities.
Crawlability: Search engines assess the quality of a website by examining its code and content. This process is known as “crawling,” and the architecture of a domain determines how easily search crawlers are able to navigate a website. Ensuring that your website is fully crawlable is essential to succeeding in search.
Mobile first: More people conduct Google searches from their phones than from their computers. To accommodate the majority, Google now indexes sites based on their mobile versions. In other words, if you want search engines to give your website love, it has to be optimized for mobile devices. That's why Rank 1st emphasizes mobile friendliness.

What we provide

There are numerous elements that contribute to a website’s quality, usability and crawlability. These are the elements Rank 1st optimizes when building a new site, or rebuilding an old one.

Design: Sleek, professional and customized to reflect your brand
Content: Succinct, effective copy written in your company’s voice
Staging server: A sandbox where changes can safely be tested
SSL/TLS certification: For increased security and SEO best practices
Tracking setup: Integration with Analytics, Search Console and Tag Manager
CMS installation: Wordpress, Drupal or other; includes plugin installation
Back-end functionality: Forms, logins, databases, etc.
Major elements: Custom headers, footers, menus, etc.
Unique pages: Singular pages, like home, contact and about us
Page templates: Reusable templates for similar pages, like blog articles
SEO optimization: All code and content optimized for organic success

What to expect when you work with us

Rank 1st is efficient and thorough in developing websites. The timeline for each respective website we create is unique, depending on the complexity of the back-end, the number of page types and the functionality and design required.

But regardless of whether you want a few pages or a sprawling domain with hundreds of sections, we always prioritize communication and transparency.

We know how to build great sites, but no one knows more about your business than you, and that's something we recognize. You’re input is invaluable, and is what drives us to create sites that are true difference-makers for our clients.

We ask questions; we answer yours; we get ourselves on the same page to align our visions so that the website that's created meets or exceeds your expectations.

Why having a great website is so important

Many people will interact with your company exclusively through your website, whether they’re reading your content, procuring your services or contacting you. To these people, your website is your company.

Providing an online experience that makes it easy for people to find what they're looking for, and exhibits the character of your organization, is a great way to make a superb first impression. And this is something that can only be achieved with an optimized website.

Who’s building your website at Rank 1st?

Lead Web Developer: Our lead developer, Michael O’Gay, has experience building numerous websites across innumerable industries. Michael emphasizes efficiency by minimizing CPU and memory usage, and maintainability by writing code that's easy to adjust.
Head of Growth: Craig Amos makes sure that your website's content is loved by both human users and search engines. Craig has been developing and executing content strategies that define great websites for more than a decade.
Designers: The Rank 1st design team is comprised by creative and experienced professionals who focus on merging aesthetic appeal with matchless UX. Regardless of what your website is used for, our team will make it look good, and easy to use.

Websites we've built

Greenway.ca

A simple Wordpress website designed to load quickly using our custom-built Wordpress theme.

The Wordpress theme, codenamed "R1 Basic," is designed to be flexible enough for web developers to create new pages, and easy enough for admins to manage and edit content on existing ones.

The theme includes several common interactive elements, like collapsible containers, lightboxes and carousels. An options panel allows Wordpress users to add custom HTML to the website's head tag, body and footer.

All elements in this theme have been programmed to load and run as efficiently as possible, to minimize the CPU and memory usage on both the server and user devices.

188bet.net

A sports themed website built using Drupal 7. This site serves as the front end of a server-side system where users can bet play money on sports matches and obtain points for correct wagers.

Multiple interactive displays allow users to manage their profiles, bet on matches, view their betting history, join groups with friends and redeem rewards with the points they've earned.

UrbanCondo.ca

A website built in Drupal 7 that displays a list of pre-construction condos available for purchase. The website allows administrators to easily add new condo listings from the admin panel.

A custom carousel shows featured locations with the highest demand. A search bar in the header quickly retrieves specific condos as the user enters characters in the text box.

RealEstateCondos.ca

A website designed to display real estate properties for rent and sale. The entire project was built incrementally over the span of several months.

The website, built in Drupal 7, retrieves listings and other data from a database and displays the information to visitors. Visitors are able to search for listings in their area and view details about each listing. Visitors can also sign up to keep a list of their favourite listings and searches.

On a separate server, a complex database system manages listings, buildings and geographical data for the website.

The map search

Integrated into RealEstateCondos.ca, an interactive map allows users to search for listings by selecting a multitude of criteria, and view the location of each listing. Clicking on a marker opens a pop-up window that allows the user to view details about the listings located in the selected area.

The map uses a clustering algorithm to group nearby listings together, which prevents the map from being covered with too many markers. The algorithm is designed to be efficient, so that thousands of markers can be clustered in a matter of seconds.