We Are Sweet: Past, Present & Future

We have always known what we are, but it wasn’t until recently that we actually wrote it down. We Are Sweet is a multimedia design, development and consultancy agency. Since we started working as a team of two people back in 2011, we have constantly been learning and refining our process. We’re now a team of 8 with a plethora of successful projects under our belts which have all been a product of our tried and tested methods. We have taken giant leaps in the last year and this article will cover where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.

Plan to succeed

We have always understood that user experience was at the core of achieving results. Great design is often invisible and goes unnoticed by users when they are truly interacting with content. To achieve that we had to begin projects by helping our clients to understand how the web works, how users think, and structure their information appropriately. 

This consultancy-first approach to structuring content meant that the following design and development production steps were much more effective with a detailed brief and deeper understanding of the clients’ requirements. By fully understanding project aims we were able to plan accordingly and ensure everyone was on the same page from the start.

It has taken us nearly a decade to establish and refine this process. The consultancy-led methodology allows us to consistently deliver creative and technical work of the highest quality. We know this process delivers results and we’re keen to share it with more clients on new interesting projects.

We Are What?

We are Creative, straight forward and personal. We are thinkers, collaborators and craftspeople.

Our clients expect us to know their business inside-out, the language they use, their tone of voice, their marketing strategy: their commercial proposition. We build websites and systems that make a measurable impact on our client's businesses.

This involves enhancing customer interaction, engagement and experiences, increasing conversions and improving operational processes. This increase in efficiency, conversion and profit allows our clients to reinvest further with us.

Looking after our customers keeps them happy, makes them money and means they continue to do business with us. Letting go of older customers is always difficult but we now have a client base that we are passionate about and proud to work with. Companies partner with us when they understand the value we are able to add to their business.

The Early Years

Our Directors originate from the very different but complementary worlds of Design and Development. James needed somebody to help him make his work look great, and Lou needed somebody to make his designs a reality on the web. 

Like many others, We Are Sweet started because businesses were asking us to design or develop things, and we really enjoyed doing it. It was a natural partnership that led to some successful early projects, working in our spare time. 

It quickly became apparent that we were good at building web platforms and that there was a demand for it. We decided to take the plunge: Lou quit his job and James quit university to incorporate We Are Sweet Ltd as a registered company. This quickly led to us securing work from a variety of large clients, including IMG Media, Inspired Gaming Group and Direct Debit.

These were demanding projects for such a small team but they helped us to slowly sculpt our approach. Years of learning, experimenting and hard work have manifested itself into our current consultancy-led process. Our belief is that the design and development (what we refer to internally as production) of projects should be the easy part. This is only possible once the initial discovery and planning work has taken place at the beginning of the project. 

By learning about our client's business, processes and aims we work with them to build a strategic plan that achieves the deliverables and results they need. Approaching projects in this manner means that clients continue to partner with us and reinvest to continually improve and grow. We work with clients that realise the potential of constant evolution.

This methodology is the core of We Are Sweet and is exactly the methodology that we’re taking to a larger market as we scale up.

Here & Now

The last 2 years have been spent documenting everything we’ve learned, setting our brand in stone and building the right team to further extend our experience and deliver our proven approach to a wider audience. It’s not been an easy ride - we’ve had to learn how to interview people, how to manage them and how to keep our clients happy whilst growing a team. We have completely changed the way the company runs day-to-day for the better while maintaining the quality of our work and commitment to clients. 

The We Are Sweet team is growing and enables us to dedicate even more attention to each client and their specific needs. A proactive approach is at the forefront of our attitude to make sure clients are up to date, communicating, seeing results, and improving to beat their competition. We’ve focused on the services we are best at. This means we’re not taking on jobs where we feel that we cannot make a significant impact or provide the client with a return on their investment. We sometimes have to say no to unsuitable projects but this only makes us stronger and more focused on the work we are best suited to.

There is a big overlap in the skill-sets within the team and these disciplines often complement each other. We have decided to keep production in-house, investing in a team that we know can deliver the quality and efficiency we pride ourselves on.

To be great at the services we offer, we realised there are some that we’re not so interested in. This has led to forming relationships with reliable partners to fully support our clients. An example of this is SEO & PPC. We’ve got a better-than-average knowledge of the world of SEO, but we’re never going to be the agency to come up with your SEO strategy. Thankfully, we know the right people. We are always transparent about any external support and help our clients build direct relationships with our partners when needed.

The last few years have taught us what great business looks like, we know that we can deliver and we know there’s a wide world of potential clients that would benefit from teaming up with us.

We are hungry to take our proven approach to new clients.

2020 Vision

Nobody knows what the future holds. We don’t want to look so far into the distance that we lose sight of the road just ahead. Being agile and able to adapt is one of our strengths and we’re ready for anything the constantly evolving world of technology has to throw at us and our clients. However, we have a clear idea of the direction we’re heading in and have set ourselves some key targets for the next year.

We will continue to grow the team. More variation and more support means an even better service for our clients. We’re not a large team of people and we never intend to be. We are building a dedicated, skilled team of experts - not a large corporation of small cogs. We’re building a culture where everybody is heard, singing our core brand values while bringing their own flare. 

Being a distributed team of remote workers gives everybody flexibility and less wasted commuting time! It makes for a happy and productive team but it does also come with challenges, such as those all-important face-to-face interactions and sharing knowledge. By documenting our operations, our clients are not reliant on one individual and we will continue to review and refine all of our own internal processes to ensure our core time is spent focusing on our clients.

The new members of the Sweet Squad mean more capacity. We’re actively looking to forge new relationships with clients that want to improve their business through intelligent use of technology. Whether it’s improving your customer-facing business or upgrading your internal processes to make your operations more efficient we’d love to hear from you.