User Experience Design
Design without strategy is just decoration.
A bad user experience (UX) can render a gorgeous web design unusable. Not only is UX a big factor in SEO, but it can also make or break your conversion rate—it’s vital that you get it right. Our expert-led UX strategies are focused on your audience’s needs and your organizational goals, and driven by our team’s combined decades of experience.
The best UX is invisible to users, because they don’t have to think about what to do or how to do it. We plan websites that are rooted in strong usability, navigability, and content discovery.
What’s Included
Expert-Crafted Prototypes
UX is a fascinating mix of strategic thinking and user-centric design. Our UX design work is a core service included with every project, not an add-on. Its purpose is to turn the sitemap’s architecture into wireframes, with menus and buttons that you can click through to understand how visitors will experience the content.
Navigation
We design accessible menus with clear labels and a logical order.
Flow
We ensure that the overall site and each page makes it easy to find what users need.
Conversion Optimization
We strategize the placement of CTAs, the design of conversion pages, and paths to take actions.
Collaboration
We provide honest strategic advice rooted in best practices and deep experience.
User experience (UX) design is a strategic approach to designing a website that’s easy to use, accessible, and leaves visitors with a positive experience.
Most frustrations with websites are the result of a UX design flaw. A great UX, on the other hand, is invisible. The visitor can easily find what they want and take actions, without encountering barriers like confusing menus or massive volumes of content with no search filters.
A highly usable website will drive business goals.
UX design is a critical part of a successful website because every time a person has to stop and think while using your site is a risk of exiting.
If a user can quickly get what they need from your site, they subconsciously form a positive opinion of your company.
Strong UX design choices, like content relationships and CTA placements, influence how long a person stays on your site, what they do there, and whether or not they convert. These in turn impact SEO—Google and other search engines have ranking factors that include user engagement signals.
We strongly believe that all websites should have a strategy behind their designs, and a skilled UX designer is vital to that work. That’s why our process rolls out the way it does—just like building a house, we always start by planning a solid foundation and a strong framework. Without those, the house will eventually collapse.
No. We do not use AI for any aspect of our UX design work. Our senior designers do all of their work manually within the design tool. All of the menu, page layout, and user flow recommendations are driven entirely by their skill and experience.
Our Approach
What to Expect
Our focus is always on making the work that we do with you as straightforward and stress-free as possible. All of our services are driven by our hands-on, collaborative approach, led by our in-house team of experts. No jargon. No cookie-cutter strategies. We’ll be honest, transparent, and put your best interests first.
See How We WorkStart the conversation
Contact usOur Work
UX Design in Action
These are just a few of the clients who we’ve collaborated with on highly usable, strategic new websites.
“Hands down, the best developers I’ve worked with! Nothing compares to not only the service that Forge and Smith provides, but also their backend system. It’s clean, easy to navigate, easily scalable and robust enough for me to go in and tweak things to my exact liking. I cannot recommend them enough!!
Urvil Villaruel, Marketing Manager
Outward Bound Canada
See How We Did ItOur Case Studies
We’re proud to collaborate with clients in Canada, the US, and beyond. We truly value the many referrals and repeat clients we’ve had over the years.
Start with a Free Discovery Call
No high pressure sales tactics. Just tell us what you need, and we can discuss options. We’ll be honest if we’re not a good fit.
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In-House, Human Expertise
We’re Your Full-Service Partner
Websites don’t start with design and end with launch. We deliver custom service packages that cover every single step of your site’s lifecycle.