Hello there,
Nice to meet you
My name is Shawna, and I’m the Website Designer and Developer behind Paradise West. I live in beautiful Qualicum Beach, BC, with my husband and two energetic, fun, and crazy boys.
My goal is to create a unique, custom-designed website for your company to help you stand out in the big world of small business.
I like to say I went from being a lab geek to a computer nerd, because my first career was as a Medical Laboratory Technologist working at Vancouver General Hospital for 9 years. It is there where I discovered my love for coding after being assigned to assist with the development of our lab information system.
After moving to Qualicum Beach in 2013 (and never looking back), I started to explore other career opportunities which would allow me to use both my creative and my technical side while being able to stay at home with my young boys. I started dipping my toes into Website Design and Development and immediately fell in love with it.
Nowadays, there are many people who learn to use WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) website builders, and call themself a website designer. While the websites they create look pretty, there is a lot more that goes into the development of a website than than simply filling in templates.
Being a very inquisitive person and always hungry for knowledge, I fully immersed myself in year of web design and development education prior to building my first official website, and have continued to learn more and more every year. I have a deep understanding of CSS, HTML, and PHP coding, Search Engine Optimization, and UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) Design. My education includes completion of the BCIT Website Technologies program in 2017, as well as many other online courses over time to deepen my understanding of Website Development.
I officially opened my Qualicum Beach Website Design company in 2018 to cater to small, local businesses that are in need of professional, solid, eye-catching websites. I look forward to working with you to create the website you’ve been dreaming of!
– Shawna