Services: Website Design

We organise and label our websites and applications to support the ease with which information can be found, therefore improving the usability and user experience (UX).

Investing in improving the user experience (UX) of your website or application provides a great return on investment because it makes your sites / applications ‘sticky’ (people use them for longer), lowers bounce rates (people want to stay) and gets your users coming back for more.

Our information architecture services provide a thorough analysis of goals and underlying data and result in a set of wireframe and user-case diagrams describing everything from the navigation system to the organisation of the information in a logical and hierarchical manner ensuring ease of use and a clear user journey. These diagrams are then subject to user acceptance testing before the design and build process.

We know the importance of understanding how users go about their tasks and take great care to think through the information hierarchy and user interface of the digital work we produce.

User interface (UI) design and interaction design form part of our wireframing process where we create a detailed blueprint not only of information hierarchy and navigation systems but also outlining user interfaces and interactive functionality in a prototype. Tasks to be performed within the site or application (both simple and complex) can then be tested, tweaked and approved prior to the design and build processes resulting in an intuitive interface and improved user experience (UX)

We strive to ensure there will be no obstacles in the way for anyone on the internet whether using assistive technology, such as screenreaders or speech recognition, or accessing your site via a mobile or internet TV.

Accessible sites are more inclusive; they reach a wider audience and improve user experience (UX). They are also more search engine-friendly so are good for SEO meaning your website will be indexed more efficiently by search engines.

By creating accessible sites we also ensure compliance with web standards and guidelines following the W3C web accessibility initiative all the way to AAA compliance should that be required.

It is essential the designs we create are responsive to the different ways that users access content.

With new devices available, the one-size-fits-all approach to web design that we’ve stuck with for so long is no longer relevant: the way people are using and accessing websites is changing. This is due to users having more diverse browsing experiences on a multitude of devices, including desktop browsers, smartphones, tablets and more. This creates challenges for web producers regarding how we should design for different screen sizes, resolutions and types of interaction (e.g. touch). More than that, it calls into question what it really means to design for the web today.

The practices we use to design and build websites help to rank them higher in search engines for keyword terms that your customers use whilst Google Analytics will help you to understand the success of your SEO strategy.

Semantic Markup, site map, XML site map and friendly urls all attribute to your page ranking; these will be considered as part of a SEO development strategy prior to website design and build. This process includes a thorough analysis of the keywords your customers are likely to use to find your products and/or services and should be consistently used within meta data, page urls, page content (including internal linking) as well as on inbound links to your site.

Post launch we will work with our specialist SEO partner should you wish to invest on a more regular basis with link building and continual SEO strategy whilst Google Analytics provides a thorough and easy to use reporting tool for you to analyse the success of your campaigns.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design and small screen optimisation

Patrick has written a white paper to outline a process called 'responsive design and enhancement' that can be used to optimise your website’s content and adapt to different screen sizes and devices.

Holland America Line

Event registration, contact management and customer complaints tracking web application for Holland America Line.

Barley McNaughton

Web design and build for construction company Barley McNaughton Limited.

Accessible breadcrumbs using ARIA

We take a look at using ARIA to provide us with a solution for building accessible breadcrumbs within a common hierarchical structure (or taxonomy) of the web: categorised sections which contain articles of content that are all related to that category.

Imagem Music Website

Front-end design and development for IMAGEM Production Music website including a ‘Top Trumps’ style catalogue page.

MDI Group

Website build for MDI Group including a JavaScript game 'Duck Hunt' built in jQuery.

Red Pen Tool Video

Following the success of the Red Pen Tool we were asked to extend the functionality from marking digitally converted documents to enabling the annotation and marking of video material from the classroom.

Standard Chartered

Event registration and concierge service for Standard Chartered staff visiting SIBOS 2010, one of the largest annual banking conferences.

Going Mobile with CSS3 Media Queries

We thought we'd give you a little insight into one of our favourite CSS3 modules 'Media queries' and how we are using it to make websites more mobile friendly.

BeatBarni

Online games developed for the 2010 European Athletics Championships, sponsored by SPAR International including social media integration with Twitter and Facebook for viral marketing.

Obesity Learning Center

Web Design and front-end build for the Obesity Learning Centre to raise awareness and provide specialist information regarding obesity on behalf of the National Heart Forum and the Department of Health.

MAPS 3

Web design for the MAPS 3 website aimed at selling the Managed Assessment Portfolio System product into schools and education.

Teaching English

New product development for Sam Learning to support teaching in Key Stage 3 English with 6 modules aimed at a number of curriculum areas.

E-Scape

A set of Rich Internet Applications (painter, mind-mapper and text editor) built for the E-Scape project allowing students to compile notes, working drawings and ideas whilst working through coursework or exams.

ADAS A+

A website and bespoke content management system developed for ADAS providing environmental knowledge though articles and white papers to experts in the field.

Modern Selling Mobile

A magazine and community based website for sales professionals throughout the UK with user-driven content and a separate mobile-web-application.

Red Pen Tool

The Red Pen Tool (RPT) is a Flash based Rich Internet Application which enables the digital conversion, assessment and annotation of students' coursework against one or more mark schemes which are associated with the work.

TAG Developments

Web design, front-end build and DRUPAL integration for educational technology specialists showcasing their products, services and portfolio.

Ingenious Interface

We take a look at some interesting interface designs

Switching from Webtrends to Google Analytics

When a customer could no longer deal with the headache of running Webtrends as their website analytics tool in 2008 we looked into the Google Analytics and were pleasantly surprised. We haven't looked back since.