Why a creative retainer works better than ad-hoc feature requests
Evolve is our take on the traditional retainer. Evolve subscriptions redefine ongoing working relationships with SMILE, all at a no-brainer price-point.
UX (User Experience)
User Experience Design (UX) is the practice of delivering effective online experiences. The result is a meaningful interaction for your users and better conversion rates for you.
Intuitive online experiences are successful ones. Whatever the purpose of your online presence, competition is often high. This is no truer than in the education sector. Universities, in particular, have found themselves needing to work harder to stand out from the crowd. Making life easy for your users can help position you above the competition.
Placing real people at the centre of your developments is key. This begins with a series of questions. Put simply, who are your users? What content are they looking for? And how do those users behave online? This insight helps to produce design systems backed in evidence.
Over the last decade, our design tools and processes have been refined to keep real people in focus throughout. Up-front processes give us the insight to benchmark against. As wireframes, user journeys and mockups are produced, they are validated.
Validation comes in many forms, but user testing is often the most insightful. Common practices include card sorts, tree tests, interviews and remote user tests. Remote user tests are particularly useful for testing user experience (UX). A set of tasks is set to an impartial panel. The test gives our design team the evidence and opportunity to refine designs. And all of this before a single line of code is written. When conversion is imperative, these small refinements can make all the difference.
Do you have questions about our processes? Are you interested to know how insight could help to improve your conversation rates? Get in touch today.
Helping DELTA Trust replace their network of school websites
The DELTA Academies Trust were looking to replace their current network of over 50 primary and secondary school websites.
Repurposing WordPress for live chat
Hijack 2.0 has changed the way that we approach live chat in the backend of WordPress, find out how we have done this.
Supporting AUA Members to Continue Developing Professionally
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the term used to describe the learning activities professionals engage in to develop and enhance their abilities.
Going Beyond Dance, Music, Art and Literature with Sampad.org.uk
The all new Sampad Arts website has launched! Sampad’s mission is to connect people with South Asian and British Asian Arts and Heritage, and to play a cutting-edge role in the creative economy.
Experience Your Future, with Coventry University
Coventry University has been running online events throughout the 2020 pandemic. But with digital fatigue setting in, they wanted to take a different approach to applicant visit days. To stand out from their peers, they turned to SMILE.
Webinar Roundup: Resources from our Accessibility Webinar
A follow up on our webinar about website accessibility and how it applies to your organisation with SiteImprove and the University of Gloucestershire.
Changing the way we design with evolving software
Over the years, the design team at SMILE have used multiple design programmes in a bid to deliver the highest quality output for our clients. When I began at SMILE in 2017, we briefly used Figma for design work but…
Introducing: The all-new University of Gloucestershire website
The all-new University of Gloucestershire website has launched. This project includes so many things that we've wanted to see in flagship websites. This high-profile development took over a year to realise and saw SMILE work with stakeholders from across the university at all levels.
Working with UEA on their flagship website
We re-designed the University of East Anglia (UEA) website. This was our biggest design project to date including UI/UX design, and the creation of a design system.