About MJ
An engineer who builds websites.
Acorn Websites was founded by MJ Howie. She began building websites and automation pipelines in 2012, the same year she finished her engineering degree at UBC. There is a longer bio and background page if you want the credentials.
Engineering taught me to scope a job, put the plan in writing, and build the thing so it holds up. That is how we run web projects. You get a fixed price and a scope in writing before you pay a deposit.
We keep the firm small on purpose. You get a direct line on the first call, and the same direct line when something breaks three years later. No account managers and no ticket queues.
In 2026 this site won Best Business Website at the Web Excellence Awards.
I live in Armstrong with my four kids. Most of our clients are in western North America. They run from Vancouver to Revelstoke, through the Shuswap and the Okanagan Valley, and south to California.
Outside client work, we run a few content sites of our own, which is where we test what works before we recommend it to you. We also build and maintain websites for four local nonprofits at no charge, which you can read about on the community page.
years building websites
Professional engineer, UBC 2012
person, start to finish
Best Business Website 2026, Web Excellence Awards, for this site.
How we work
Engineering habits, applied to websites.
In engineering you do not start pouring concrete and see how it goes. You scope the job, price it, write it down, and get it signed. Then you build the thing you said you would build.
Web work rarely runs that way, which is why so many business owners have a story about a site that took a year and never finished. So we run projects the engineering way. If the scope grows, you get a change order and a number before any of it gets built.
The other habit is measurement. Rankings are nice. Calls and form fills pay the bills. Tracking gets installed on every build and we show you how to read it, so you can see which pages bring in work and which ones just sit there.
We also test on our own sites first. We run a few content brands of our own, and the sites we own and manage carried 1.3 million pageviews in 2025. When we recommend something to a client, it is usually because we already broke it, fixed it, and watched what happened on a site where we were the only ones paying for the mistake.
Most of our clients come from a referral, a Google search, or the Chamber. Almost all of them stay on a hosting and maintenance plan after launch, which is the honest measure of whether the work held up.
Questions
About working with us.
- Can we meet in person?
- Yes, by appointment. Our office is in the Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce space at the Odd Fellows Hall on Wood Avenue. Book a time first so you are not standing at a locked door.
- How do you show me the design?
- On a private link, and then we leave you alone with it. There is no live reveal call where a few people watch your face while you work out whether you are allowed to say you hate the header. You look on your own time and tell us what is wrong with it.
- Are you an SEO, a web designer, or a web developer?
- All three, which is less common than it should be. Many web projects split the work across three people. A designer draws the pages, a developer builds them, and an SEO gets hired after launch to fix what the first two missed. We design the pages, build the site, and do the SEO ourselves. That means the page structure, the headings, the speed, and the tracking are right on launch day. It also means one firm answers for all of it.
Ready to talk?
A 20 minute call. No pitch. What you need and what it costs.
Or text 778-692-5555 or email hello@acornwebsites.com. We reply within two business days.