Help Is Available

While people in our industry may be proficient with new technology that helps them make higher quality parts more efficiently, they don’t necessarily know (or have an interest in) the latest strategies for generating higher volumes of traffic on their Web sites. It’s not their area of expertise. And that’s OK.

Just as a shop will often contract out certain aspects of their production process in order to provide a complete product as required by the customer, it can also hire an expert external source for getting the most from its presence on the Web.

Buckeye Shapeform (www.buckeyeshapeform.com), manufacturers of enclosure units, novelty cans, knobs and deep drawn products, did just that. After almost 10 years of mediocre marketing results from its two different site design efforts, the company enlisted the services of an external Web service partner.

This partner carefully studied the company’s manufacturing capabilities, products, sales process and customer buying needs and constructed a robust new Web site with advanced search and navigation technology. The site also incorporates a well-structured online catalog to display the company’s array of products in each of more than 16,000 configurations.

Since the new site was launched at the start of 2008, the company has reported a 120-percent increase in average pages viewed and almost 1,000-percent increase in conversion actions—steps bringing a visitor closer to a sale. The end result has been more than 1,000 leads that produced 60 new clients and almost $100,000 in new business.

We don’t have to be good at everything. We only need to connect with the right people who can help us reach our goals. It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.