QS Newsletter 40

a t i n g c ommu n i c a t i o n s a n d p r o c e s s e s t o t r i g g e r t h e r e s p o n s e y o u wa n t Ashfield Voluntary Action (AVA) is a registered charity providing support to voluntary sector groups across Ashfield and supporting individuals and families through a range of targeted projects. The charity provides a wide-range of services; acting as a broker for volunteering, supporting community and voluntary sector groups, running a community enterprise, and delivering services which improve quality of life including initiatives which support wellbeing and befriending schemes. Quiet Storm was approached by AVA in Autumn 2018 and tasked with designing and developing a new website which better reflected the organisation’s aims, objectives and values, and showcased the range of initiatives it supports. Following its launch in December 2018, the website has seen an 89% increase in visits. Its news section accounting for a third of all page views. AVA’s Manager, Teresa Jackson said: “Our new website has made a huge difference to the way we promote ourselves and has helped increase our visibility.” Increasing the visibility of Ashfield Voluntary Action Creating options for Davidsons Homes Davidsons Homes is a Leicestershire housebuilder that has been providing quality homes at affordable prices across the Midlands for many years. Helping Clearance Paving to boost web sales during lockdown Clearance Paving is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of discontinued, discount paving products. Keeping Breedon connected during lockdown The Breedon Group is a longstanding Quiet Storm client, and we have worked on several projects for the construction materials giant over the years. It built more than 700 homes last year and has ambitious plans to expand regionally over the next few years. Quiet Storm has enjoyed a great working relationship with Davidsons over many years. We built its Davidsons Vision CRM system, for which we won its Consultant of the Year award earlier this year. And we were recently tasked with creating a new online portal which enables Davidsons customers who have purchased a new build house to manage their choices of décor, fixtures, fittings and finishes, plus any upgrades to standard options, at their leisure. The new portal, which sits within Davidsons main website, also gives customers complete visibility of the progress of their build, from start to finish. Jason Glover, Operations Director at Davidsons Homes, said: “We’re a fast-growing company that embraces technology and innovation to provide an exceptional service to all our customers. Our Davidsons Options portal enables us to give customers even more control over their new build.” It supplies discontinued, trial and factory second garden and driveway paving from manufacturers and merchants directly to the customer. The paving market is highly competitive and driven by ever-changing tastes consumer demand. Manufacturers try to stay ahead of the curve by regularly introducing new paving products to keep up with the latest garden design trends. At the end of each season, Clearance Paving use Brett Landscaping discontinued product lines for sale to the general public via its ecommerce store, www.clearancepaving.co.uk . Quiet Storm created the website in 2018. Earlier this year, in the first two months of lockdown, the website recorded its best- ever performance. Visits were up by 200%, page views rose by 432% and transactions increased by a massive 1,182%. Danielle Thorpe, Head of Marketing, said: “People finding themselves either on furlough or working remotely had the time to focus on home improvements. This helped us to record an outstanding online sales performance at the start of lockdown.” Its GB division employs thousands of people across the UK and comprises several aggregates and downstream products businesses. The construction sector was one of the first to be affected when the Government implemented lockdown restrictions in March to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. When the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme was launched the following month, Breedon Group placed around 2,500 of its staff on furlough leave as its sites were temporarily shut down. Quiet Storm was tasked with quickly building and launching an online communications portal that the company could use to keep its furloughed staff up to date with the latest information. More than 1,500 staff signed up to the portal, which was password protected and featured a business bulletin board and a host of other tools to keep the team engaged. Steve Jacobs, Breedon Group’s Head of Marketing, said: “Quiet Storm delivered an excellent solution which was deployed quickly to enable us to stay connected with furloughed staff throughout lockdown.”