If you're searching for a web designer Canada businesses find reliable, responsive and easy to work with, I'd like to help. I'm Peter, a freelance web designer and developer with more than ten years of experience and over 200 completed projects. I work remotely with businesses, non-profits and agencies in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal and smaller towns across the country. You work with me directly, with no account managers in between, and I build websites that meet Canadian expectations for accessibility, privacy and payments.
Working with a remote web designer: Canada and time zones
I'm based in Nairobi, Kenya, which is seven to eight hours ahead of Eastern Time and ten to eleven hours ahead of Pacific Time depending on daylight saving. In practice this works in your favour: we schedule calls early in your day, and much of the work happens while you sleep, so you often wake up to progress. Day-to-day communication happens over email, Slack, Zoom or Google Meet, whichever you prefer. I share a written scope and agree the invoicing currency before any work starts.
Accessible websites for Canadian organisations
Accessibility is a legal requirement for many Canadian organisations, not just a nice extra. In Ontario, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requires the public sector and private or non-profit organisations with 50 or more employees to make their websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA. I design and build to WCAG standards from the start: proper heading structure, colour contrast, keyboard navigation, form labels, alt text and accessible menus. You can read Ontario's own guidance on how to make websites accessible, and see my website accessibility service for audits and fixes on existing sites.
Privacy: PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25
Canadian businesses that collect personal information online need to handle it carefully under PIPEDA, and organisations serving Quebec also have obligations under Law 25, including clearer consent for tracking technologies. On the technical side I build forms that collect only what you need, add consent checkboxes and privacy links, configure cookie consent so analytics and marketing pixels respect visitor choices, and secure the whole site with SSL. Your lawyer or privacy adviser should confirm the wording of your policies.
Bilingual English and French websites
If you serve customers in Quebec or across Canada in both official languages, your website should too. I set up proper multilingual structures in WordPress or Shopify so each language has its own URLs, menus and SEO titles, and visitors can switch language easily. Search engines then show the French version to French searchers instead of a machine-translated page.
Online stores for Canadian customers
As a Shopify developer and WooCommerce developer, I build stores that price in Canadian dollars, apply the right GST, HST or PST settings for each province, and offer the payment options Canadians use, such as cards through Stripe, Moneris or Square, PayPal and Shop Pay. I can also set up shipping rates, local pickup and order emails. See eCommerce website design for more.
What I build for Canadian clients
- Business websites for professional services, trades, clinics and consultants
- Non-profit and charity websites with donation forms and volunteer sign-ups
- Booking systems for appointments, classes and rentals
- Website redesigns that protect your existing search rankings
- White-label development for Canadian agencies
- Ongoing maintenance: updates, backups, security and content changes
Domains: getting a .ca address
A .ca domain signals to customers that you're Canadian, and it can only be registered by people and organisations that meet the Canadian Presence Requirements. I'll register it in your name, or connect the one you already own, along with professional business email.
How to choose a web designer in Canada
- Ask whether they build to WCAG 2.0/2.1 AA, and how they test it.
- Confirm that you will own the domain, hosting and every login.
- Ask for live examples and test them on your own phone. See my portfolio.
- Get a fixed scope, a timeline and post-launch support terms in writing.