Wildly undercutting in all directions.

A Sault Ste. Marie web design firm is expanding its online footprint into southern Ontario.

Pictographics Ltd. has broken into the Toronto market, having signed contracts to build and host Websites for several small retailers and furniture stores which are developing an online presence.

President Luke Dalla Bona says Pictographics has signed six contracts with small companies and is actively pursuing two others.

Realizing Northern Ontario's economic pie is only so big, he started offering his services to small southern Ontario businesses by cold-calling them. The tactic has produced results.

"Our goal for 2005 is to try and have a dozen signed up," says Dalla Bona.

"The health of my business is based upon the health of other businesses. If they're growing and expanding and new businesses are coming to town, they need my services.

"If they don't, advertising is the first thing to go. They start cutting back on their advertising budgets and, unfortunately, Northern Ontario is less than vibrant when it comes to that sort of thing."

Best of all, he can charge Northern Ontario prices and "wildly undercut" his southern Ontario competitors since his company doesn't have the pricey overhead.

An average Web site built by a typical Toronto Web firm usually costs between $5,000 and $10,000, says Dalla Bona. "We're half that.

"These kinds of things not only give us a competitive advantage, but we produce a product that is on par with and better than (what) is being produced by companies in Toronto.

"We've already got a number of clients down there who are starting to refer us to other clients, so the amount of cold-calling is starting to go down already."

An archaeologist by trade and a skilled cartographer, Dalla Bona's early work was heavily geared towards computers and geographic information systems doing landscape and predictive modelling during the early days of the Web in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Simon Fraser and University of Manitoba grad starting doing Web sites on the side to make a few extra bucks.

The Windsor native, who was working for the Ministry of Natural Resources as a provincial archaeologist at the time, started Pictographics in Thunder Bay, doing digital mapping for various government agencies, Native organizations and universities. That fad came and went, but the Web was starting to take off.

When he moved to the Sault in 1996, he saw a need in the local market for a full-service Web firm.

"There were folks who would sell you Internet access and they'd give you Web space on the side. And there were folks who would design Web pages for you, but you basically had to take care of putting it on the Web.

"It was really analogous to the days of desktop publishing. Anybody who had a computer and a dozen fonts thought they knew how to design a newsletter."

He decided to gear their business specifically toward the professional market and installed his own servers and equipment in-house from day one.

There were no manuals at the time, as software was adapting and changing. But the company learned how to integrate data-bases on the fly.

"I've never taken a course in how to program a Web page. You just have to learn it as you go."

The great thing about the Web, he says, is there are huge communities online where he can share ideas and help source software.

The six-employee firm now boasts a client base of more than 200 in the Sault area, the majority of which learned of the firm via word of mouth.

"Sometimes we'll get a run where all we're doing is building (resort) lodge Web sites."

Some of his clients include Algoma University College, Sault Area Hospitals, Elliot Lake Waterfront Properties, the Algoma Kinniwabi Travel Association, the Sault Ste. Marie Chamber of Commerce and Station Mall.

Pictographics is also developing a number of in-house products including a content management system, an enabling technology allowing clients to update their own Web site.

"The folks using our content management system are changing their Web sites every morning" by adding new pictures, updating prices or posting news items.

Dalla Bona says he places great emphasis on educating his clients to use their Web sites in the most effective way possible.

A more media-savvy client, he feels, translates into more business opportunities later on.

Dalla Bona says one client in the local accommodations sector counts 65 per cent of their business as being directly attributable to the Web with bookings from Ireland, Germany and Europe.

Pictographics is redesigning that Web site to include French, German and Dutch.

www.pictographics.com

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By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business