FAQs
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Testimonials
General FAQs
At Sparked, we help people uncover the right path forward, online. Whatever challenge you’re facing, we’ll sit down and figure it out together.
Whether you need a new website, better ads, fresh messaging, ongoing website maintenance, or something else, our team is here to help. We provide both strategy and execution, making us an extension of our clients’ businesses.
If we were to choose three reasons, they would be:
- We do all of our work locally in Toronto and Southern Ontario. We never outsource overseas.
- We put relationships first. That means you’ll get to know our names, and we’ll get to know yours.
- We have incredibly high retention rates. Our clients say that’s because we’re great to work with and we truly care.
We offer a wide range of website and digital marketing services, all under one roof, to make it easy for our clients. A one-stop shop that provides both strategy and execution.
Our main services include:
- Digital marketing strategy
- Website design and development
- Website hosting, maintenance and support
- Copywriting
- UX/UI design
- SEO services
- SEM services
We treat each project and client as unique, and provide the right mix of services to meet your needs.
We’re not the cheapest, but we’re also not the most expensive. Since we’re focused on delivering high-quality work and retaining long-term clients, our prices reflect that. We also do all of our work in-house (no outsourcing overseas) and we don’t use AI to produce content. We’re not interested in under-cutting our competition, but rather delivering measurable results for our clients.
While we typically provide project-based pricing, our hourly rate is $150 CAD. We do offer discounted rates for for non-profits/charities.
Absolutely. Check out our portfolio, as well as our client list.
If you’re looking for something specific, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Yes, you can check out what our clients have said about us by reading our testimonials or Google Business reviews.
Sparked is a proud member of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA).
The CMA is the largest marketing community in Canada, with members from over 400 corporations and 30 post-secondary institutions. The CMA supports activities related to thought-leadership, professional development, consumer protection and commercial success.
Why, yes! We’re proud to have won these awards:
- 2021 Web Excellence Award Winner for designing & developing Corporate Class Inc’s website.
- 2022 Web Excellence Award Winner for designing & developing Laneway Distiller’s website.
We’re a proudly values-driven business. We believe:
- Integrity over everything – Giving our very best advice is at the core of who we are.
- Curiosity fuels growth – We ask questions, we listen actively, we seek new paths.
- Respect is vital – Mutual respect makes space for great outcomes to emerge.
We believe businesses should give back. That’s why we’re proud to donate our services on a pro bono basis to various charities or non-profit organizations. We also make regular financial donations.
Past recipients of our pro bono work have included:
- Victim Services of Durham Region
- Chromosome 18 Canada
- Help Heal Humanity
- Charles G. William Park
At Sparked, we’re proud to be a green hosting provider. That means the websites we host run on 100% renewable energy.
We also choose to remain a fully-remote and digitally-enabled agency, further reducing our impact on the environment.
Thanks for your interest in a career at Sparked!
Please check out our Careers page to learn more about job opportunities.
We work fully remotely. However, our team is located entirely in Toronto and Southern Ontario (including Windsor, Muskoka and Ottawa).
We have clients located across Canada, the Caribbean, the US and Europe.
To get in touch with us, please send a message via our Contact page. We’ll get back to you within 1 business day, if not sooner.
Website Design & Development FAQs
Each custom website project starts with a deep dive. We’ll sit down with your team so we can hone in on a strategy that matches your needs and goals.
We value working collaboratively with our clients. You’ll always know and understand the recommendations we’re making. No tech jargon or upselling you website services you don’t need.
Through every step of the custom website development process, we’re laser-focused on building you a beautiful website that enhances your reputation and supports your growth.
We work almost exclusively with WordPress. Using this CMS, we build all sort of websites — from ecommerce sites, to brochure sites, to portfolio sites. We work with small and medium-sized businesses.
Whether you’re building a new custom website or looking to update your existing one, we’ve got you covered. We offer all the services you need, so we can write, design, develop and launch a website for you.
Our website services include:
- Website strategy
- Website architecture
- Copywriting
- UI/UX design
- Integrations
- Ecommerce
- Accessibility & translations
- App development
- Landing page creation
- Tagging, tracking & analytics
- Hosting, maintenance & ongoing support
We work almost exclusively with WordPress because we find it best suited for most small and medium-sized businesses. We do have capabilities to work with other CMS’s for specific scenarios.
We don’t, however, work with website builders like Wix, Squarespace or Webflow.
If you want to, yes! We use a user-friendly page builder that allows you to make content changes on your own. We don’t believe in “developer-lock” and try to stay away from custom code and unnecessary complexities.
Many clients choose us to support their website after launch — and we offer flexible packages for this — but the choice is entirely up to you.
Nope! If you already have a hosting provider you like, you can stick with them. If not, we can migrate your website to our servers. The choice is yours.
Typically clients do end up going with our hosting services, as it’s fully-managed and offers better performance than common shared hosting services, while still being affordable.
Yes, absolutely. Please check out our portfolio page for a select sample. If you’re looking for something specific, please reach out.
To get started, we’ll hold a 30 minute discovery call to ensure our services are right for you and to answer any questions you may have. Then, we’ll create a tailored proposal for your review.
Contact us today to get started.
Website Maintenance FAQs
Our website maintenance services involve:
- Keeping your WordPress core, plugins and theme updated to the latest version;
- Monitoring your website for performance and uptime; and
- Taking and storing daily website backups.
We offer three packages with different features to meet your specific business needs.
We offer three WordPress website maintenance packages:
- Basic – $59 CAD per month + taxes
- WordPress core & plugin updates
- WordPress theme updates
- Performance monitoring
- Uptime monitoring
- Daily website backups
- Business – $79 CAD per month + taxes
- Everything from Basic, plus:
- 90-day archive of backups
- Staging environment set up (when needed)
- Advanced – $99 CAD per month + taxes
- Everything from Basic & Business, plus:
- Daily malware scans
- Realtime firewall
- Bot protection
- Vulnerability scans
Yes, absolutely. If your business has specific needs, we can design a custom package just for you.
Yes, you can end your services at any time with no penalty. We never lock our clients into term contracts.
To get started, we’ll hold a 15 minute discovery call to ensure our services are right for you and to answer any questions you may have.
Then we’ll send across a services agreement, and once that’s signed, we’ll request access to your WordPress website and begin.
Yes, our team will require administrator access to your WordPress website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) FAQs
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to making sure your customers can find your business online. At Sparked, we offer SEO services informed by the latest best practices and guidelines from Google and other search engines.
That means no “overnight success” or “too-god-to-be-true” promises, no weird keyword stuffing formulas, and no buying backlinks. Simply good practices, done repeatedly over time, and updated as knowledge about the algorithms change.
We offer complete SEO services, which include:
- SEO audit & strategy – Get insight on where you’re at today and plan for where you want to be tomorrow.
- Technical SEO – Implement various backend fixes that can boost your search engine page rankings.
- On-page SEO – Optimize your copy and content so your target audience can find you faster.
- Local SEO – Focus on local areas and regions and become the go-to in your neighbourhood.
- SEO blog writing – Rely on our team of skilled writers to create optimized content that supports your SEO strategy.
- SEO analytics – Pull together the right data to inform and refine your SEO and marketing strategies.
Yes, you bet. A good place to look is in our portfolio. But, if you don’t find what you’re looking for there, reach out to us and we’d be happy to provide you with examples.
Yes, you can end your services at any time with no penalty. We never lock our clients into term contracts.
To get started, we’ll hold a 30 minute discovery call to ensure our services are right for you and to answer any questions you may have. Then, we’ll send across a proposal for your review.
Contact us today to get started.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) FAQs
Whether you’re looking to develop more leads or you’re launching a new product or service, our SEM services will deliver high-impact campaigns to help you reach the right people.
Every great SEM campaign starts with a great strategy. Working together, we’ll begin by mapping out your goals and KPIs.
From there, we’ll build and execute campaigns that are tailor-made for your business. Guided by data, you’ll always have the right information to make decisions.
We offer everything under one roof – from creative design and copywriting, to landing page development, to tagging, tracking and A/B testing – so you can focus on your core business.
We offer everything you need to advertise online, which includes:
- SEM strategy services – Determine the right marketing mix to maximize your spend and establish meaningful KPIs.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) services – Attract new qualified marketing leads with PPC campaigns tailored to meet your goals and budget.
- Remarketing services – Reach customers who have already visited your site so you’re always top of mind when they’re ready to buy.
- SEM campaign creation & optimization – Bring new visitors to your website through targeted, fully-managed campaigns that are optimized on a regular basis.
- Tracking & analytics – Set up tagging and tracking across your digital properties and monitor progress against KPIs.
- Paid social media services – Get to your customers where they spend their time online with multi-channel social media advertising campaigns.
We’ve got a number of case studies on our portfolio page that provide examples of the types of results we’ve achieved.
That being said, we have many more examples than what’s listed on our website. If you’re looking for something specific, please reach out.
We help our clients advertise across all the major paid media channels like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Yes, you can end your services at any time with no penalty. We never lock our clients into term contracts.
To get started, we’ll hold a 30 minute discovery call to ensure our services are right for you and to answer any questions you may have. Then, we’ll send across a proposal for your review.
Contact us today to get started.