What does Arete Soft Labs do?

Arete Soft Labs is a B2B web design and digital marketing agency in Toronto and Ottawa. We design and build websites and online stores, and grow them with SEO, AI-search optimization, and paid media — focused on generating qualified calls and quote requests.

What is AI search optimization (GEO/AEO)?

AI search optimization, also called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), structures a website so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews cite it when answering buyer questions. Arete offers it as a dedicated service.

How much does a website cost in Canada?

Cost depends on scope, from a focused redesign to a full custom build with SEO and ongoing marketing. Arete provides a clear fixed quote after a short discovery call.

Do you build on Shopify and WordPress?

Yes. Arete builds custom WordPress, Shopify, Shopify Plus, and WooCommerce stores, choosing the platform around your goals rather than a default.

What industries does Arete Soft Labs work with?

We work with B2B clients across manufacturing and industrial, professional services, legal, finance and accounting, SaaS and technology, education and training, and wholesale and distribution, mostly in the $1M–$10M revenue range.

Where is Arete Soft Labs located?

Arete has offices in Toronto (1 Yonge Street) and Ottawa (502 Langelier Avenue), and serves clients across Canada and the United States.

B2B Web Design Agency · Toronto & Ottawa

Pipeline First Web Design Company in Toronto

Subhead Most websites are built to look right. We build yours to fill the sales pipeline, then prove it with traffic, leads and revenue. Offices on Yonge Street in Toronto and in Ottawa, working with Canadian and US businesses since 2007.

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★★★★★4.9 Avg rating · 30+ awards · 1,000+ projects · reviewed on Clutch & Google

Trusted by ambitious brands across Canada & US.

Selected Work

Work that fills pipelines.

Websites, online stores and SEO/AEO for manufacturers, distributors and consumer brands across Canada and the US.

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Bartell Global

Manufacturing · Custom WordPress

Telus Fund

Retail · Shopify Plus

Genrep

E-commerce · Shopify + SEO

Who We Are

Arete is an award-winning web design company in Toronto

Arete Soft Labs is a web design company in Toronto [L1] with an office in Ottawa [L2]. Since 2007, we have delivered over 1,000 projects for manufacturers, distributors, professional firms and retailers across Canada and the US.

Design, development, ecommerce and marketing all sit in-house, so search structure, speed and accessibility are planned at the start, not retrofitted by three vendors. You get one senior contact and a fixed quote for a fixed scope — and AI does the groundwork in our own process, which is a large part of how we hold that price and date.

Explore our work →

19 yrs

Designing and building since 2007

1,000+

Projects delivered

30+

Industry awards

4.9★

Google rating

Our Services

Web design, ecommerce and marketing services

One system, five ways we grow you — so nothing falls between design, development and marketing.

Arete Build

Website Design & Development

Custom websites and WordPress builds that load fast, look right, and turn visitors into enquiries — with AI-powered search built in where it helps.

Web Design Web Design UX/UI WordPress Custom Dev AI Features

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Arete Commerce

Ecommerce & Online Stores

WooCommerce and Shopify stores built to sell, and migrations that move you without losing what you have built.

Shopify WooCommerce Shopify Plus Migrations

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Arete Amplify

Google & Meta Ads

Google and Meta campaigns that bring in buyers who are ready to talk.

Google Ads Meta Paid Social

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Arete Search

SEO & AI Search

Get found on Google and cited by AI assistants when your buyers ask them a question.

SEO GEO/AEO Content Marketing

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Arete Care

Maintenance & Support

Updates, security and ongoing improvements for WordPress/WooCommerce and Shopify/Shopify Plus, so your site keeps getting better after launch.

Maintenance & Support CRO Speed Optimization Retainers

website maintenance services

Our Work

Web design case studies from Toronto and across Canada

Three recent builds, with the numbers the client actually cared about.

Toronto · Shopify Migration · B2C + B2B

Caviar Centre

A Toronto luxury food brand selling to both retail customers and restaurants, running on a split WooCommerce and Ecwid setup that made every order harder than it needed to be. We migrated the catalogue to Shopify, rebuilt the storefront in English and French, and separated the wholesale (B2B) and retail buying paths so restaurant buyers stopped being treated like shoppers.

+21%

orders in month one

+135%

completed checkouts

+37%

conversion rate

Read the Caviar Centre case study →

Manufacturing · Bilingual WordPress · SEO/AEO

Genrep

A generator manufacturer with four Ontario locations running separate English and French websites that had drifted apart. We consolidated both into one bilingual WordPress site [L8] with a full product catalogue, an online request-for-quote engine and a dealer locator, then rebuilt the search foundation for Google and AI assistants and added AI-powered predictive search across the technical range.

+32%

organic traffic

68%

faster load

locations, one site

Read the Genrep case study →

Mississauga · Manufacturing · Multi-brand WordPress

Bartell Global

A construction equipment manufacturer in Mississauga selling across the GTA, Canada, the US, and the UK, with six brands scattered across separate sites. We unified all six under one fast, search-optimized WordPress build with a quote engine and full product catalogue, plus a dedicated UK site sharing the same foundation.

+27%

lead capture

brands unified

−44%

bounce rate

Read the Bartell Global case study →

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BArete Build

Web design and WordPress development in Toronto

We design and develop custom websites and WordPress sites for Canadian businesses — built for speed, trust, and turning visitors into qualified enquiries.

Our designers work on-brand and conversion-focused. Our developers build fast, secure sites your own team can update without calling us. Every layout, word, and load-time decision is judged against one question: does this move a qualified buyer closer to contacting you? Where a site carries a large catalogue or a deep document library, we build AI-powered search into it — search that understands what someone means rather than matching their exact words, and improves the more it is used.

Web Design Custom WordPress UX/UI Accessibility AI Search

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CArete Commerce

Ecommerce website design: WooCommerce and Shopify

We build and migrate WooCommerce, Shopify and Shopify Plus stores — and help you work out which one you should be on in the first place.

That decision is worth getting right. Each platform suits a different business depending on how you sell, what you sell, how your team works, and where you expect to be in two years. Once that is settled, we design a store that cuts friction, stays easy for your team to run, and is built on the platform that fits your business.

WooCommerce Shopify Shopify Plus Migrations

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AArete Search

SEO and AI search optimization agency in Toronto

We get your site ranking on Google and cited by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.

Search has split in two. Half your buyers still type into Google. The other half ask an AI and take the first answer they are given. We build for both: technical SEO and content that earns rankings, plus generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) that make your business the answer.

SEO AI Search (GEO/AEO) Technical SEO Content Marketing

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SArete Amplify

PPC and paid media management in Toronto

We run your Google, Meta, and paid social campaigns, built to bring in buyers who are ready to talk rather than traffic that looks good in a report.

We put qualified people in front of pages that are ready to convert, then keep optimizing against the numbers your sales team reports on — cost per qualified lead, and what those leads are worth once they close.

Google Ads Meta Ads Paid Social Retargeting

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CArete Care

Website maintenance and support plans

We keep your site fast, secure, and improving after launch, on a monthly retainer.

Launch is the start, not the finish. Support covers the day-to-day — updates, backups, security, the small changes you need this week — alongside ongoing testing and refinement so your site converts better in a year than it does on the day it goes live.

Support & Maintenance CRO Retainers Audits

website maintenance services →

Industries We Serve

Web design for your industry

Different industries, three recurring problems. Most projects we take on look like one of these.

01 / Catalogue & quote

Complex catalogues and quote-driven sales

When your product range is large and the sale ends in a quote rather than a cart, the site’s job is to get a buyer to the right product and then to a form without friction. Product catalogues, request-for-quote engines, dealer and branch locators, multi-brand structures.

02 / Considered purchase

Trust-led, considered purchases

When buyers are comparing firms rather than products, credibility does the selling. Clear service architecture, credentials and people surfaced properly, accessible builds that hold up to scrutiny, and search visibility for the terms your clients actually use.

Professional Services Legal Finance & Accounting Healthcare & Medical Education & Training Non-Profit & Associations

03 / Selling online

Selling online, to consumers and to trade

When revenue runs through the store, small friction costs real money. Platform choice, migrations without downtime, separate B2B and retail buying paths, checkout optimization, and ongoing improvement after launch.

Ecommerce & Retail Consumer Brands SaaS & Technology Travel & Tourism

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About Arete

Arete means excellence. That’s not an accident.

In ancient Greek, *arete* meant living up to the highest potential of a thing. We chose it because it is the standard we hold every project to.

Since 2007 we have grown from a small Toronto web design studio into an award-winning agency with offices in Toronto and Ottawa, more than 1,000 projects delivered, and clients across Canada and the US. We stay deliberately focused: senior expertise on every build, honest advice about what to do first, and work measured the way you measure it — leads, calls, and revenue.

About Arete Soft Labs →

ARETEEST. 2007EXCELLENCE/ar·e·tay/

ἀρετή

excellence — the act of living up to one's full potential

Client Reviews

What our clients say

★★★★★

"They understood our business, not just our website. The redesign paid for itself in new enquiries."

— Don B. · Manufacturing

★★★★★

"Professional, responsive, and genuinely strategic. The site finally reflects the quality of our work."

— Dikshit S. · Professional Services

★★★★★

"From SEO to design, they delivered on every promise. Our organic traffic and leads both climbed."

— H.C. · Retail / E-commerce

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Awards & Partnerships

Awards, ratings and technology partnerships

Thirty industry awards since 2007, 4.8 on Clutch and 4.9 on Google, and certified partnerships with the platforms we build on.

Awards & Ratings

30+ Industry Awards Clutch 4.8★ Google 4.9★ DesignRush Top GoodFirms Verified

Technology Partners

Shopify Partner Shopify Plus WordPress WooCommerce Google Partner Meta Business

Free · Monthly · Real tips from projects we deliver

The Arete Brief.

What we learned building and ranking sites last month — what worked, what did not, and what changed in Google and AI search. Written by the team doing the work, not a content agency. One email a month.

3,000+ subscribers

One email a month

Free always

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FAQ

B2B Web Design & SEO — Questions Answered

Short, straight answers — the same ones we give AI search engines.

We are a web design company in Toronto with a second office in Ottawa. We design and build websites and online stores, then grow them with SEO, AI search optimization and paid advertising. Design, development, and marketing are all in-house, so one team is accountable for how your site looks, how fast it loads, and whether it ranks. Since 2007, we have delivered over 1,000 projects across Canada and the United States.

Business websites: $5,000 – $15,000 CAD. A custom-designed site for a new or established business looking to build a new website or redesign.

B2B and custom websites: $10,000 – $50,000 CAD. Product catalogues, request-for-quote engines, dealer locators, bilingual builds, and connections to your CRM or ERP.

Ecommerce websites: $10,000 – $100,000 CAD. WooCommerce, Shopify, and Shopify Plus builds and migrations, scaling with catalogue size, B2B pricing rules, and integrations.

Where you land comes down to how much is built from scratch, how many of your other systems the site has to talk to, whether you need a French version, and whether your content is ready. We quote a fixed price for a fixed scope after a short discovery call, so the figure you approve is the figure you pay. There is a full breakdown of the cost of a website in Canada on our blog.

A focused business site runs 4 to 6 weeks. A custom B2B site with a product catalogue and quote engine runs 8 to 12 weeks. Ecommerce builds and migrations run 8 to 16 weeks depending on catalogue size and integrations.

The launch date is set at kickoff, and the schedule is built around hitting it. The one thing that genuinely affects timing is content. In week one, you get a clear list of exactly what we need and when. If writing twenty pages is not something your team has time for, our in-house writers can handle it — they write for your buyers first and structure it for Google and AI search at the same time, which beats writing it twice.

You always know who you are talking to. One senior person owns your project from first call to launch — no handoff to a junior account manager.

Your whole project sits under one roof. Design, development, ecommerce and SEO are in-house, so the site is structured for search and built for speed from day one.

Your quote does not change. Fixed price for a fixed scope. If a requirement triggers scope creep, you hear about it before it is built.

Your launch date is a commitment. We plan around it, protect it, and you always know where the project stands.

Yes, all three, plus Shopify Plus. More usefully, we will help you pick.

WordPress suits content-led and catalogue-driven sites where you want full control of structure and SEO. WooCommerce fits when your store sits inside a larger WordPress site or needs custom pricing logic. Shopify and Shopify Plus make sense when you would rather a hosted platform handled payments, security, and scale.

The right answer depends on how you sell, who you sell to, and where you expect to be in two years. We will talk you through the trade-offs honestly — and if the platform you are already on is working, we will tell you to stay put.

AI search optimization — generative engine optimization (GEO), or answer engine optimization (AEO) — structures your site so assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews cite it when someone asks a question your business can answer.

It matters because more buyers now get one recommended answer instead of ten links. If your competitor is that answer, you are not in the conversation. The work overlaps heavily with solid technical SEO — clean structure, clear information about who you are, real answers to real questions — so it rarely needs to be a separate budget line.

Yes, where there is a real job for it to do. The most useful is usually site search — AI-powered search that understands what someone means rather than matching keywords and gets better the more it is used. We built that for Genrep, whose buyers work through a large technical product range, and for FHENY’s online store.

We build chatbots as well, though we will tell you honestly when one is not worth it. If your site takes a steady volume of the same questions, a chatbot pays for itself. If not, it is one more thing to maintain. We also use AI heavily in our own process — research before design, checking content and spec sheets for inconsistencies, preparing product data for ecommerce import. That is a large part of how we hold a fixed price and a fixed date, and every decision that reaches your customers is still made by a person.

Yes, and this is where redesigns most often go wrong. Every existing URL is mapped to its new address before launch, and the pages already earning rankings are kept rather than rewritten on instinct.

Most clients gain traffic after launch rather than losing it. Genrep grew organic traffic 32% after their rebuild, and a Mississauga client grew 127%.

Yes, through their APIs. We regularly connect sites to QuickBooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Epicor, NetSuite and SAP Business One, and to Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoho.

In practice, that means product and pricing data flowing one way, orders and enquiries the other, and nobody retyping anything. If your system is less common, the question is simply whether it has an API or an export we can work with — we check before quoting.

AODA applies to most private-sector organisations in Ontario, and the standard it points to is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. We design to it from the start and test before launch — colour contrast, structure a screen reader can follow, forms that can be completed with a keyboard alone.

Designing for it from the start costs a fraction of retrofitting it. Audits and remediation of an existing site are separate work we can quote for.

Not at all. We are based in Toronto with a second office in Ottawa, and work with clients across Canada and the United States — Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, along with New York, Chicago, Arizona, North Carolina, and many other states.

Recent projects include web design for a construction equipment manufacturer in Mississauga and selling into the GTA, Canada, the US, and the UK, and a generator manufacturer headquartered in Hamilton with offices in Toronto, Ottawa, and Leamington. Most projects run remotely with regular calls. If you would rather meet in person, we are on Yonge Street.

Yes, end to end — business sites and ecommerce stores, on WordPress, WooCommerce or Shopify.

There are two ways to do it. Separate English and French builds give you full control of every page, which matters when the two markets need genuinely different content. Translation layers — WPML or Weglot on WordPress, Translate & Adapt or Langify on Shopify — run one site in two languages, with AI translation as the starting point and human review wherever the wording has to be right. That route launches faster, costs less, and leaves your team maintaining one site instead of two. Most clients are better served by it.

The parts that usually go wrong are the parts we handle up front: URL structure, hreflang tags, and a workflow that keeps both versions in step as you publish. For Genrep, we consolidated two separate sites into one bilingual WordPress build. If you sell into Quebec or hold federal or provincial contracts, this is worth getting right the first time.

Launch is the start. Your business keeps moving, so the site has to as well — new sections as your offering grows, speed work as you add pages, conversion testing, and on WordPress in particular, the core, theme, and plugin updates that stop a good website quietly becoming a broken one. That is what a monthly retainer covers, sized to how active your site is.

You own all of it either way. Code, hosting access, admin accounts, documentation, and training are handed over at launch. We build on open platforms, so you are never stuck with one agency, including this one.

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