New microsite and branding to increase revenue by 50%

With over 50 years in the electrical wire and cable business, a manufacturer and distributor was ready to grow its online business. The company had some experience in eCommerce and wanted to evolve its future online presence from their current method of sales.

Challenge

With over 50 years in the electrical wire and cable business, a manufacturer and distributor was ready to grow its online business. The company had launched a website that supported eCommerce, but wanted to streamline the backend by adding functionality that would allow features such as being able to easily edit the website, optimize online marketing campaigns, launching new products, and increasing conversions.

The company wanted to evolve its future online presence from their current method of sales. They needed help with branding, gathering their catalog of products, and updating their website. Moreover, they were looking for suggestions for best practices and help to grow their direct extension cords business.

Solution

The client has already had a site on nopCommerce built five years ago but they wanted to reinvent it and drive online sales. GoldenComm conducted a full audit of the company’s current systems and methods and then created a strategic plan.

Planning / Information Architecture

The process included strategic keyword research, analytics review to see where things are working well, and what could be improved and competitive analysis. UI/UX audit on existing website was done as well. After that, it was possible to make an informed decision of which pages should be on the new website and to create a new sitemap.

UX/UI Design

• Creation of brand name concepts: Bad Ass Extension Cords – After analyzing the parent company’s website, the team worked to create the concept and branding from the ground up.
• Style guide and logo creation – Before the website design, GoldenComm first created a logo, and established a style guide. The design of the website and any future designs for the company would be based on the style guide.
• Website wireframes and designs – The wireframe process is a great way to first focus on the strategy for presenting content. Once wireframes have been approved by the client, its time to move into creating the designs for the website.

Website Development and nopCommerce Integration

• Front end and back end development - Front end and back end developers worked closely together to build and integrate the website with nopCommerce and the other custom features the site utilizes.
• Custom page templates - Custom page templates were created to maintain consistency throughout the website and give the client the ability to create basic pages on their own once the website is launched.
• Custom product configurator - Frontend team made a custom endpoint for the product configurator that then uses Javascript on the frontend to get data from the endpoint to see what options should be available.
• Solr integration - The products configurator was customized to meet clients' industry specific requirements. In addition, Solr, a standalone enterprise search server, was integrated with REST-like API, while utilizing Solr's powerful full-text search and near real-time indexing to enhance the catalogic search. Solr is functioning as a custom reductive navigation; catalogic reductive navigation was customized with the Solr's hit highlighting and powerful faceted search capabilities.
• Customized Admin to facilitate website changes - With that, the client can make basic edits of the site through the admin.

Online Marketing

It included website search engine optimization, Google Shopping Integration, Product Listing Ads (PLAs), analytics monitoring and custom Google Ads campaigns.

Result

The new site was launched in January 2018. A year after Bad Ass Extension Cords noted the excellent results. “A far more robust, navigable site, supported by Golden Communications’ marketing campaigns and SEO efforts has produced dramatic results. A month-to-month comparison (January) shows total traffic increased 55%, with paid search traffic up 96%. For the compared periods, transactions increased 121% and revenue increased 138%”, - says Dan Mulhany, Director of eCommerce.

The client achieved the following:

• Increased website traffic by 75% Year over Year
• Increased average session by 10% Year over Year
• Conversion Rates improved by 57% Year over Year
• Grew revenue by 50% with forecasted 50% increase in revenue in 2019

The online store helped Bad Ass Extension Cords reach a new customer base, increase profitability, improve productivity, while creating a buzz in the industry. With their new B2C nopCommerce store they are able to sell their cords directly to consumers. And with custom admin features, they are more self-sufficient.