Testimonials

“I live in the United States so initially I was a little wary about hiring a design team all the way in New Zealand, but those concerns turned out to be entirely unfounded. Hiring Rachel and Stephen to redesign my website was one of the best business decisions I have ever made. They are a pleasure to work with – always professional, responsive (despite the time difference), and knowledgeable – and my new site is as beautiful as it is functional. The numbers speak for themselves: since the launch of the new site about six months ago, my traffic and advertising revenues have increased threefold. Not only that, new email subscriptions have gone through the roof, thanks to a more engaging design and sign-up process that is easy and seamless. I have continued to work with Rachel and Stephen and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them – they are the top-notch!”

“If I had to start over, I would definitely go with Cre8d again! I hired them for a complete rebranding and redesign of my site and it has been a wonderful experience throughout. Rachel and Stephen are both very nice people to work with, extremely knowledgeable, and responsive (despite the huge time difference between Vancouver and New Zealand). Not only did they create exactly what I pictured in my mind, but they made it even better. Their level of professionalism and technical skills, attention to detail, and organization throughout the redesign process was exactly what I was looking for. There was an additional challenge since my site is bilingual, but the team managed to adjust all the setups in the most seamless way. The new site is truly beautiful, modern, and easy to use. Just a few months after the redesign, I can already see the results with a spike in traffic, and more engaged people on the site that translate into email subscriptions. My only regret: I wish I had hired them years ago. I highly recommend them!”

“Rachel is the designer of my dreams, and I’ve hired many of them as CEO of several companies. Talented both as a designer and programmer, an entrepreneur in her own right, and fully conversant with all the latest technologies. If you have a blog or a website and you want it done *right*, call Rachel.”

“We thank our lucky stars for the day that we discovered Rachel Cunliffe and Stephen Merriman — a smart, creative sister-and-brother team that designs beautiful websites, including our new one. They are consummate professionals and a joy to work with, and we can’t recommend them to you highly enough. We know you’ll thank us later. (You’re welcome.)”

“Rachel and Stephen are a dream team when it comes to perfect design and technical support. From our first conversation to the subsequent tweaks, it has been a wonderful, rewarding collaboration. There is much to commend: their professionalism, elegant, polished aesthetics, and up-to-date knowledge of design trends and solutions. Rachel and Stephen always answered my questions promptly and in detail, and they have made it easy to experiment and look for interesting ways to make my website more interactive and user-friendly. I love working with them and look forward to new projects together.”

“Working with Rachel and Stephen is among the most productive and pleasurable relationships I have. We work remotely, with a time difference of 16 hours, which is incredibly efficient, they always understand what I want, never get frustrated with my frequent changes and delays and their designs and executions solve problems before they arise. They are a five star team. I recommend them without hesitation.”

“Working with Rachel and Stephen has been the smoothest of experiences, and they have continually impressed me with their professionalism, responsiveness, and creative thinking. The complete makeover and migration of a website can be a stressful and daunting project for a blogger to undertake, but I felt in the best of hands and would recommend their services wholeheartedly.”

We count ourselves very fortunate to have Rachel and Stephen at Cre8d as our design and development team. Nothing is too hard, nothing is a problem, and their combined level of skill and knowledge would be hard to beat. They are fast, efficient and always helpful. We’ve been amazed at the way they have helped us to continually improve the functionality of our website and the overall success of our business. We were particularly thrilled when our new site won ‘Best Launch or Relaunch’ at the NetGuide Web Awards in 2012 and this reflected the excellent site development undertaken by Rachel and Stephen. We can’t recommend Cre8d more.”

“Rachel and Stephen have done an outstanding job with my website. Take a look for yourself. Her quick thorough responses to complex requests have kept me coming back to her professional team of designers time and again.

A great web designer’s value is not measured in how flashy a web site is. A great web designer is organized, detail oriented, thorough, guides your vision to deliver the best practical user experience and passes all that along to her team of coders who implement the vision with out asking the same questions twice. Rachel’s team delivers.

Do not be concerned about working with a company from New Zealand. I have found Rachel’s team in New Zealand to be 100x more capable than the 5 website designers I have worked with in the United States before her.” –

— Jason Frasca

“I first hired Rachel a number of years ago to move a client’s HTML website into WordPress. Since then, she and I have worked on many projects together, including completely revising my own website. Rachel’s work is outstanding. She’s also what I call an “old school” designer. By this I mean that she takes the time to get to know clients and their work. The result is fresh, vibrant websites that visually communicate a client’s story — and that work in tandem with the copy. I recommend Rachel to many of my clients. It’s a joy to work with her. I learn quite a bit about design and usability, and it’s lovely to see each new creation.”


“Our US-based B2B company needed a new site to go with our new brand name. Rachel and Stephen have a very structured and thorough development process, and show excellent creativity and judgment. The outcome was excellent — super clean, fast to load, and lovely on mobile.”

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“We all know how important websites are these days. First, user friendly. And on all devices! Attractive. Always up-to-date. I couldn’t accomplish that on my own. So I called cre8d design. Wow. Marvelous. Rachel and Stephen are helpful and timely and responsive. They gave me lots of examples and we talked together to get the right vision for my website. cre8d design gave me detailed directions about how to update the site on my own with my blogs and new resources. And whenever I have trouble or a question – I just email and Stephen or Rachel helps me get back on track. And if you’re worried about price…. I can only tell you that I was surprisingly pleased. Visit cre8d design. Now.”

“I have used Rachel and her team at cre8d on multiple occasions, mainly for my site redesign and for tweaks, adjustments or the addition of new features. Her work is professional, timely, accurate and cost effective. I have not a single thing I can fault her for. I have happily referred Rachel to associates of mine for web design work and would not recommend anyone else. I highly recommend them. Their design process and project management makes an upgrade and re-build a pleasure.”

— Cameron Slater

“We’ve greatly enjoyed working with Rachel Cunliffe and Stephen Merriman. I can’t say enough about their organization and communication process. Designs, ideas, and feedback are delivered quickly and with enough detail to follow through on our end without unnecessary meetings or communication; essential when working with a team in a radically different timezone. I would highly recommend working with them on your next WordPress project.”

“In addition to her tech expertise, Rachel is more creative, responsive, personable, and articulate than any other designer with whom I’ve worked. She understands your vision, and is able to execute in a professional and timely fashion. Rachel’s work has never been anything less than stellar. I’ve referred her and worked with her on several client website launches. She has made the collaboration process truly enjoyable, and has taught me so much.”

— Lucinda Blumenfeld

“Rachel Cunliffe’s creative and reliable team are even more available than most businesses located just down the street, and they’re always determined to provide whatever time is required to complete the job well.”

“Rachel and Stephen built a gorgeous home for the soul of my online business. They inebriated every ounce of design and coding with personality, vibrance, and light. Hire them. Your expectations will be blown out of the water.”

“We hired Rachel at cre8d in 2013 to redesign our site. I was so nervous about choosing the right team but immediately felt comfortable with Rachel just by her straight forward and transparent way of doing business. High integrity coupled with a creative eye makes Rachel our go to for any future design projects and ongoing site adjustments. I would recommend cre8d without a doubt to anyone looking for an esthetically pleasing, easy to navigate and useable website!”

“Rachel has been a tremendous support to the Department of Statistics, at the University of Auckland. She is a statistician with valuable expertise in social media. Rachel was the primary driver in developing our Blog, StatsChat, and is very proactive at encouraging social media uptake and innovation in the way we communicate to improve statistical literacy among students, journalists and the general public.”

— Karen McDonald, Department Manager at The University of Auckland

“I liked Rachel and Stephen’s work so much that I hired them twice — to create my personal blog and then our company blog. They are talented, responsive and a pleasure to work with.”

“I adore working with Rachel and Stephen, not just because they’re knowledgeable and talented designer-developers, but because they’ve made updating and maintaining the tech side of my site a completely unintimidating venture. They answer my questions, dumb and smart, with ease. They communicate their timing and deadlines clearly. Most of all, the deliver perfect work.”

— Cara Eisenpress

“It was a pleasure working with Cre8d Design when re-branding our website. They provided insightful and knowledgeable feedback to our designs for better SEO and performance. Rachel and Stephen were quick with the turnaround from design framing to development and launch. We couldn’t be happier with the overall site including the adaptability for mobile devices! Thank you so much.”

“In addition to her tech expertise, Rachel is more creative, responsive, personable, and articulate than any other designer with whom I’ve worked. She understands your vision, and is able to execute in a professional and timely fashion. Rachel’s work has never been anything less than stellar. I’ve referred her and worked with her on several client website launches. She has made the collaboration process truly enjoyable, and has taught me so much.”

“At the recommendation of a valued client, I first hired Rachel at cre8d design to redesign my website. She and Stephen were amazing! Even though they are in New Zealand and I am in the US, you’d never know there was a time difference. They are responsive, creative and patient (when I was having a hard time settling on a logo :-) and I had/have full confidence in their knowledge of web design and coding. They always came through with flying colors. Since then I have referred them to clients of mine and have received glowing evaluations of their work every time. Your website is in good hands with Cre8d Design!”

“Rachel created a sophisticated and user-friendly website for our book. She was tuned in not only to design but to the concepts of the book. Our website reflects our book’s mission through a deft use of visuals and type–and she was always reliable and on time! Rachel was a pleasure to work with.”

— Susan Schneider and Sonya Rhodes

“Rachel made the website she made for me (tinasloan.com) wonderful and really was able to “get” what I wanted. She worked hard till we understood one another and proceeded to do a fabulous job as you will see if you go to the site. I can’t recommend her highly enough. She is FABULOUS!”

“I had to officially ‘launch’ my brand as an author and desperately needed a logo and website. With Rachel and Stephen’s duality of services–design and development—I have a site that perfectly reflects my personality, functions the way I need it to, and has been able to grow as my business does. Cre8d is truly a one-stop-shop of super talent… and I can’t thank them enough.”

“Rachel is always efficient, professional and extremely creative! A must-hire.”

— Meredith Bagby

“I love working with Rachel and cre8d design. Pretty much every part of working with them is seamless. Their partnership has helped our business grow well.”

“The Cre8d design team were very professional. Rachel was always accessible, reliable, and easy to work with, providing excellent support. Stephen was exceptional at understanding my needs and objectives for the site and was very helpful in terms of programming.”

“For the past month, I’ve been working with the excessively talented cre8d design to bring you the modern, grown-up version of Pink of Perfection. I went to Rachel and her team with an idea of what I wanted and she nailed it from the get-go, exceeding my wildest expectations. She and her brother Stephen could not have been more of a joy to work with them, and I would highly recommend them for any web project you have. I’m kind of speechless with happiness at their work right now.”

“Rachel did a fabulous job designing marketing materials for my consulting business. The work looked great and she was always prompt, thorough, and clear in her communication. Rachel has a great package of qualities – her project management, design, and communication are all top-notch.”

— Sally Martin

“cre8d design understood my vision for a new website right from the start. They worked directly and efficiently with me, enabling us to bring my dream to life in the best way possible. I was thrilled to work with this team and recommend them to anyone looking to upgrade their website.”

— Kelsey Banfield

“Are you in need of a new website or design update to help increase sales? Then look no further than the honest and reliable cre8d team of Rachel and Stephen. After a horrific experience with another web designer I had the good fortune of a friend recommending that I speak with Rachel. Not only did they do an impeccable job on my wife’s site redesign, but they did it with exemplary integrity, professionalism, and creativity. If you want to ensure that you get the site that your business deserves–one that will help boost customer engagement and increase SEO– then I would highly recommend you hire this team.”

— Mark Hayward

“Rachel was a joy to work with in designing my blog. Given I new nothing about the subject, or the process, she was patient, knowledgeable and a great teacher. Her patience continued whenever I have e-mailed since with a problem or a change to my site. It has been a great experience woking with someone contents away. I highly recommend her.”

— Sarah Meder

“Rachel has a good eye for design, produces great results and is a pleasure to work with. I have hired her services several times.”

— Chris Harvey

“Rachel does excellent web design work. She is very knowledgeable about all aspects of creating an appealing website My experience has been that Rachel is very responsive, timely and goes above and beyond to make sure you are satisfied with the project.”

— Cathy Taughinbaugh

“I’ve worked with Rachel and Stephen on 6 projects now and always consider them first when planning my next venture. They are friendly, professional, responsive, inventive and excellent communicators. In addition to their clear expertise in WordPress, Rachel has provided me with some excellent design work for use in logos and printed media, and Stephen has yet to fail me in terms of his coding.”

— Gareth Furber

“Stephen and Rachel did a brilliant job taking my vision and designs and with great care turned these into a custom responsive website built with WordPress. I have worked with Stephen and Rachel on a number of sites and they always provide an exceptional service. I highly recommend them.”

— Jonathan Gunson

“I’ve hired Rachel many times to help me achieve important marketing objectives. She’s worked on everything from full websites to microsites, to campaign landing pages, and has always come through (mostly in a pinch!) She does very good work, is thoughtful and strategic in her approach, and always delivers on time and under budget. She’s smart about leveraging best practice and provides advice based on dozens of projects — in fact, her experience has proven invaluable to me on multiple occasions. I highly recommend Rachel and would work with her again in a minute!”

— Derek Gordon

“I’ve been working with Rachel and cre8d since 2010 and they have helped me through 3 major blog re-designs. They always have excellent suggestions about the design, and come up with ideas that really make sense for my blog. Friendly, creative, quick and responsive are a few words to describe them, and I really love working with them!”

— Kelly Keeton

“Foodpolitics.com is the second website that Rachel has designed for me. I thought whattoeatbook.com was gorgeous but this one is even more so. The new site is elegant and conveys precisely the message I wanted it to. I get lots of compliments on it. More than that, web technology does not come easily to me so I especially appreciate how well the site functions and little time it takes me to manage it.”

— Marion Nestle

“It was great working with Rachel. As a busy Mom I gave the team the barest bones to work with. What they put together is just perfect for the nature of my blog and importantly, it’s mobile friendly. I look forward to working with cre8d as my blog continues to evolve.”

— Monique Watson

“Many thanks for the great work cre8d design did in creating our new website. The design is great and was done in such a timely manner. The customer feedback re: our website has been excellent and is even responsible for a few new sales. You were a pleasure to work with!”

— Dave Baer

“The “taste!” website is looking and working beautifully! Great to look at, easy to handle, perfectly structured and very accessible, as show the visits these last couple of weeks. Thank you both for your time, energy and creativity in building the site for us, we really couldn’t be any happier.”

— Britta Wiegelmann & Frank Stephan Johne, taste!

Launching a new website can be a daunting task, but Rachel and Stephen make the design aspect an incredibly fun, collaborative process. Thanks to their patience, accessibility, and exceptional talent, and I wound up with a beautiful, well-functioning site that has far surpassed my expectations. I cannot recommend cre8d design highly enough!”

— Kathryn O'Malley

“Dozens of clients have commented on our clear, attractive and easily navigable new site. The added functionality and streamlined design is exactly what we were hoping for. Rachel and her team took our ideas and turned them into a working reality to bring our small business the online presence we needed. Thanks Cre8d!”

— Laura Heeringa

“The team at cre8d design were extremely friendly and professional when working with me on my website. They were responsive and open to all my questions and ideas. They worked hard with me to have an end result that was exactly what I was looking for. I appreciate all the work and time they put into my project and would highly recommend them to others.”

— Rebecca Lawer

“Rachel does excellent web design work. She is very knowledgeable about all aspects of creating an appealing website My experience has been that Rachel is very responsive, timely and goes above and beyond to make sure you are satisfied with the project.”

— Cathy Taughinbaugh

“Rachel and team gave my site a much-needed modern update to the design and back end, and everything runs much smoother now. They were quick with answering questions and concerns, and didn’t mind my too-frequent requests for last minute changes.”

— Lindsay Buroker

“You were really patient with people who had limited technical understanding, quick to understand what we were after and efficient in delivering a site that’s received many compliments for its crisp look and functionality.”

“Rachel and her team have done a fantastic job with ChannelFlip.com. We were looking for a team that could understand what we wanted, design it and QA it in super quick time, then get it up and running with the minimum amount of hassle and time (not to mention cost).

From the initial design (gorgeous) to the implementation (quick and efficient), Cre8d did an amazing job, absolutely nailing exactly what we were after, and continuing to make tweaks and changes as we require them.

The great thing about Cre8d is that although they’re super technical and competent, they can talk to clients in plain English, and are capable of taking convoluted English instructions and translating them into HTML – a rare talent in a world of “I KNOW BEST” coders and web teams.

Cre8d’s design work is as beautiful as Rachel’s sunny Kiwi visage, while the coding is solid enough to withstand a battering from the All Blacks. Bravo!”

— Wil Harris

“I hired the cre8d design design team for a complete site redesign job. Working with Stephen and Rachel on the project was a fun experience and produced outstanding results. The Cre8d team communicated well to accommodate my requirements accepting changes on the go, making me feel that my site is a top priority to them. cre8d rocks!”

— Udi Turosh

“It has been a pleasure working with you and your friendly team at cre8d design throughout the time in which you created us an amazing website. You took the time to understand exactly what we were trying to achieve, gave helpful recommendations when required and used your creativity and initiative to satisfy our brief. We would like you to know how pleased we are with the outstanding service you have given us and we look forward to a continuing relationship.”

“My new website is up and looking absolutely beauticious (yes, that is beautiful + delicious)! I can’t believe it’s here in all its sparkling prettiness. Huge thanks to Rachel and Stephen at cre8d for being so kickass!”

— Nicole Jardim

“I can’t thank you and Stephen enough for doing such a great job with both the redesign of my website and blog. From the very first introduction via email until the completion of the project you were professional, prompt AND patient, making me at ease with every single step of the process. Your design and coding skills went beyond my expectations and I couldn’t be any happier with the outcome. You are true professionals!”

“Working with Rachel & her team at cre8d design was a great experience! She managed to create a design that reflects me in the ways that I exactly wanted, while promptly delivering to deadlines efficiently & programming it in a user-friendly manner. I definitely recommend cre8d design for anyone looking for both quality & efficiency.”

— Reem Yousif

“Hiring cre8d to redesign my blog was the best investment I’ve made. Rachel is easy to work with, offers amazing advice, and never strays from her timeline. I’ll definitely use her services again!”

— Erika Valente

“Rachel has both feet firmly planted in the digital world, where her design work shows an appealing clean and clear aesthetic. She is an attentive and meticulous collaborator; someone who listens to others and whom you can trust to do the job well. I enjoy working with Rachel and have no hesitation in recommending her.

— Julie Middleton

“Rachel is an efficient and creative web designer who always has time to answer questions and solve problems. Her friendly & professional approach to projects is great to work with.”

— Tracy Meek

“I hired Rachel to design and build a new home for my WordPress blog. She was creative and quickly came up with a lovely design. The whole process of crafting the site & having my content moved over was seamless.”

— Esther Crawford

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