Collective

We’re a worker-owned agency that designs, builds and supports websites for organisations we believe in.

Insightful and evidence-based, our work is driven by user need

Whether you’re looking for an agency to create a new website, brand or digital product, or for a long term partner to support, maintain and continuously improve what you already have, we’re on it.

Whatever we’re doing, we start by asking questions. Lots of questions. Really getting to know you and your users is the first step on our journey together.

We’ll help you win hearts and minds and, from time to time, wallets too. And we’ll do it with a smile because we know we’re making a difference.

Using workshops and interviews to consult with internal and external stakeholders and representatives from your audience groups, we’ll develop a shared understanding of your organisation’s vision, mission, objectives and culture, and how these relate to the needs and motivations of your users.

Most commonly the first stage of a project, discovery can also be decoupled and delivered as a standalone piece of research or accelerated with an immersive Design Sprint, employing principles and methods from Design Thinking and Human-Centred Design to explore and prototype a new product or proposition.

Building on the insights gained during discovery, we’ll design an engaging and accessible experience for your users, whatever device they’re using.

From creating a new information architecture, wireframing key pages and mapping important journeys, through mood-boards and lo-fi sketches, to mobile-first visual design and atomic design system development – using open source tools such as Pattern Lab – it’s a collaborative process, and we’ll test with real users every step of the way.

Independently or as part of a project, we can help you think about your brand and visual identity as part of your wider communications strategy.

Working with you directly on brand development, or extrapolating your new or existing brand for digital implementation, we can create an innovative, exciting and appropriate visual identity for you that considers all use cases, whether online or offline.

Our style guides cover both visual design and language and are delivered as living documents, ready to adapt over time to the evolving needs of your organisation.

We are committed to helping our clients ensure that the information and services they provide are grounded in principles of inclusive design and accessible to the widest possible audience. We understand that the work doesn't end with design and development, and our Certified Professional in Web Accessibility, Maria, provides consultancy, accessibility audits, mentoring and training.

Creating accessible digital products that are compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) ‘AA’ level – a legal requirement for UK public sector bodies – also delivers improved readability, page speed and SEO performance; by doing the right thing for some of your audience, everyone benefits.

Drupal has been Agile Collective’s core technology from day one, with some of the team's experience dating back to the mid-2000s. Whether we’re delivering a major new Drupal project or supporting your Drupal site for the long term, you’ll be working with a team that knows Drupal inside out.

Our deep knowledge of Drupal means we make the right choices when it comes to selecting contributed modules, and we’ll only create custom modules to meet genuinely custom requirements. We always adhere to Drupal Coding Standards, and performance optimisation is baked into our build process.

Working with large, complex organisations over the years has given us lots of experience tackling interesting technical challenges including major migrations and API integration projects, delivering these collaboratively with both internal teams and other project partners as required.

We are very involved and engaged with the Drupal community at international, national and local levels: as a longstanding Organization Member of the Drupal Association; as regular attendees at DrupalCon Europe (including speaker sessions at DrupalCon Europe 2020 and 2021 about our work on LocalGov Drupal); as lead technical partner for LocalGov Drupal since January 2020; and as organisers and sponsors of Oxford Drupal User Group (OXDUG).

As lead technical partner through the Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Microsites phases of LocalGov Drupal – the publishing platform for local government in the UK, created by councils for councils – we've been working since January 2020 with a growing number of local councils and other agencies to realise a vision of collaboration and code-sharing that has rich potential for increasing the speed and quality of development, and for reducing costs, for local government website projects.

As well as driving the technical development of the distribution itself, we provide a range of LocalGov Drupal services to councils including development, design, training, consultancy and support.

Our LocalGov Drupal services.

We don’t mind a bit of heavy-lifting, and working with large, complex organisations usually entails tackling interesting technical challenges, often in partnership with both internal client teams and external service providers.

CMS migration projects are notoriously difficult but we’ve got a lot of experience, including successful migrations for Oxfam International, ActionAid and Oxfordshire County Council.

In an increasingly API-first world, integrations are also a common requirement. We have solid experience with payment gateways, CRM systems like Salesforce, CiviCRM and Dynamics. If there’s an API, we’ve got it covered.

We all know support and maintenance isn’t as interesting as a shiny new project, right? Wrong!

Over the years we’ve built up our support and maintenance service to be more than 30% of our business, delivering reliable and responsive support concurrently for more than 40 clients and counting. This covers everything from priority attention for critical security updates and server management, through user support and routine maintenance, to ongoing improvements and access to our full range of services.

With dedicated support systems and staff, a rock-solid SLA, and laser focus on customer service, we understand how fundamental long-term support can be to healthy client relationships, especially as clients increasingly prefer a continuous improvement model over the traditional ‘big bang’ of yesteryear.

Our digital marketing services can be delivered as an integral part of a larger project, under an ongoing support and maintenance agreement, or as a standalone piece of consultancy.

From an analytics review or SEO audit of your website, to optimising your e-commerce conversions or maximising the value derived from your Google Ad Grant, we’ll help you evaluate what’s working well and what’s not, and create an actionable roadmap for improvement.

We have worked with

  • Actionaid
  • BASW
  • British International Studies Association
  • CAST
  • Catalyst
  • Centre for Sustainable Healthcare
  • Climate Outreach
  • Co-operatives UK
  • Crohn's and Colitis UK
  • Croydon council
  • Cumbria County Council
  • Eden Project
  • Ethical Consumer
  • Freedom from Torture
  • Fundraising Regulator
  • International Co-operative Alliance
  • International Land Coalition
  • International Planned Parenthood Federation
  • International Union for Conservation of Nature
  • Lambeth council
  • LocalGov Drupal
  • Modern Art Oxford
  • Oxfam International
  • Oxford City Council
  • Oxford University Hospitals
  • Oxfordshire County Council
  • RECOFTC
  • RISE
  • Start Network
  • Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity
  • UNICEF
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Southampton
  • War on want

What our clients say

We've been delighted with their expertise, vision and dedication to the task.

As a group of councils, we didn't have any expertise in collaborative working with open source code. It was essential that our suppliers could guide us, and Agile Collective has been more than equal to the challenge. We recommend Agile Collective wholeheartedly. They are very capable Drupal builders and thinkers, and all round good people to have on your team.

Will Callaghan

I would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Agile Collective and have genuinely found them fantastic to work with.

I think you’d be hard pushed to find another whole team of people like this. I usually have one or two people within suppliers I use that I prefer to work with, but I would happily go to any team member at Agile Collective and know that I would receive great service.

Chrissie Duxson
Communications Manager, BISA

We found Agile Collective to be a fantastic co-operative to work with.

They have been helpful and supportive all through the web build process, offering detailed explanations and advice where necessary and also responding quickly to requests and issues as they have arisen. We now have a much quicker website, that has 100% uptime. Their work on our e-commerce has improved sales by just over 80% year on year while other metrics have also shown improvement including bounce rates and time on site.

Tim Hunt
Co-Editor and Director, Ethical Consumer

What really made a difference was the human side of the project.

We had a complex stakeholder context and Agile Collective always knew just what to do. Our project was deeply collaborative and delivered a wonderful website that everybody is over the moon with! I can't thank them enough.

Rob Safar
Digital Producer, ActionAid

I felt that everyone I met at Agile Collective understood and shared our objectives and our values as an organisation.

It was great to work with skilled, motivated people who take real ownership of the project and were invested in its success. I'm only sad we were too scattered across the globe to have a beer after work.

Ed Crompton
Web Developer, Oxfam International