Re-thinking ‘online open days’ with SMILE Hijack
For Regent’s University, London.
User insight driving design choices
The platform’s longevity is a testament to its success. In its first iteration, the platform began life as a Postgraduate only platform, but pretty quickly struck up a good following with both students and staff, leading to it being deployed…
The power of personalised videos in student recruitment
University College Birmingham valued individuals: so much so that they wanted to run a personalised campaign. SMILE worked with the college over two years to deliver a personalised video campaign that returned unbelievable results.
The University of Sunderland flagship website redesign
Dive into the details of how we won gold at HEIST for “Best Website” in 2018.
Generating an authentic experience for online events
“Being authentic” is perhaps the most overused phrase you’ll hear when engaging students online through digital open days, chat-bots and other online experiences. But you can really get to the heart of decision-making moments if you can leverage the right conversation, so working out what authenticity looks like for you will help you go in the right direction. This article aims to uncover some of the key considerations when engaging youth audiences online.
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.
An overhaul for Newman University
To rebrand the university, replace the hosting infrastructure, CMS and design of the Newman University flagship website, including the design of a course database system as well as overhaul and replace the current intranet system with a bespoke offering from…
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.
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.
What students want from universities in 2017
"Large amounts of useless information", "Not enough important images", "All look the same", "Not entirely honest". These are all quotes from a group of students when asked what university websites are currently like. Students know what they want to see on websites, and what is currently being shown, is not it.
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.
What is moment mapping?
University web properties have multiple audiences. In most cases, the primary purpose is to engage with students and therefore recruit them. However, let’s take a moment to make sure we don’t forget about all of the other users — parents, stakeholders, staff,…