I live in Fort Erie, on Garrison Road, and I build WordPress websites. When something breaks on your site, you are not opening a ticket that gets read in another time zone the next business day. You are calling a person who lives a few minutes from you and who has to see you at the grocery store afterward. That changes how the work gets done.
I meet clients in person across Niagara, and after launch monthly care covers the updates, backups and monitoring if you want it.
Building on the web since 1996, in WordPress since 2007 · accessibility built in from the first commit, AODA and WCAG 2.2 AA · WordCamp speaker at 18+ events · Fort Erie, Ontario
Most of my client work is the same senior WordPress work I would do for anyone across North America. The local part is a bonus, not a limit. But if you are a Fort Erie business, the bonus is real, and it is worth being plain about what it actually buys you.
Why hiring local actually matters
The honest version is not that a local developer writes better code. Good code is good code whether it is written here or in Toronto or in Manila. What being local changes is accountability. If I do work you are unhappy with, I do not get to hide behind a support address. You know where I am. That single fact keeps a lot of people honest, and I am one of them.
The second thing it changes is that I already understand the market you are selling into, because I live in it. A business in Crystal Beach runs on a completely different clock than a business in Stevensville. Crystal Beach fills up for a few warm months and then goes quiet, so its website has to do its heaviest lifting in a short window, when a family from Buffalo is standing on the sand deciding where to eat. A trades business in Ridgeway or Stevensville is the opposite. It works year round, its customers are neighbours and repeat calls, and its website has to look reliable rather than seasonal. If a developer does not know that Fort Erie is really several small economies stitched together, they build one generic site and hope it fits. It rarely does.
The third thing is simpler. You are dealing with one person the whole way through. Not an account manager who hands you to a project manager who hands the actual work to someone you never speak to. The person you talk to on the first call is the person writing the code and the person you call when you want to change your hours for the long weekend.
What I build for Fort Erie businesses
I build on WordPress, and I build it so it is yours to own. That matters more than it sounds. A website is a bit like a house you pay to have built. Some builders quietly keep a key and charge you every time you want to move a picture on the wall. I hand you every key, in writing, at the end. Your domain, your hosting, your logins, your site. If you ever decide to work with someone else, another developer can open it up and understand it, because it is standard WordPress and not a locked box only I can service.
The projects tend to fall into a few shapes:
- Seasonal tourism sites for Crystal Beach, where the site has to load fast on a phone, say clearly what you offer and when you are open, and make it easy to find you from the beach.
- Trades and year-round local business in Ridgeway, Bridgeburg, and Stevensville, where the job is to look established, show your work, and make it obvious how to get a quote.
- Professional practices, the legal, accounting, and healthcare offices around town that need a calm, credible site that a new client trusts before they have met you.
- Aged sites that still work but feel like they belong to a different decade, are slow on a phone, and no longer reflect the business behind them.
Who I have built for
I mention this so you know the local rate does not mean local-only experience. The work I bring to a Fort Erie shop is the same work I bring to much larger jobs.
- Postmedia. I was part of the team on a national news platform migration, the kind of job where a lot of traffic and a lot of history has to move without going dark.
- Sherwin-Williams and M.L. Campbell. Training-platform work on the wood-coatings side, which is my day job. It keeps me close to how real people learn to use a tool, which is most of what a good website has to do too.
- Regional Niagara businesses. Trades, professional services, and tourism operators across Fort Erie, Ridgeway, Niagara Falls, and St. Catharines.
What actually gets a Fort Erie business found
People expect me to sell them something complicated here. Usually I talk them out of it. The honest answer to getting found locally has three parts, and the first one is free.
First, claim and fill out your Google Business Profile. Real photos, real hours, the actual address. This is the thing that wins the “near me” searches, the ones where someone across the river types “web designer near the bridge” or “patio near me”, and it costs nothing. Most local businesses never claim it, which is exactly why claiming it works so well. Second, a fast site on a phone that says plainly what you do and where you are. Not clever, plain. Third, and there is no shortcut here, time. Reviews from real customers, showing up consistently, being the same business online that you are in person. Anyone selling you a way to skip the third part is selling you the thing that gets sites penalised.
Who to know in Fort Erie
No arrangement, no referral fee, nothing in it for me. These are simply where a Fort Erie business gets found and gets known locally, and being listed and active in them does more for a small business than most of what gets sold as marketing.
- Greater Fort Erie Chamber of Commerce (opens in a new tab). It serves Fort Erie, Ridgeway, Crystal Beach, and Stevensville, and its office is on Garrison Road, the same street I live on. I am a member.
- Fort Erie business improvement areas (opens in a new tab), the Ridgeway and Crystal Beach BIAs, which do the on-the-ground work in the two districts where storefront and season matter most.
- Town of Fort Erie (opens in a new tab), the municipality, for business resources, permits, and the practical side of setting up locally.
- Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce (opens in a new tab), the regional chamber, for when your reach is the whole peninsula and not just the town.
How a project runs
It starts with a free twenty-minute call, and I mean an actual conversation about what you need, not a sales pitch with a countdown timer on it. If it is not a fit, I will tell you, and often I can point you at the simpler thing you actually needed.
From there the work runs in four phases. Discovery, where I learn your business and who you are trying to reach. Architecture, where we agree what the site is and how it is laid out before a single pixel is designed. Build, where it gets made. Launch, where it goes live. You get a private staging link the whole way through, so you are watching it come together and giving feedback, not waiting in the dark for a reveal.
Most projects run four to ten weeks depending on size. Every build comes with a thirty-day defect warranty, so if something I made does not work the way we agreed, I fix it and you do not pay again for it. And to say it once more because it is the part people forget to ask about: you own the domain, the hosting, and every login. All of it is handed to you.
Common questions
How much does a website cost in Fort Erie?
Most local builds start at $2,500 CAD. It is a fixed price agreed against a written scope before the work begins, so the number does not move once you have said yes to it. What changes the figure is how many pages you need and how much of the writing and photography you already have. You get a real number after a twenty-minute call.
How do I get my Fort Erie business found on Google?
Start with the free thing before you spend on anything else. Claim your Google Business Profile, add real photos and accurate hours, and keep it current. That is what wins the “near me” searches, and most of your competitors have never done it. Then make sure your site loads fast on a phone and says plainly what you do and where. After that it is time, real reviews, and consistency. There is no button that skips those, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you a risk.
Do you only work with Fort Erie businesses?
No. I do the same senior WordPress work for clients across North America, and I always have. Being in Fort Erie is a bonus for the businesses here, not a fence around who I work with. If you are local, you get proximity and a person you can actually reach. If you are not, you get the same standard of work, just without the running-into-me-at-the-store part.
Tell me about your project
The fastest way to a straight answer. Tell me what you need and I will reply within a business day, honestly, even when the answer is that I am not the right fit.
Prefer to talk? Call 647-641-0643
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