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Who We Are

Our web design team

Based in Burlington, Ontario, Leaf Design is a close-knit team of web designers and developers from across North America.

Toronto area business

Located just outside of Toronto, our offices are in Burlington, only a small drive from Oakville or Hamilton.

Top-tier talent

Our team brings together top-tier developers and designers sourced from across North America.

A long-term group

Most of our team has worked with Leaf for an average of 8 years, so you get a group that knows how to deliver together.

North-American team

We don’t outsource any work offshore. Our all-Canadian team eliminates any timezone delays or language barriers.

A diverse skillset

Most projects draw on talents from across the team, so the right expertise is applied to each part of the work.

One point of contact

Your single point of contact is founder Ian Chapman, keeping communication clear and consistent from start to finish.
We enjoyed the entire process of working with the Leaf Design team. Their approach to marketing our business was not only effective, but very insightful.
Client Collaboration

Roles and responsibilities

When we take on a project, we enter into a partnership, working towards a common goal – to put your organization into a better position than before we met.

Our responsibilities

  • Steering the overall project in the right direction to accomplish all goals we set out to do
  • Making it clear to you when to expect certain milestones
  • Keeping communication lines open so you stay in the loop on our progress
  • Responding to any questions or concerns promptly
  • Keeping your best interests in mind at all stages of the project

Your responsibilities

  • Providing business input and approval on strategy discussion
  • Timely responses to all requests for information or feedback
  • Providing reasonable availability for ad hoc discussions
  • Delivery of digital assets (text, photography, and marketing collateral) in a well organized format
  • Prompt payments on all agreed upon invoices

Joint responsibilities

  • Making design and development decisions based on the project’s objectives, rather than personal preferences
  • Notifying the other party in advance of any business disruptions that may affect the project schedule
  • Respecting the other party’s knowledge and expertise
  • Bringing a positive attitude to the project partnership

Our office

Situated in the heart of Burlington, our office is accessible within a 15 minute drive of Hamilton or Oakville, or about 30 to 45 minutes from downtown Toronto. It is here were we meet with clients, plan strategies, and build the websites that we work on day-in and day-out.

Because of our personal approach to our clients, we enjoying meeting in person to truly get to know and understand your business and its team. Phone and email communication are great to get started, but a face-to-face conversation offers the a more human connection. When it comes to the web design process, we believe this intangible connection provides significant benefits towards establishing trust with your web design partner.

However, if you are planning to meet with us – all meetings are by appointment only. Unfortunately, due to our busy schedule, we are not able to handle walk-in inquiries. Therefore we suggest you schedule a free discovery call so you can select a date and time that works for your team (and ours).

Our availability

Our normal business hours are Monday through Friday, between 9am and 5pm EST. Emails and voicemails received outside those time periods will be responded to the next business day. Just as you value your personal time, so do we.

While we are occasionally available for an impromptu meeting, that is not the norm. To setup a time for a phone call or meeting, just send us a quick email and we’ll sort something out. In fact, we use a great app called Calendly that makes it simple to schedule a meeting with us.

Operating out of the Toronto, Ontario area, we observe all Canadian and Ontario holidays. Although not as often as we’d like, we do take vacations once in a while. With the exception of any personal emergencies, we will inform you of any vacation plans at least a month in advance, should they impact your project schedule.

Good to Know

FAQs

Don’t see the answer you were looking for? Please send us a message and we’d be happy to help.
How do you usually meet with clients throughout the project?

If you are local to the Burlington area, we are able to meet in person – either at our office or yours. However, for most of our clients, we find online video conferences to work well for everyone’s busy schedules. This has the added benefit of AI tools being able to capture all discussions to review post-meeting.

For the majority of the project, you will work with your single point of contact, Leaf Design owner Ian Chapman. This approach ensures a consistent experience with all communications throughout the project. When appropriate, other team members may join in on certain client-facing meetings.

Does our team require all content to be ready in advance of the project?

That’s OK, we can still get started on your project. Even a rough draft or outline of your key points is all we need at the early stages.

Having said that, missing content is the #1 reason for delays in a web design project. Clients often underestimate the amount of time and effort is required to create high quality web copy. So we recommend you start working on copywriting efforts sooner rather than later.

If you’ve got writer’s block and need some assistance with crafting great copy for your website, we offer copywriting and copyediting services to assist your team.

How involved will I be during the design process?

The design process is a collaborative effort between our team and yours, however the level of engagement varies by client.

The bulk of the design work will be handled by our team, but your input is essential. You’ll want to be engaged heavily during our initial kickoff meeting, as that will allow us to create a blueprint for the project’s design.

Once the initial design concepts are ready, we’ll connect again to present them to your team, and discuss your feedback. This is your opportunity to let us know what resonates with you and what needs some further attention.

While we encourage close collaboration, there is a danger that clients can get too caught up in the minutia of details. If this occurs, we’ll help you refocus on the essentials, as it will be for the betterment of the project in the long run.

What happens if we don’t like the design?

Although highly unlikely due to our significant pre-design planning, there is always the potential for us to miss the mark on the initial design of you site. However, all of our projects do include time to allow for revisions.

This will provide us with an opportunity to listen to your team’s feedback and understand what needs to be addressed. From there, we can make adjustments to the layout so that it completely aligns with your goals and objectives.

And because our design process happens in stages, any issues can be addressed right away before they permeate through the rest of the site.

To this day, we have yet to ever restart a design from scratch. We attribute this to our meticulous planning efforts during the discovery phase of the project.

How do you handle mid-project scope changes?

While we do our best to plan out your requirements in advance of signing a proposal, we understand that priorities can shift and new opportunities arise throughout the course of a project.

Our proposals are fixed-price, but for smaller changes we can still be flexible. Often an addition or two will be balanced out with some other area of the project that required less effort than expected.

However, for larger scope changes we would provide you with an additional estimate prior to engaging on the new work. Only once approved by your team will we begin on the additional work. Our goal is to ensure there are no billing surprises at the project’s completion.

See What’s Possible

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  • Learn about your business
  • Analyze your website
  • Identify areas of opportunity
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