We are a UX design agency. We design effortless and intuitive user experiences for websites and applications.
600% increase in online enquiries
21% increase in ticket sales
400% increase in sales
68% increase in bookings
.png)
Higher Ground are expert designers of engaging user experiences that stimulate the senses, influence the customer and deliver beautiful, useful websites and apps that will elevate your business.
Our UX team are proud to have worked on some incredible and successful global projects, from JCB Worldwide and to ImmotionVR.
We research, plan, design and develop the best user-led websites, mobile and tablet apps.
Based in the beating heart of Manchester's Northern Quarter, we aim to consistently provide exceptional UX design services to our clients in a friendly, collaborative and accessible way.
We can provide on-demand UX consulting to help with prototyping ideas, customer journey mapping, user testing workshops, remote design sprints or lean, effective design solutions.
We can project lead from conception to completion, or fit seamlessly into your current design and development team; providing highly effective, flexible and bespoke UX consulting services at a sensible price, wherever and whenever needed.
We recognise that every company is different, and have 20 years experience. Our UX approach is innovative, unique and always tailored to your business priorities and users’ needs. We deliver on our promises and have a successful track record; combining a clear process, flexible approach and deep understanding of UX.
The best UX connects people to your site, app, product or service, effortlessly and intuitively.
Once you have gained knowledge and understanding of what the customer really wants to achieve you will have gained insight into how to capture their attention, gain their confidence and influence their decision making. This is where researching user personas really pays off.
Discoveries are crucial to setting design projects off in the right direction by focusing on the right problems and, consequently, developing and delivering the right solution. Generally, the more time you spend on a discovery, the more details you’ll find about a problem to solve, the better solution you will find. There are two types of discovery:
Higher Ground utilises journey mapping to enable effortless and user-focused digital experiences that will delight the customer and deliver tangible results for your business.
When you take care of your customers, they take care of you.
We can work collaboratively to:
Learn more about Customer Journey Mapping here.
An information architect focuses on the organisation of information within digital products. When UX designers create apps and websites, they map out individual screens so that the user can easily find the information they need. They also create a flow that allows users to navigate between screens effortlessly.
When finding information becomes too complicated or too slow, there’s a risk that users will simply leave and search elsewhere. When people abandon an app or a website, it’s more difficult to bring them back. This is where information architecture design plays a key role.
Wireframes are lean, low-fi, cost-effective visualisations of pages, apps and websites that provide opportunities to:
The benefits of wireframes for your business product or service are to:
Prototypes are a relatively simple working model of a page, app or website. Interactive prototypes benefit the overall design process in a number of ways, and typically:
Find out more about Higher Ground Wireframing & Prototyping here.
User interface design focuses on the visual experience a user will have across all screens and visual touch points of a website or application. UI interface design is vital to any UX project by seamlessly blending a brand’s ethos and style into the platform; convincing people to interact with key elements, and taking specific action to achieve a desired outcome.
Amazing UI Design will ensure:
%202%20(1).png)
User Experience (UX) Design focuses on the interaction between customers or users and products or services.
UX is an umbrella term that encompasses UX Research: figuring out how people perceive and interact with a product, system, or service; and UX Design: where improvements are made to how useful, easy, and fulfilling a customer’s journey is when experiencing a digital product or service on a website, mobile, tablet or app.
A User Experience (UX) Agency brings together a multidisciplinary team of specialists to work collaboratively in combining aspects of psychology, business, research, language, design and cutting edge technology to provide seamless, effective, meaningful, interactive and satisfying digital customer experiences.
A great UX agency designs websites & applications tailored for the people using them. UX identifies and engages customers through in-depth, analytical research and targeted marketing; supporting the business growth of clients through innovative and responsive website development which increases revenue by successfully persuading visitors to buy particular products or services.
UX can be valuable both for the business owner and for the product or service user.
For the business owner, having good UX design can help users see the value in a particular brand, be loyal to it, and make it stand out. In the long-term, it can lower expenses, improve ROI and increase online visibility, gaining competitive advantage.
For the user, good UX design allows useful and usable interaction with particular products and services in an effortless, enjoyable and successful way. Users need to achieve certain goals to make their online experience both positive and rewarding.
The UX design process can be divided into five key phases: user research, design, testing, implementation and optimisation. While the UX design process does typically take place in that order, it’s important to note that UX is an iterative process. Throughout the UX design process, new insights will be discovered that may lead to amended design decisions. Certain steps in the UX design process will be revisited and repeated to continuously optimise and improve a product, service, app or site.
A satisfied user will return; a frustrated one will not. If the goal of the user is met, then they have had a positive experience of that product or service. They find what they are looking for quickly and easily. When a user has a positive experience, they are more likely to buy a product or service as well as recommend it to their friends. When a user buys the product or service, returns to the site, or recommends it to their friends, the traffic to that site and conversion rate for that site are increased.
An amazing designer once said to me “It’s the icing on the cake”. UX design refers to the term “user experience design”, while UI stands for “user interface design”. Each element compliments the other and both are crucial to the UX Design process.
Essentially, UX refers to the interaction between the user and a product or service. UX design considers the different elements that shape this interaction. A UX designer thinks about how the experience makes the user feel, and how easy it is for the user to accomplish their desired tasks: the optimisation of an application for its most effective and enjoyable use. UI complements UX by focusing on the look and feel - the presentation and interactivity of a product or service in digital form.
UI refers to the point of interaction between the user and a digital device or application. UI design considers the look, feel, and interactivity of the product. It’s all about making sure that the user interface of a product is as intuitive as possible, and that means carefully considering each and every visual, interactive element the user might encounter. A UI designer will think about icons and buttons, typography and color schemes, spacing, imagery, and responsive design.
Take a minute to think about how essential and indispensable some of the most important features of your business are: from your website functionality, to the effectiveness of your human resource processes, financial tracking, logistical oversight or customer relationship management systems. Now think about how digital transformation can help improve those processes, make efficiency savings and have a direct effect on your profitability. UX methodologies can be applied to all those key areas. The end result is that better UX Design leads to better business and better profit.
So, the pithy answer is that cost is relative to value: it all depends on how much you consider the improvements to key parts of your business are worth. A UX agency will help you to improve each metric to deliver high value returns. Therefore the true cost to the business should be relatively low compared to the beneficial impact it has.
UX Design adds value and is important because it aims to fulfil users’ needs by providing positive experiences that keep users and customers loyal to a product, service or brand. Meaningful UX Design enables digital customer journeys most conducive to business success.
Better Interaction
+
Better Performance
=
Better Business
We’ve condensed our experience into a unique suite of UX support packs. Work with us and we will provide a collaborative and successfully proven path to improve your digital strategy.
Understanding your customers’ UX perspectives and identify issues.
Custom UX design for everything it takes to make your strategy succeed.
Have you recently rebranded or are you scoping a rebrand project? We help lots of people create a totally new website for their businesses. We do much more than provide you with a redesign: we investigate who your customers are and devise effective strategies to engage and convert them.
Engage visitors and convert more leads with our proven CRO methods. Contact us for a chat if you are planning or currently have an online marketing campaign - our team have been optimising conversion rates for over 15 years - we are as experienced as it gets.
Learn more about conversion rate optimisation.
Testing removes the guesswork from decision making and lets the data guide the strategic path forward. We will produce and test alternative layouts - making sure our research and theories actually resonate well with your target customers, increase conversion and sales.
- Test anything from form placement to button sizing, button naming, navigation visibility, wording, sales messages, product placement, pricing position and lots and lots more.
- Increase conversion rates by testing alternative layouts.
What a user does once they get to your landing page determines the conversion rate. We have many years of experience creating very effective landing pages for targeted marketing campaigns. We can help you to engage website visitors and convert them to take action.
We have brought together an experienced team of designers, developers, data analysts, SEO experts and content writers to create innovative and effective websites solutions that are eye catching and conversion-focused. We use Wordpress and Webflow to turn your ideas into solidly built and highly successful website platforms.
With first click test we can show a group of users a section of your design - such as your app dashboard. Asking questions such as “What would you do to perform X task?” and measure how many clicks it takes to perform such a task.
Show your users a screen for 5 seconds, take it away and ask them what they recall. Did they spot the big important button? Could they update the data? Did they read the block you've carefully written?
Get reactions and feedback from as little or as many users you want to test, without the need for cables, expensive testing booths or cameras.
We find this the most useful of all user testing. It can be really low cost and take around 15 minutes per participant. You will always get valuable feedback to help you improve your website by testing user this way.Ask our Manchester user testing team about user interviews at a cost your business can afford.
Get immediate feedback and understand of what actual customers think about your website or app and your business.
Design teams can often miss the target when it comes to thinking about how real customers think.
Asking actual customers what they want can be a really cost-effective way of solving not only design, but a business problem.
Our Manchester based user testers have run many customer interviews with an array of people over the years. From freight shippers with Couriers & Freight, banking customers with Think Money, Frequent and infrequent Lottery users with My Lotto. In every occasion we found nothing quite beats chatting to real customers.
In this PDF you will learn about the business value of UX and how to apply UX methods to gain high levels of business growth. If you're looking to invest into UX, this PDF is for you.
