Lee Hamilton had built a platform that solves a real problem: every morning, school attendance officers spend up to an hour processing voicemails, deciphering unclear messages, and chasing parents for missing information. AbsenceView replaces that chaos with a single, structured system, potentially saving schools 72 days per year in administrative time.
The product worked. But the existing website and brand weren't doing it justice. The messaging was too generic to resonate with busy school administrators. The product interface, while functional, looked like an early-stage MVP rather than enterprise-ready software. And with a major educational conference just weeks away, Lee needed a brand and presence that would build immediate trust with head teachers and attendance officers.
We worked closely with Lee to transform AbsenceView from a promising product into a credible, launch-ready brand – covering everything from the company name through to a polished product interface and conversion-focused website.
Naming
Through our discovery sessions, we developed the name AbsenceView – clear, functional, and immediately understood by schools. "Absence" captures the core focus; "View" suggests clarity and oversight. We secured the .com domain and verified availability for UK trademark registration, giving Lee a name he can build on long-term.
Customer research & Positioning
Before designing anything, we helped Lee structure interviews with potential customers to understand their real pain points. From those conversations, we identified four distinct audience segments – attendance officers drowning in morning admin, head teachers focused on operational efficiency, pastoral leads needing faster safeguarding visibility, and parents wanting a simple reporting process.
This research uncovered something critical that neither Lee nor his customers had fully articulated: the safeguarding implications of delayed absence notifications. During that first hour of processing voicemails, a child could be missing and no one knows. AbsenceView eliminates that blind spot.
"The way you captured the requirements, your software, it dragged that out as a really important feature. I don't think the school had picked it up – the safety aspect of that one golden hour of not knowing where that child is and we hadn’t spotted it. And now with AbsenceView, we can know that straight away. There's somebody missing; nobody would pick that up before. But the way you captured the requirements, it dragged that out. That's an absolute golden nugget. We would never have found that had you not captured the requirements like that."
- Lee Hamilton, Founder at AbsenceView
Product UX/UI
The existing product interface was functional but looked like an early MVP. We redesigned key screens to present AbsenceView as mature, reliable software that schools can trust. The improved UI builds confidence with decision-makers during demos and positions the platform as enterprise-ready from day one.
The mockups proved so valuable that the AbsenceView team used them as the foundation for rebuilding the entire application interface.
"When you produce the first pass, the colour scheme and everything like that, I was a little bit, I'm not sure that's what I asked for. Let me think about it. And then went away and realised you're absolutely right. You knew it better than I did. And you also know what consumers respond to. So I took that on board. But yeah, you knew what I wanted, which has led me to go and completely redesign the UI of my application. Was the mockups useful in my process of redesigning? 100%."
Branding
We developed a clean, professional identity designed for the education sector – trustworthy, modern, and distinct from generic EdTech aesthetics. The deliverables included logo design, colour palette, typography system, and a brand guide ready for immediate use across all materials.
"Your design, you've got a real flair for design and your style. The colour scheme that you've chosen, the brand, and the font, the layout is clean. I don't know if you did that because that's what you detected from doing this for a while and talking to me. I don't remember actually saying that's what I like; but that is exactly what I like – clean, uncluttered, efficient, elegant. The team have all done very, very well. They've all done excellently." - Lee Hamilton, Founder at AbsenceView
Website
We built a conversion-focused Webflow site with dedicated pages for teachers, schools, and parents – each speaking directly to the audience segments we'd identified. The site combines warm, practical language with clear calls-to-action, designed to support both conference conversations and ongoing lead generation. Mobile-responsive, GDPR-compliant, and optimised for performance.
"This is one thing you don't need to be worrying about as a startup founder. Of all the things you've got to think about, designing your website, coming up with your brand – you just need to have a conversation with you. Have that discovery session with you and then let you go with it. As a founder, you've got too much to do. You could try doing it yourself, using ChatGPT or any of these little tools to build your own website. You'll get something that looks like it was generated by AI. It'll look clunky. It will not be as good as this. It's absolutely worth the time. Give you an hour for discovery and let you get on with it. Probably the most value I’ve had out of an hour for a long time."
Lee Hamilton
Founder & CEO, AbsenceView
