CDG is formed
Dave Green, President, formed Creative Design Group after selling his radio station broadcasting group. The three person staff that opened the doors started with a hope and a prayer that websites would become important and the business and staff have watched a world of excitement and constant improvement open up for their employees and customers. CDG began by hand coding websites and constructed one of the first banking websites in the Heartland and have grown to a customer base with over 40 states and four countries.

CDG Expands
Creative Design Group originally started as a regional Midwest design firm with more of our clients covering a 4-6 state area. But with our successful Google search engine placement and with the credo that every site we do sells another one, our business starts to expand nationwide. Being first or second in Google under “free website design quote” gave us hundreds of leads that we converted to clients at a very high rate. Our staff took off the blinders and realized that we had the opportunity to be a bigger national influence.

Recognition & Expanded Partnership
Fast Company, an influential technology magazine, names CDG as one of the top influential web designers in the country – a high accolade for what started as a small town, mid-western design company. This recognition helps expand our coverage even more coast to coast and allows us to expand our staff, our design work, our marketing skills and increase our growth. CDG expands and becomes partners with new search engines, new ecommerce cart programs and begins to directly program our first software that will later become our content management systems.

The iPhone, and the world changes.
We have to do what? We have to start worrying about websites displaying on small devices in the palm of your hand? Programming becomes more difficult with the classic beta max vs vhs war going on in every phase of our business. Quick and nimble becomes key as the CDG staff is forced to try, evaluate and choose programming languages and software on an almost weekly basis. The first national discussion of mobile websites begins and this creates what would become CDG’s most important division, mobi marketing and design. Social media is exploding, unfriend and Google become verbs. Amid the banking crisis and market jitters CDG posts another consecutive year of sales and profit growth. CDG is on the cutting edge of programming and marketing - and customers continue to stay with us.

Mobi’s are out – responsive is in.
For the first time CDG starts programming responsive websites. The coding is new, the programming is difficult, but our customers need websites that float and move based on the device being used. Our websites need to work and look great on tablets, iPhones, Kindles, iPads and also look great landscape and portrait versions so that the customer can choose how a site needs to be seen. Life is exciting at CDG as our staff is pushed to new limits of knowledge and effort and they respond perfectly with jobs and websites well done. Our customers continue to choose us year after year after year.

A new website for CDG
Finally we get around to redoing our website to make it responsive. Yes, we are late to that party but our customers come before us. While our board is filled with sites in development, we also needed to produce a new responsive site for ourselves. Google Analytics, our CMS software, Ecommerce with a new twist and search engine optimization – all subjects we have focused on for years – are expanded and vital to our success. The staff is faster and more knowledgeable than ever before and our customer retention rate continues to be over 94%, a value unheard of in website design. Come join us at CDG, we would love to have you along for the ride.

We continue to grow
Business has been very good as we continue to grow. CDG currently hosts hundreds of sites with thousands of jobs depending on our daily efforts. Our business changes daily with new software, new techniques, new browsers, new devices and new coding. Recently we have greatly expanded our custom software installation so our clients can save thousands by editing their site from anywhere, anytime, any place. Our customers grab their phone, take some photos or video and have the content on their site in minutes.

It's March of 2020, and like a lot of things in our business, we didn't see that coming. But yet we were prepared. Covid-19 hits and our customers are desperate for changes, improvements, and support of their hard decisions and tough times. CDG has nursing care websites in 20+ states, and we have dozens of county health departments. All, instantly, needed "Home Page Interrupters" on their site to add and edit data fast and easy and from anywhere. CDG staff went home....but their work and our servers never failed our customers. It is a tough time for many but we helped save thousands of jobs by keeping the sites running. Our customers, many for the first time, put their website first, and we were there to help. Our ideas and edits helped keep their businesses running and employees working.