Digital Partners
About Us
(and how we can help you)
QUAFF is a digital marketing agency for ambitious businesses in Birmingham and the surrounding areas.
We provide website design and hosting for WordPress websites to help your business thrive online.
QUAFF started life as a partnership between me, Kate, and my husband Martin, combining our skills to support small businesses with smart, stylish websites and solid strategy. He’s since moved on to a new role (still cheering me on from the sidelines), and I’ve taken the reins.
Our clients are really important to us – they’re not just another number on our spreadsheet; they’re part of the QUAFF family!
/kwɒf,kwɑːf/
verb
To drink deeply.
Why ‘QUAFF’?
Martin’s decade in the wine industry, the fact we love a good laugh (so much laughing…) and Kate’s tendancy to gulp down gallons of several coffees every day, meant ‘QUAFF’ felt like a good fit.
Hello, I’m Kate, the designer and strategist behind QUAFF Digital.
QUAFF began as a partnership between me and my husband, blending our skills to support small, creative businesses with website transformations. These days, he’s moved on to new things and I’ve taken the reins solo, but I still say “we” sometimes. That’s because while I’m your main point of contact (and the one doing the planning, design, and strategy), I also work with a small team of trusted developers and tech specialists when extra hands are needed.
So whether your project is a simple refresh or something more complex behind the scenes, I’ve got you. And I’ve got the right people to back it up.
I’ve been designing websites and wrangling content since 2010. If your site feels messy, out of date, or just not you, I’d love to help fix that.
I could write the usual guff here and you’d likely get bored after a few sentences. Also, it’s difficult to write about yourself without sounding like a plonker. It’s great you’re doing your due diligence on us though, so here are my basics.
As for our results – our case studies say it better than we could!
I do things differently.
Most agencies take on as many clients as possible at once so they can earn more money, but this means that clients gets less time and attention from their agency.
At QUAFF, I only take on a few clients at one time so that I can give them all of my attention and make sure their needs are fully met before moving onto the next project. This means you get a better service than if you were with an agency who has hundreds of other clients to look after too.
Although the deliverables for each client are different, the way I work with every client is the same. Learn more below.
Transparency
Communication
Honesty
Enthusiasm
Commitment
Understanding
Respect
Being clear about our processes & progress helps you to trust us.
I’ve heard enough horror stories from clients to know that you’ve probably had a terrible experience with a web designer or agency in the past.
Disappearing designers, unfulfilled promises and downright fraud, I’ve heard it all.
So the way I deal with any project is with transparency.
I’ll always let you know if there’s a problem, if there’s going to be any delays, or if I think we can see a roadblock up ahead.
Talking to each other openly provides clarity and direction.
For a true digital transformation, I need regular, timely, open communication.
Because I limit the number of clients I work with, my response time to client emails and support tickets is incredibly quick.
Whilst I don’t expect clients to be available 24/7, I do need to know you’ll consider our communications a priority, particularly during website building or testing phases.
Honesty is essential, but I know this takes a lot of trust.
I need to know how you operate inside and out.
I need to know data, figures, targets, business considerations, what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, what you should be doing but keep putting off. What you enjoy, what you dislike, what you wish you had more time for.
Then I need to know where you want to be, your essential, ideal and ‘stretch’ financial targets, and what your aspirations are.
This stuff can feel really personal, but I need to know all this to figure out how I can get you where you want to be.
Getting stuck into the work helps keep us all on track.
To properly understand your markets, competitors, and content I’ll immerse ourselves and learn as much as we can. Expect tangential conversations about your industry.
In return, I expect our clients to be ready to get stuck in to whatever needs to be done too.
This might mean providing me with website content in a timely manner, learning a few new digital skills or setting up social media platforms.
Success comes when everyone gets behind the project.
I’m serious about your digital transformation, and I need to know that you are too.
I put a huge amount of time into the work I do for clients and, for successful outcomes, I need clients who are as commited as I am to the partnership.
When projects get pushed down the priority list or tasks get ignored, I can’t do what I need to do and projects don’t get completed.
You’ll make a financial commitment to cover my time and costs, but it’s also an indication that you’re taking this thing as seriously as I am.
Sometimes 'life gets in the way' of business, and that's ok.
Just like you, business is only one part of my life. I have a young family (plus a German Shepherd and three cats…), hobbies I love, and I value my weekends.
I expect your lives to be similar, so I know that sometimes other things need to come first; family, pets and life admin can’t be put on hold just because I need something from you.
While I’ll always be around for emergencies, I do put my family first and know that you do too, so there will be times when work is delayed.
As long as everyone is kept informed, then we can all work together with understanding and compassion.
Above all else, everyone should be treated with respect.
Everyone’s ideas and opinions are valid, and I always make an effort to listen closely to our clients, before making a decision on anything that will affect them.
This is why communication is so important to me. Almost everything can be resolved by talking, and I’ll always treat you with respect, no matter the issue.
Respecting each other is essential to growing a successful long-term relationship, and I’ll go out of my way to do so.
Testimonial
Richard Cook
Managing Director, Shirley Aquatics
As a company looking to grow their online business, it can be difficult to know what’s important. I was paying £500 per month for an SEO agency. I could see that we were getting some results, but this wasn’t translating to an increase in turnover, I felt our website was stagnating a little. I also classed SEO as a cross between a black art and an insurance policy…I had no real idea what it was doing for me but was concerned what would happen if I stopped it all together.
I also had our website rebuilt at an eye watering cost. I found the whole process really stressful, and it was clear the company just wanted to get me out of the door and get onto the next project. It took way too long, as their focus was on other clients and the launch was just awful. As soon as I started asking for facilities I though should be on a modern website, they started issuing quotes for additional work.
With both of these companies there was a real gulf between my business and theirs, they had a lot of clients and I always felt there was something missing, I was never going to have the time to completely understand online marketing and they never really had the time to totally understand our business.
When I first met with Kate and Martin from QUAFF, I was quite jaded about my past experiences with everything online. They came across as incredibly down to earth people, who genuinely cared about my business, and wanted to understand exactly what I wanted… which was a bit difficult as I wasn’t entirely sure what was possible. I knew a number of my competitors where doing extremely well and could not understand why we couldn’t crack this.
I was a probably still am set in my ways, but they have dragged me kicking and screaming into the modern era of digital marketing. I don’t mind saying I was initially sceptical of some of the things they wanted to do. I wanted a website that worked, didn’t break down all the time and got me lots of shiny new customers. Kate and Martin had a plan for this and clearly knew how to deliver. Ultimately I was provided with a time line, that, months down the line was adhered to, this in itself amazed me, given the complexities of my business and my “how about this..for an idea” phone calls.
Martin said we need to begin by doing a survey of your existing customers, this I struggled with a little, as I didn’t see the benefits of all the work involved (on their part not mine I might add) and I felt that this was would get in the way of the important website building stuff. Guess what…I was wrong. The survey helped them to create a set of “average digital customers” this helped in turn to gear our facebook and Instagram marketing to these particular customers, which has ultimately helped to drive our social media presence. Amazing stuff, and I understand it, which is even more amazing
We have had some great success with blog articles and YouTube videos, again I wasn’t fully on board and felt it was just something I was supposed to do. Martin has been incredibly patient and supportive with this particular aspect, and having picked up on my shaky writing skills, is perfectly happy researching and writing articles for my company. This takes an incredible amount of pressure off, allowing me to concentrate on customers in store. Most importantly of all, when a customer approaches you and says how much they enjoy this content and has a trolley full of all the products you’ve been recommending, you know its time to eat humble pie and admit these guys really know what they are talking about, I mean really!
It was quite clear to me that QUAFF weren’t your average digital marketing agency, and were exactly what we needed, that hands on approach we have with our customers. The personal touch that makes all the difference.
My experience with having a website built in the past is that it’s always a frustrating process. You know the sort of thing you’re after, but because it’s clearly not your field of expertise, you need someone to show you exactly what’s possible. More often than not this doesn’t happen. Any suggestions or requests can be met with limitations or a more costly project. This time around, it was like a breath of fresh air. Although we had a portal to access where we were in terms of marketing and the website build, it wasn’t until quite late on that we got to see the working model. Again, this was oddly reassuring. We have been wowed in the past by a great looking home page early on, only to find the finished product doesn’t deliver. I knew that Kate had been working tirelessly behind the scenes making sure what she was putting forward actually worked first.
We then had a number of ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ conversations, Kate would then come back excitedly days later, not only having managed to create what we had spoken about, but go above and beyond, with a facility we didn’t know would be possible. We would get regular updates on improvements and modifications that had been made, to improve the back end performance or the user experience. It has been an amazing process, and we aren’t done yet!
When the website went live Kate and Martin’s focus was to ensure this went as smoothly as possible, it’s a stressful time for anyone, and we have had it go badly wrong in the past, so I was completely at ease to know Kate and Martin had tested everything thoroughly and had considered when best to do this as well as what plan B would be if things didn’t go according to plan.
It’s nice to know that we are all excited to see where the website will go next and not to simply have a hand shake and a bill after launch day. I genuinely feel like they are part of our team and get excited about the things that excite us. I also feel that I know a lot more know than I ever did about digital marketing…and it hasn’t been a painful experience! Equally they have taken the time and effort to get to know us and our business in a unique yet thorough way. So much so that I’m pretty sure I could put a Shirley Aquatics Top on Martin, put him on the shop floor and he could hold his own!
Do you need help transforming your digital presence?