Team Alberta - Winners of the 2012 Manulife Canadian Mens Teams Squash Championships

The 2012 Canadian Men’s Team Squash Championships was a resounding success.  The London Squash Racquets club has written an excellent article about the event.

Social Canopy was proud to sponsor the event and is looking forward to helping the London, Ontario squash community in organizing and advertising their future events.

Social Canopy is proud to be sponsoring the 2012 Manulife Canadian Men’s Team Squash Championships  from January 6 – 8. This annual event features teams comprised of the top squash players from each province competing for the national title. This is the first time that the London Squash Racquets Club has hosted the event so it is a rare opportunity for Londoners to watch some national level squash in their own backyard. Playing for the Ontario team is UWO alum and Londoner Brad Hanebury, but more impressive is that the entire B.C. Team is composed of UWO alum and current players Chris Hanebury, Mark Ridgeway, and Ryan Herden.

A short article has been written up in The Londoner. We will update you with more information from the London Free Press, Metro, and The A Channel as it becomes available.

Tickets are free so come watch some of the best squash in the country. For more information about the event, visit the Squash Canada website.

Dental office websites are a strange breed: the auto playing music, the awkward pictures of the dentists, the religious use of Adobe Flash – it’s as if they’re stuck in a time warp. When Dr. Saari from Cherryhill Dentistry contacted us regarding a makeover for his website, we thought we knew what to expect. Fortunately though, having seen our previous work, he trusted our artistic instincts and told us to go with whatever we thought best. His only two requirements were that the site incorporate his logo and that it be simple enough for his elderly patients to navigate. No problem there, Dr. Saari.

Tackling the design of this project was designer Johnny Del Guercio. Keeping with our previous theory of dental websites being bright and uncluttered, he drew up a design that perfectly fit the mold while managing to avoid looking common. The top navigation menu was limited to only four options. This kept the site simple to navigate and also allowed space for sub descriptions below each navigation item. A Q&A section was added to increase site content for search engine optimization and to help answer some of his patients’ questions before they called his office. Dr. Saari also teaches at the University of Western Ontario, so including a page referencing his work only helps to differentiate him from other dentists in the area.

For the backend we chose WordPress. It seemed like a natural fit given that Dr. Saari has a strong technical background and had expressed the desire to update the news or Q&A sections on his own. Also, with WordPress’ enormous library of plugins, installation of new modules (such as a newsletter subscription) will be a breeze.

The site was very positively received and barring a few copy changes and typos (we blame the caffeine jitters), there were no requested changes. Two weeks after launch, the site has seen a steady climb up the Google rankings in important keywords for dentists, and his patients are now contacting him directly through the website.

View the new Cherryhill Dentistry website at drsaari.com

When the CEO of Convergentek called us up one morning at 8AM and said he needed a website for his company, we were confident we could help him out. When he followed this up by requesting that it be finished in under 72 hours, we knew we would need to restock our coffee supply.

Previous to approaching Social Canopy, Convergentek had very little online presence. With their company sales soon hurdling over the seven digit mark, they saw the need to take their website seriously. This new desire to explore the internet spectrum also happened to coincide with a big marketing push the company was planning in the following weeks. Needless to say, their company sales was on the line and time was not on our sides.

Our initial queries into determining what Convergentek wanted their website to accomplish yielded the usual suspects: online branding of the company and marketing of products to potential customers. With this in mind, designer Brian Dillon put together some drafts of what he felt would best accomplish these goals. Being a dental software company, we felt that a bright concept with plenty of open space would best appeal to their market. After all, the last thing a dentist wants to see after a long day of cleaning and drilling teeth is a clutter of text.

Next we set about designing the logo. The triangle and sideways half-circle were envisioned by Brian (interesting footnote: Brian was also the driving force behind the new Social Canopy logo). It successfully conveys parts of the name of the company (the ‘C’ and the ‘V’ being distinctive-sounding letters in the word “convergentek” ), and also happens to resemble a drill and a tooth.

Meanwhile, our marketing team pondered on how best to advertise this new website. Being the staples of any social media marketing campaign, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were all suggested. With several hundred clients, Convergentek appeared an ideal candidate for social media marketing. Facebook is a great way to connect with previous clients and use their own social networks to reach out to new potential clients. LinkedIn, being a professional network, is a useful to filter out some noise and connect directly with people of interest. We felt that Twitter, on the other hand, should be used primarily for interacting with current customers via news releases, software updates, customer feedback, and special offers and discounts.

Our coffee cup counter lost track somewhere around the 45 hour mark, but nonetheless, 68 hours (approximately 2AM) after being first contact by Convergentek, we were proud to have the site done and ready for launch.

To our very talented team here at Social Canopy, a big congratulations and a good night’s rest were in order.

Visit the new Convergentek.com website.

Anden Construction's New Look

This project entailed a complete redesign of Anden Construction’s online business model. Their old website was a mostly static affair that had failed to bring in the desired leads. Their paid online searches (PPC) were scattered and not offering a good return on investment. Their social media usage was nearly non-existent.

Their new business model began with a newly designed website built upon a modified WordPress & HTML5 compliant core. The site was designed from the beginning to be frequently updated with news, recent projects, and customer testimonials. Social Media outlets were utilized to allow Anden Construction’s to more directly connect with their large customer database. Their PPC has also been updated with better keywords that lead potential customers to custom landing pages. This has seen a dramatic increase in conversion rates while also greatly reducing their cost per conversion ratio.

View Anden Constructions Webiste

Alberta Pressure Vessel Manufacturers' Association

The Alberta Pressure Vessels Manufacturers’ Association’s website hadn’t been given an update in nearly a decade. Their site was server from static HTML files which over the years had become cumbersome and complicated to update.

Requiring simplicity and ease of use above all else, we used WordPress with a few choice plugins to make things easier. The design of grey steel and sharp colours were chosen to reflect the trade of which the association is involved.

The final product was held in high regard by the association’s members and has led to increased usage in the website and its offerings.

View Alberta Pressure Vessel Manufacturers’ Association Website

APVMA Golf Tournament

For the previous eight years the Alberta Pressure Vessel Manufacturers’ Association had run a charity golf tournament with proceeds going to the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation. As the tournament grew, so did the workload involved in managing registrations. So APVMA approached Social Canopy to build them an online registration system.

For this system we wanted stability, speed, and security at the utmost, so we chose Kohana as an MVC framework and used Paypal online payments to accept money orders. The final product enabled APVMA to create new tournament events on the fly, manage registrations, and even create archives of all events in order to build a player contact list. Plus, with the actual exchanging of money being handled by Paypal, there were no last minute headaches of trying to collect entry fees and also fewer security security concerns.

View the APVMA Golf Tournament Website

London Squash Racquets Club

The London Squash Racquets Club is a private, member-owned squash club in London, Ontario. The club was looking to attract a younger membership and therefore saw the need to establish an online presence.

The framework of the site is built up Joomla. The dark colours of the background paired with the yellow and green of their coat of arms, evokes an elegant yet sophisticated feeling. The Joomla content management system (CMS) enables the club staff to easily update the content on their site with information about their latest events and promotions.

After launching their new website, the club saw an enormous increase in activity and have since been able to effectively use the site to engage their current membership while also bringing in new prospective members.

View the London Squash Racquets Club Website