When it comes to poor user experiences, people are unforgiving. If you make them struggle with your interface, they will probably abandon you.

Our user-centred design (UX) process eliminates frustrating experiences, optimises your investment in digital media and increases the value you deliver to your target audience.

It’s based on understanding and meeting your business needs by designing experiences that your users will enjoy. By placing your users at the heart of the strategic, creative and technical decision-making process, we can deliver a superior online experience that leads to:

• increased site performance and visibility in search rankings
• stronger brand perception and customer loyalty
• higher levels of customer advocacy and recommendation

One way to view user testing is to validate design and functionality ideas and improve them

iteratively on user feedback. Another view though, is that testing allows you to go deep into your customers' expectations of how a product or service stacks up against competitors.

Our range of testing methodologies include lo-fi paper based testing for rapid feedback on prototypes through to large scale remote tests with video/audio feedback, notation and recommendations for improvement.

• Gain real insight into your customers
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Identify barriers to online buying
• Increase sales and conversion rates
• Reduce load on support or customer service
• Reduce development costs

We can help you to test an interactive prototype before development, or improve an area or process flow in your online service where customers are clearly struggling.

As online customer experience improves at rapid pace, your customers' expectation of beautiful, simple, personal and frictionless online experiences increases. With every upgrade or new release of your competitors product, your own is at threat.

We can help to use testing to uncover what your customers have become used to and, by analysing their feedback from a service design perspective, advise you on the improvements you need to make to stay one step ahead.

Digital services based on research offer a better user experience. That’s because measuring feedback and sentiment helps brands to plan, prioritise and deliver developments in a strategic way.

Our team can research the performance of your digital services and user requirements, then provide you with substantial evidence to inform your next moves. Our research service includes:

• face-to-face interviews
• group workshops
• scenario planning
• online surveys
• desk-based research
• competitor and market analysis

We conduct quick and efficient research that uncovers the maximum value for your business and service users. Our findings lead to improvements or innovations that add significant value.

Users explore digital services via diverse journeys. Understanding their online behaviour provides vital insight to tailor digital services in a way that offers the smoothest experience.

We will determine where your web service could be improved and provide solutions with measurable benefit. We do this by:

• identifying and improving the online experience for your site users
• carrying out web data and usability analysis
• improving your information architecture, navigation and content placement.

Streamlining your online journeys will help your users reach their destination without hassle. This will improve your click through rate, level of engagement and brand perception in the digital space.

Our digital strategy service uses design thinking principles to unlock new product, service and experience propositions for your business and your customers.

Working in rapid, collaborative iterations, our engagements might include:

• Market and stakeholder research
• Business change and service design
• Content strategy and content planning
• Product and service prototyping
• Workshops, online, desktop and one-to-one user research

In the digital era, graphic design is an integrated discipline. Our designers are communicators first; focused on making design work for your business and for your audience whatever the application might be.

For us, design is not about being showy or flash. It is about finding appropriate solutions. More often than not beauty and clarity arises from getting the answer just right.

Our designers are responsible for making intelligent, strategic decisions that add value to your business goals.

Technology is always changing. That’s why it’s vital to stay on top of the latest developments to safeguard your business for the future. It’s all about being proactive to stay competitive. Our development services include:

• Responsive design
• Front end development
• Content management
• Iterative and agile optimisation
• Ongoing support and hosting

We think of ourselves as being ‘technology agnostic’ and stay abreast of all the latest developments. This means we can help you select the best solution for your business needs – and how to make good use of it from the start of a digital project, to completion and beyond.

We do this through:

• in-house development, system integration and hosting management
• a special interest in user experience
• placing emphasis on good and robust accessibility practice
• being active in the web standards community
• a commitment to open-source solutions

We are not only capable of designing and developing exceptional websites but also robust bespoke web applications.

Web applications are tools or services that are built for use in web browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge. They're designed for mobile browsers but also work on desktop and they don't require the user to download an application to their phone.

A good web application can help run a business or service better whilst save time and money by making the operational process efficient and effective.

We build intelligent web-based applications with the latest technology and utilising database design that can display an huge amount of data and manage it within issues in a live, heavy traffic environment.

A cleverly designed bespoke solution can give you a competitive edge in the marketplace. Using a combination of our in-house software development tools and the latest open-source software frameworks such as Laravel, we develop bespoke web applications to suit your specific needs and opportunities.

All of our custom-built applications are carefully tested, and re-tested, before being deployed in a live environment.

We have designed and implemented web-based software products for several high profile clients including A New Direction and Trinity House. We can do the same for you.

Websites need to be continually updated with fresh content. That’s because publishing new material gives audiences a reason to return, helps brands to stay dynamic and boosts search engine rankings.

Our open source content management system, BoomCMS, makes this simple for you to achieve.

It's intuitive design makes it easy for anyone to carry out website updates - even if they don’t come from a technical background. In fact, it’s so easy to use that most people can pick it up and use it proficiently in half a day, removing the need for long and expensive training.

BoomCMS can enable you to:

• Create, schedule and delete site pages
• Easily navigate content via the front end or site structure
• Format your page using the easy to use WYSIWYG editor
• Manage your images with an advanced digital asset manager

Want to find out how BoomCMS can streamline your web processes?

Some interface examples from BoomCMS.

Different types of people explore your site or product. Understanding who they are, what they need and how they behave can help you think from a user-centred perspective and tailor your digital service to provide a better customer experience.

We can help you get there by identifying the key ‘personas’ using your digital services. These are fictional characters based on research and project knowledge that represent your archetypal site users.

They represent users during the decision-making process, helping to:

• keep user-centred thinking central to the project team
• set priorities and inform design choices
• provide insight into target audience goals and behaviour.

Personas are quick to develop and ensure your decisions are based on user-focused research. They lead to tidy customer journeys and in the long run save your business time and money.

Successful websites offer smooth user experiences. That is to say, they position content in the right places, have simple navigation and clearly explain the options available.

We think a website’s architecture should be determined by users, not driven by the opinions within a business. Our team can provide the insight required to help you plan and organise your webpages in a logical structure. This will ensure your website or digital service:

• puts content in a logical place
• illustrates content need and responsibility
• defines navigational structure and website boundaries
• helps with terminology
• allows for future needs
• gets business buy-in

The process of investigating, creating and agreeing a structure helps those involved to user and business needs. By thinking from the point of view of your visitors, we can structure your information architecture in a clear way.

Our content marketing service makes it easy for your targets to discover and share your content and provides you with the metrics to plan for success.

Content is crucial to any website or campaign. It can help a brand connect with its customers, increase search engine rankings, and contribute to the achievement of marketing goals.

Whatever your ambition, our content experts can help you realise the best ways to achieve it through a blend of content and digital marketing strategy.

We can research, create and deliver content campaigns on your behalf or train and support you to do it in-house. Our services include:

• inbound and content marketing
• video and animation production
• search engine optimisation (SEO)
• digital content strategy
• copywriting, editing and style development
• content management
• corporate communications

Nowadays people access the web from mobile and tablet devices. Most of them expect the online experience on a mobile to match the one they receive on a desktop. What’s more, if your site isn’t optimised properly, you’ll be penalised on search engines.

Our mobile-first approach to web design can help you offer a positive user experience across devices, without the need for separate mobile, tablet and desktop websites. We can design and build responsive websites, to meet your diverse business needs.

We can optimise your website so it:

• meets increasing user expectations, now and into the future
• provides high-quality content that loads quickly on the move
• is easy to action flexible and efficient updates across devices

Stoke Newington School

Willmott Dixon

The Audience Agency

We apply service design methods to map your customer journeys and unlock opportunities for creating value, delight and engagement at every touch point.

The way people use the web is always changing. To meet growing user expectations in the long-term, brands need to think from a user-centred perspective to evolve their digital services.

Our approach involves:

• researching your archetypal web visitors
• identifying diverse user journeys
• designing a user-centred website with strong user experience (UX)
• rationalising your information architecture and content placement
• utilising innovative technology to improve your service.

We design and build websites for some of the largest companies in the world, and some of the smallest. Whatever the size of the challenge we provide common sense advice and strategy. Our user centred approach to design ensures an elegant, usable and cost-effective solution.

Responsive web design

We've been creating responsive websites, that optimise your digital presence for customers on the move, for several years. Where appropriate we adopt a 'mobile first' approach to the planning, design and build of your website.

'Mobile first' unsurprisingly begins the entire process from the mobile perspective and works outwards to encompass content and design for other devices. Read this piece on responsive design to learn more.

Content management

We can provide website planning, information architecture, wireframe and graphic design services for websites built on any platform. Our Content Management System is Boom CMS, built, maintained and optimised by our own team, using the Laravel open source framework.

Technology is always changing. That means keeping up to date with the latest developments is a vital exercise when it comes to outpacing competitors and safeguarding services.

Our team is always looking for emerging technology that offer innovative solutions. We do not limit ourselves to particular technology - so if you want to make use of an alternative tool, let us know.

Some of the innovative services we can put you in touch with include:

• integrating your digital service with connected devices
• boosting your content marketing with programmatic technology
• automating campaigns with user-centred inbound marketing

We've successfully created email newsletter templates for clients for implementation on many e-newsletter platforms.

Email clients (the program that you use to view your emails like Outlook or Apple Mail or Gmail) aren't all the same and they don't all treat html emails the same.

Even though there needs to be some compromise between design and compatibility. Making email templates that work shouldn't mean dull design though.

Projects do better when they’re informed by solid research. That’s because uncovering insights at the start of the journey — and using them to inform your strategy going forwards — keeps you thinking from a user perspective.

Our team can carry out the research that’s right for you, to help you understand what your users want and identify solutions to any problems before they arise. Not only will this ensure your end product satisfies its users, it will protect you from the costly process of carrying out improvements in hindsight.

We tailor our service to meet your needs, but often take the following approach:

• propose a strategy based on your objectives
• interview the relevant parties via online surveys, face-to-face discussion groups, or web and phone-based methods
• uncover insights and key actions based on your data.

That’s because people use their smartphone to access the web on the go - and this pattern of behaviour is always growing.

To help you stay relevant, our team can help you choose the right mobile technology and solutions to stay sustainable in the long-term.

A mobile-first strategy can help you achieve fluid and rewarding user experiences across devices.

Our services include:

• responsive and adaptive web design
• mobile-first copywriting and SEO
• smartphone-ready digital services

In today's competitive digital arena, businesses want a strong search engine ranking. This is a challenge for many businesses - to rank above your competitors, your content needs to be optimised better than theirs.

We can optimise your content for search on a project basis or for a defined period of time. Our approach to search engine optimisation (SEO) involves:

• identifying the messages and keywords that will deliver the best results
• checking and optimising your content against agreed trends
• agreeing a strategy that balances paid and organic search to drive a strong click through rate to your content
• monitoring and adjusting your content regularly
• reporting on performance and recommending improvements

Service design methods underpin all of our work. During the discovery phase these methods might include:

• Design workshops
• Stakeholder workshops
• Value proposition
• Ethnographic research

We don't have a one size fits all approach and instead, taylor the most appropriate methods of uncovering insight to your specific business scenario.

The outputs from a intensive discovery phase, while hard to predict, could include:

• Service prototypes
• Customer journey maps
• New product or service propositions
• Business canvas models and value propositions.

Our service design approach is geared to uncovering new service propositions, improving existing services and delivering improved customer experience that provides you with the competitive advantage in your sector.