Consultancy

“Consultancy” is an overused word, but we’ve used it to cover a collection of services that we can deploy to assist our clients.

To start with, we take a consultative approach to business development. We like prospective clients who are willing to talk about what it is they want to achieve in their web projects. Often, even before we’ve responded to a brief we will have explored some options, thrown in some ideas and unearthed some nuances in what it is our prospective client wants to achieve. That’s how we like to work.

Research and analysis

We will typically start projects with a research phase. Often this will involve talking to stakeholders in one-to-one meetings, reviewing analytics and talking to the people who look after the website. We will seek to gain as much insight as we can into the real objectives of the organisation for its site and understand what different target audiences will want. Techniques we use include semi-structured interviews, workshops, user personas and surveys, statistical and competitor analyses.

Consultancy

Ultimately, we are attempting to paint a picture of what a successful website will achieve.

Ultimately, we are attempting to paint a picture of what a successful website will achieve.

Information architecture

Once we’ve completed the research phase we typically embark on the development of an information architecture. Sometimes we start the information architecture process during the research phase by using pen and flipchart to sketch initial wireframes and Post-it notes to explore possible structures and labelling. This can be a good way of teasing out business priorities and calls to action. Information hierarchies, wireframes and sometimes clickable prototypes are the deliverables we create during the information architecture phase. We might use techniques such as card sorting to identify content groupings and test ideas.