Must read

A currated collection of articles that you absolutely must read if you are going through the process of overhauling or creating a website.

Must read

Why and how you need to find every website you own

Universities have hundreds of sites. More often than not, the majority of these fly under the radar. At best, this can be a missed opportunity - but at its worst, it's can erode your brand governance model.

Nathan Monk
December 1, 2020

Must read

The difference between the needs of the user and stakeholder opinions and how feedback can affect a project

When it comes to redesigning a flagship website, a prospectus, or virtually anything that requires design input, there is a 99% chance that the client will have an opinion and thoughts to feedback (rightly so, they are paying for it).…

Elliott Barnicle
November 5, 2020

Must read, Opinion

A Blueprint for the Ideal Content Team: The Agency Perspective

Content is the stuff that websites are made of. And with the sheer amount of content migration that can come along with a website redesign, a plan is needed to help smooth the process. Nowhere is this more true than in the education sector.

Jon Bates
July 14, 2020

Must read, Opinion

Evolution, not revolution

We believe that a website is never finished. A website is an ongoing process.

Jon Bates
June 11, 2020

Insight, Must read

SEO Tips for writing content for your website

These are some SEO Tips for writing content in a way that will benefit your search engine ranking. Search Engines like good content. So don't let these take over your writing. A lot of these tips are simply good writing pointers in general. Google is clever enough to see past the old loopholes and rewards good citizens.

Nathan Monk
June 11, 2020

Must read

How AI can help colleges deal with huge volumes of enquiry

SMILE are the team behind the newly released Chesterfield College website. Along with a new visual language and website structure, we have utilised Artificial Intelligence to help ease a strain on internal resource.

Jon Bates
July 12, 2019

Insight, Must read

Quick and dirty background video

Background video is a useful tool in a web designers toolkit. I’ll show you how quick and easy it is to pull together. You can see it on a whole swathe of websites now — probably (in part) due to technological reasons. It’s easier to code it up and it’s widely supported by browsers.

Nathan Monk
January 30, 2019

Insight, Must read

The Responsive Media Grid

How do you deal with an image (or video) in a shape-changing, responsive container? It's a common problem, and I've designed a system to help tackle it.

Nathan Monk
January 28, 2019

Insight, Must read

Understand your audience better with personas

University websites are primarily used to recruit and engage with students, but realistically they have multiple audiences to appease. It’s common for universities to forget about some of the other audiences such as parents, staff, academics.

Nathan Monk
May 18, 2017