Creative Brand Design

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for eSmart Systems. We develop, design, and execute solutions that help utilities inspect their critical infrastructure and manage the information on their critical infrastructure using advanced analytics and big data.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

When I first started with eSmart Systems last year, I inherited their existing website and online profile. The website was not the best website based on messaging and look and feel. We wanted to implement a digital, mobile-first approach to our marketing strategy, so we went to Creative Brand Design to help us achieve that by first establishing our digital footprint with our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Following our rebrand, Creative Brand Design designed and developed a WordPress website for us from scratch. They used the files that our branding agency provided us as a starting point and delivered a product that made us stand out from our competitors. They integrated the site with our HubSpot instance as well as the other third-party tools that we’re using. 

We started the engagement by showing Creative Brand Design our competitors’ websites. After that, they conducted market research and analyzed our brand to understand what we do as a company. They then worked with us on the wireframes. We had quite a few iterations through the wireframing stage. Once the wireframes were signed off, we then went into the development phase.

Their creative director took control of the site going live and managed the transition because they're also going to be hosting our website. Additionally, they also did post-live testing to make sure that the site works in all formats.

Additionally, Creative Brand Design is also handling our SEO efforts to make sure that our site is optimized.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a creative director, a creative designer, and a project manager from Creative Brand Design.

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

I found Creative Brand Design through my own research. I did my own due diligence and narrowed down our choices to eight providers, and Creative Brand Design stood out.

From our first interaction, we knew that they had a defined approach. We chose them because they customize the sites’ designs based on the client’s brand, which was something that we wanted for us as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent £10,000 (Approximately $12,400 USD) on the whole website.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and we’re still working with them on the site’s hosting.
 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I don’t have any metrics to date since we only launched the site last week. We're still doing post-live testing and are hoping to start promoting the site next week. However, I’m very impressed with Creative Brand Design’s process and the time they've taken to deliver something of really good quality. What they've done for our company is really amazing.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Creative Brand Design has performed well in terms of project management. They’re always transparent. They walked us through their entire process, provided us with an accurate timeline estimate, and met all of their deadlines.

We typically communicate via email. They do have a system set up for us now for help desk calls and other things, but we haven't started using that yet. They also use various collaborative tools where we can look at their designs and comment on them in real-time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with Creative Brand Design’s cost-effectiveness and transparency. I really like how they provided us with unique designs that match our brand, unlike other companies that just provide cookie-cutter pages that everyone else is already using. We definitely feel like the value we get from Creative Brand Design is fivefold the amount of money we’ve spent on them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to ask a lot of questions upfront, and whenever you have more questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to them. It’s also a good idea to be honest about what you do and don’t understand.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product designer at an innovative coffee brewing company. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

We hired Creative Brand Design to develop a website for our product. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Creative Brand Design has designed and developed our WooCommerce website to sell our product. The site has a custom-built subscription package that allows users to choose which product they want to subscribe to. Users can also customize the product to fit their needs. 

Creative Brand Design’s team broke down each step of the project — we started with a meeting to discuss the project. Once that meeting concluded, Creative Brand Design provided us with a project scope statement highlighting the services they’d carry out. Creative Brand Design then led a discovery process and researched our market. After that, their team developed the wireframes and completed back- and frontend development. My team provided feedback during each stage of the development process. 

Although the first website is complete, we plan to extend the scope of work to include another website development project. We need Creative Brand Design to develop a website for our sister company.

What is the team composition?

We only had direct contact with the project manager. 

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

We looked into several web developers but liked Creative Brand Design’s team— their services stood out from the competition.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested £6,000 (approximately $8,000 USD) with Creative Brand Design for the website project. However, we plan to invest another £6,000 (approximately $8,000 USD) on the second project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership with Creative Brand Design began in September 2021, and it’s ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We track site traffic via Google Analytics to see if the new site increases our traffic. 

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Creative Brand Design uses a custom portal to manage the projects — my team has access to it and submit tickets and raise queries. Creative Brand Design generally sticks to budgets and communicates well via email, although communication declined a bit when the project manager was away. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with Creative Brand Design’s portfolio — they’d worked with other subscription-based coffee companies, which reinforced my confidence in Creative Brand Design’s abilities. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Creative Brand Design should speed up their response time and provide a more comprehensive breakdown at the beginning of each project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise customers to invest time in finding what kinds of websites they like and taking notes of the user flows and interactions — that information should be relayed to Creative Brand Design. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Policy and External Affairs for the Nuclear Industry Association, the trade body advocating for the UK civil nuclear energy sector. I am responsible for leading policy development, political engagement, media relations, social media and overall messaging.

For what projects/services did your company hire Creative Brand Design?

We were tasked by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to create a virtual hub to showcase the nuclear industry in the run up to COP26. We hired Creative Brand Design to design and build a website that would look professional, be highly interactive, and accessible to ordinary members of the public interested in finding out more about nuclear energy.

We had from 1 October to 26 October to deliver the project. We also had to build a high-functioning site while still preserving the existing content of the domain, which had been designed in a basic Wix format. We further had to get approvals from two non-client organisations, including the UK Government department and another sector organisation.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We had previously got a pitch from CBD for the re-design of the NIA's website and had been impressed, although we had gone with another vendor. We invited them back, and were impressed by their portfolio case studies, including previous work with Government departments, and their willingness to work swiftly without complaint to a hard deadline. That last was critical for us as we had essentially three weeks to design, build, and populate a 17-page website.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project involved:

• a kickoff meeting
• daily morning meetings between client and vendor team for the duration of the project
• design of a homepage
• design of a logo
• design of basic building blocks for subpages of the website
• design of two complicated interactive maps of nuclear sites in the UK and regional carbon intensity across the UK
• selection and placement of photographs and videos
• population of copy and videos on the website

the stages were approximately:

• First week: logos, basic wireframe, homepage design, basic look and feel
• Second week: sub-page building block design and approval, beginning of maps design, population of home page and 4 main sub pages with visual content
• Third Week: population of 12 sub-sub pages with photos, videos, and copy, design tweaks to sub pages, copy and design modifications on home pages and main subpages, creation of a designed factsheet for the website available for download
• Fourth week: approvals and transfer of existing netzeroneedsnuclear.com content to a subdomain, uploading website

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked principally with 4 people, 1 project manager and web developer, 1 web developer, 1 designer, and 1 company director and web developer, with some support from others. They also worked over time to get the project in for Government approvals.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

It looks spectacular, and content has universally received high praise from the nuclear sector. There's a sense of the great interactivity built in, and https://netzeroneedsnuclear.com/nuclear-is-green/ for a sense of the visual design.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The team was extremely communicative and responsive, with daily calls in the morning to discuss work issues and to take decisions. They worked long hours, and jumped quickly on the inevitable series of minor changes required. When I downloaded Slack, that did make communication a bit easier as it was the project team's preferred messaging platform.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They created visually appealing designs from scratch and made them look complete and coherent in only three weeks. That was an incredible achievement. They were magnificent.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The only thing really was to confirm in writing the design choices for some of the most complicated pieces, i.e the interactive maps. But all things considered, given the extreme time pressures, they did a splendid job.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing director of Cranleigh Magazine. We run two sections; print and online. We print 7,800 copies of our magazine, deliver them to the local area, and also publish online to establish our digital presence.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

When we started the magazine six years ago, I was aware that a lot of magazines were dying off, so I needed to design a new magazine that could also be published online.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Creative Brand Design has been with us since the magazine’s inception. I wanted to have a freshly printed magazine, and an equally fresh online presence so we would have dual facilities if ever our online presence would kick in at a higher rate in the future. We’ve done 71 issues so far, and it’s all archived on the website — which is one of the ideas that we put into the design requisite. Every single thing that we do is archived as a PDF that anyone can refer to.

We initially told them we wanted a website and a really good local online presence. We also asked them to establish our Facebook, and Twitter since we have a reasonable following on both platforms.

I’m not quite sure of all the technicalities of the development, but we also told them that we wanted a listing system, so that any business that comes to our magazine would be listed immediately on the website. These businesses could use the listing system to advertise their services and products, so we requested a listing system with a paid advertising feature.

The platform was built on WordPress so that we could upload content ourselves — we also asked them to build our logo and optimize our SEO. They set up our emails and have been hosting our website since its creation.

Moreover, Creative Brand Design helped us by doing paid ads on Google, so if someone wanted to find information about the local area, we would come up first.

What is the team composition?

We worked with designers, SEO specialists, and copywriters. They also had technical experts who worked on the backend of the website.

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

They came quite highly recommended to us. I chatted with a couple of people who introduced me to a member of the company.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around £5,000 GBP (approximately $6,800 USD). We had a certain amount of money to play with, and we wanted to keep the project within our budget. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked from September–November 2015. We still go back to them when we need to implement new features, and if we have any long-term projects, we will certainly be using their comprehensive service.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I found them to be very professional and the quality of their service was 100%. They delivered what I asked on schedule and they never went over our budget. At some stage, we may upgrade the whole site, so I would definitely go to them for a complete site review.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

All my queries were answered through their ticketing system. Every time we sent a request for help, our ticket gets logged and we’ll get a response saying they will deal with it as soon as possible. Moreover, there was usually an opportunity to speak to a specialist, whether for SEO or coding — we found that that was a very good way of doing it rather than having a mass of phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things that I liked about them was they were quite innovative. The internet is changing all the time, so it’s hard to keep up half the time — however, they always seemed to be on the pulse.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t really put a finger on something like that. They actually look after clients no matter how big or small. They’ve grown a lot over the years, and they’ve become more sophisticated as a company in what they can achieve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would highly recommend them. Go in with a completely open mind, and let them meet your brief to take you further forward.

Introduce your business and what you do there?

I’m the operations director at CitySpec Specialist Pest Management, a pest control company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

We needed their help in optimizing our online presence.

SOLUTION 
What was the scope of their involvement?

Creative Brand Design supports our digital marketing pipeline by helping us acquire a higher Google ranking and reach out to a wider audience. We've kicked off our engagement with a brainstorming session, wherein we've relayed our targets and current statistics to help their team formulate tailored strategies for us.

Based on the information they've collated, Creative Brand Design has expanded our existing site sections and features and produced additional content to optimize our overall UX. They've also designed our landing pages, taking our specific target locations into consideration.

Creative Brand Design's ongoing work for us centers on SEO, PPC, and social media marketing. Additionally, they're in charge of our web hosting and site maintenance efforts to ensure that our platform is always at its ideal state.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact is their project manager, who oversees a team of developers, designers, engineers, and digital marketing specialists. 

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

Creative Brand Design recommended to us — upon learning about their team, we reached out to them for a trial. We were truly impressed with their performance, so we decided to officially onboard them as our creative partner.

How much have you invested with them?
 
We've spent about £80,000–£90,000 (approximately $111,000–$125,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement commenced in February 2012.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Creative Brand Design has elevated the quality of our website, making it more sophisticated and user-friendly. They've integrated concise yet unique sections, which have evidently improved our clients' navigation experience. 

As for their team's marketing efforts, we've seen a 70% increase in our inquiry rate, and we now have more marketing opportunities to explore through our robust metrics. Overall, Creative Brand Design continues to prove that our long-term investment in their team is worthwhile, and we can't thank them enough.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via email and phone calls and conduct periodic in-person meetings. Creative Brand Design has top-notch project management skills — they always bring productive and innovative ideas to the table, so our expectations are exceeded every time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our near-decade partnership is enough proof that we find Creative Brand Design as a goal-oriented and reliable team. They take the time to understand our needs and always make an effort to keep things moving forward —  this personalized and dedicated approach truly makes us feel like they're a part of our internal team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I struggle to think of anything — they've been a perfect partner to us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared with an outline of what you want to achieve for your business. Creative Brand Design will surely understand and even refine your ideas to deliver the best results.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I own the business. We have three e-commerce businesses in the UK and in one of them, we sell audio vacuum tubes.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

We were trying to reach as many customers as possible with the budget and facilities we had.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Creative Brand designed our Magento website that’s integrated with PayPal, and they migrated all the product data to it. They also designed our branding and logo, and they’re currently handling SEO and website security.

We’re in a niche market so it’s very difficult to have an image. We have to describe our products in a way that people can understand, to make it easier for them to click and buy. This is one of the major areas where Creative Brand helps us.

They’ve offered us social media marketing services, but we don’t have the kind of business that would go well with that.

What is the team composition?

I have two points of contact, their director and a technician. I don’t know how many people are working behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

I live in a small village in the southeast of the UK, and I’m a believer in supporting local businesses. Creative Brand Design is based in the locality, and that’s how I got involved with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re spending $5,000–$10,000 per year with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Creative in May or June 2014. We had a major upgrade in 2019, and we’ve had two redesigns in-between. The collaboration is still ongoing, as we’re planning to do a Magento upgrade.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The results are pretty good. We started with sales of £50–£60 per day, but now, we’re getting £400 per day just on the website alone.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s very easy to contact them if we have any issues and we get replies quickly to our emails. Either they fix the issue straight away, or they schedule it for us. They’re quite busy, so I wouldn’t expect them to fix an issue within five minutes, but they get things done.

They provide us a platform where we can check the progress of the work. Most of the communication is through email, because it provides a log of the conversations as opposed to phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re people that we can actually talk to. Interactions with certain providers can be quite robotic. Here, I get responses from people I can relate to.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to get even bigger. They have a huge volume of work, so they need to expand.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’ve recommended them to a couple of people already.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization is a think tank for coming up with policy ideas for economic growth. I’m the director of the campaign.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

We needed a new website that was more bespoke, modern, and more accessible for the publications that we print. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Creative Brand Design created a new WordPress website for us with 5–6 different pages. It was a relatively simple brief, but they came up with an attractive design, provided content creation, and did some research on the sector. They also provided us with wireframes and did some SEO work as well. The site already went live, but they still do some specific work for us from time to time.

What is the team composition?

I had a main contact point who was partly involved with the design, a person who was responsible for the wireframes and production, and I had somebody who dealt with the SEO and post-launch issues.

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

I researched for companies who were able to do this type of project, and I was impressed by some of the work that Creative Brand Design had done.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in January 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

First of all, we’ve had a significant upgrade in the number of website hits we garnered — we’ve probably quadrupled the traffic we’ve been getting which is good. I’m also very happy with the look and feel of the site, as it’s very user-friendly.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

They have an integrated project management system which you get access to once you use them. It’s so easy to comment on everything, and the wireframes and designs get along interactively with the system that they use. The team also stayed on top of the timetable. It was originally set to launch in March, but was pushed back to mid-April as we were getting content to them a bit late.

Most of our communication was done by phone, and then it subsequently moved to either by email or through the dedicated project management system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I never spoke about this, but whenever I want to contact them, they’re always available. They’re also responsive when it comes to ideas, so if I had a rough idea, they would be the ones to flesh it out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. There were a couple of minor issues I noticed when the site went live, but they resolved them pretty quickly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I believe the key thing is to spend some time thinking about what you want out of the website before you start. I had a bit of a blank canvas when I started with them, but it was partly because I didn’t want to interfere with their creative juices. However, I also think they wanted more input from me at the beginning about what I wanted to achieve, so it’s also important that you give them ideas.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of CTR Developments. We’re an engineering company that mainly focuses on designing and building race cars.

What challenge were you trying to address with Creative Brand Design?

We needed their team to update our existing website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our website was up and running for many years, and we hadn’t really thought about updating it until our customers started to notice that it was already outdated. We then thought it was about time to jump in the trend and improve our website to potentially increase our revenue. 

We initially tasked Creative Brand Design with redesigning our main logo before deciding to push through with the refurbishing of our site since we were pleased with how the logo turned out.

Creative Brand Design used WordPress to develop our platform — they changed its theme to make it look more professional yet modern, while our team was in charge of generating web content since it was product-specific. We let them take over the UX design phase so long as they subscribed to our goals and color preferences.

What is the team composition?

We work with one project manager and a team of three designers and developers.

How did you come to work with Creative Brand Design?

I found their team online after looking for a design agency to help us with our site update needs. Apart from their affordable services, we were also impressed with their online portfolio, so we decided to onboard them right away.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $6,000 on both the logo and the website.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from June 2020–April 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We don’t sell essential products that people would consume every day, but we could definitely say that our sales went up since Creative Brand Design reworked our website. 

Our customers found it easier to contact us, and that wouldn’t be possible, had it not been for our new website. We also got positive feedback on its functional and modern look, and our new logo was equally well-received by our customers. Overall, their team’s efforts had a beneficial impact on our business.

How did Creative Brand Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Our main communication channels with Creative Brand Design were phone calls and emails. Their team was keen on structuring the project flow, so there weren’t any difficulties when it came to understanding each phase of the project. 

While there were instances wherein deadlines were not met, they made sure to deliver everything we needed so the timeline wouldn't be compromised. In terms of project management, I’d give them a seven out of ten.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team’s supportive nature definitely stood out — it’s an important aspect for us because we’re not a huge company with corporate sponsors. We were always assured that they valued our partnership, and that was an integral part of the project’s success.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were instances wherein I felt the need to chase them for updates. I was aware that the project was going smoothly, but I would appreciate frequent updates to see where we were at in terms of the timeline that we set.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to relay your goals clearly and set up everything you need in terms of prototypes and project plans. They’ll take it from there and deliver what you need.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are All Things Drinks - an online drinks company that delivers delicious drinks to your doorstep across the UK. I am the co-Founder.

For what projects/services did your company hire Creative Brand Design, and what were your goals?

We discovered Creative Brand Design (CBD) while doing a google search to help us create our unique website. They also helped us create our brand logo and colours.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

After looking into a few other companies, we found CBD to be the best at understanding our needs and coming up with a realistic budget for the project and clear demonstration of their abilities to make our dream a reality.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Working closely with our account manager, I am so proud and truly love what they have created for our website - All Things Drinks. The staff are great at understanding what your needs are, turning them into achievable goals and completing them thoroughly. I also really enjoy working with CBD as they seem to love a creative challenge and never say never to any wild idea I may have! They simply help me create that idea into a realistic project and arrange a payment plan to achieve this timely.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I work very closely with my account manager - who I absolutely adore! I have also worked with the founder, wireframe specialist and SEO specialist.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

They firstly set up our e-commerce platform and worked with us to make sure all the settings were right. The latest project was creating bespoke landing pages which have increased our average time per page as customers can navigate the range in a more visual format.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They use their inhouse ticking system which allows for you to set the urgency of the issue and someone is always available to help. The team has also guided me on using various tools to give them comprehensive feedback which speeds up their ability to understand and execute a solution.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What I like most about them is their ability to understand if something isn't exactly how you want it and fix it in a skilled and empathetic way. There is no blaming or back and forth - simply what needs fixing and they get on with it! I would highly recommend them for anybody looking to develop a website and especially to those who have a vision.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

From my experience, maybe they could look into growing their team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a short-term rental agency in London. We work with leisure and business travellers in providing them with short let solutions in London.

For what projects/services did your company hire Creative Brand Design, and what were your goals?

I hired Creative Brand Design to fully design and develop my company website and logo.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

At first, I contacted around 10 companies in UK to design my company logo. I decided to chose Creative Brand Design because they were quick in answering, professional, and the price they offered was interesting. I also liked the work they have done with other companies. Once the logo was finished, I was very happy with the design and the way the work was handled. Therefore, I decided to trust them with my website design as well.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Below are the 6 phases of the website development: Phase 1 Discovery Phase 2 Wireframing Phase 3 Prototyping & Concept Delivery Phase 4 Development, Extended Operation & Functionality Phase 5 Content & Tweaks Phase 6 Testing & Launching

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

At first, I was in contact with the business development manager. During the whole duration of the project, I was in contact with the studio manager who advised and helped me during all the phases of the project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

I had very positive feedback on the website from partners and clients.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

I really liked the fact that Creative Brand Design asked me to which level I wanted to be involved in the progress of the project. I found that very professional. Communication was great, and I didn't have any surprises at any stage.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

During the development of the website : their professionalism and the fact that they understood exactly what I was expecting. Creative Brand Design sent me a clear proposal for the project and before starting any work, I had to fill in a very precise questionnaire about the company (audience, target, competition...).

I also liked the fact that everything could be done through their portal. If I had any comment regarding the design or anything, I could just go online and pin a comment or ask for a change, to which they would respond to. I also think that the result is stunning, and correspond to what I was expecting.