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Manufacturer Website Design

The Freshman Effort or
"How we hired a hobbyist to create our website on the cheap"

Like many businesses, Quick Start Products and Solutions brought their marketing online using an inexperienced web designer with little to no marketing or business knowledge. As a result, their first website was launched devoid of a unified marketing plan, or any clear idea of how the website would integrate into their sales and marketing process.

After two years of being live online with incomplete content and "Under Construction" pages, Quick Start began to actively seek a professional web design and development firm with the right mix of traditional marketing and online advertising expertise to redefine and redesign their existing site.

Quick Start required more than just a pretty picture to synthesize an effective online marketing tool - they needed a web development company that could build sophisticated web based systems to help them run their business online. Direct Response Web Solutions filled the requirement of a one-stop-shop for direct marketing and traditional marketing services, both on and offline.

The Three-Target Audience Design Challenge

Quick Start Products and Solutions manufactures ether quick-start systems for diesel engines. The product is essential to the supply chain, logistics, and construction industry, where diesel engines are required to start at freezing temperatures.

From the outset, it was obvious that Quick Start had a number of conflicting target audiences to whom they wished to market their website. Our client wanted to provide information about their products to three discrete audience segments: Highly educated engineers, truck and equipment sales teams, and the ultimate end-users (truck drivers).

This three-tiered audience - with its varying educational, class, and emotional backgrounds - was a considerable obstacle to implementing a comprehensive marketing plan. Since each segment possesses their own distinct needs and interests, appealing to each market individually required diverging approaches. The design team at Direct Response Web Solutions welcomed the challenge.

After meditating on a strategy and hatching out several unique design layouts, we reviewed the results with our client and arrived at a design interface that served the tri-fold purpose of conveying a brand identity, representing the business as an online entity, and marketing to three distinct target audiences. (Pictured at left.)

Ether University

Quick Start wanted the redesigned website to help educate people about ether technology and safety. To create a clearinghouse of information about ether and the latest technology in the diesel engine manufacturing industry, DRWS developed a content management system that non-technical staff could use to easily add articles and white papers to the website. This CMS was devised to automatically launch and archive articles based on the needs of Quick Start's business plan.

News and the Distribution Channel

Our client's management team was looking for a way to communicate with their customers and let them know when news, ether articles, or other content was updated on their website. To achieve this capability, DRWS developed a newsletter launch tool in a secure section of the new website. The newsletter system accesses all of the content in the Ether University, Press Release and News databases. A non-technical staff member can select any of the articles from the website, identify a list of users, and launch a formatted, multi-part HTML email newsletter without having to reformat, edit, or re-enter content.

The beauty intrinsic to a well-developed content management system is that all content is entered through one set of administrative screens, via a user-friendly interface very similar to a word processing program. This essentially means that after the data has been entered into the system and formatted once, it can be conveniently reused and sent as many times as is needed.

Added Functionality and Website Content Management

The website revamp fully outclasses the old site, complete with a professional look, an efficient performance, and a full capacity for quick daily updates and added functionality. The new website:

Registers users for upcoming newsletters about Quick Start Products and industry articles
Provides non-technical staff a secure way to add news and article content to the website in an easy-to-use, word processor interface
Automatically launches and archives content based on the parameters established in the content management forms
Provides a workflow for selecting website content, articles and news to include in an HTML newsletter to be sent to a list of registered users.

Announcing Your New Website

In addition to the site upgrade, Direct Response Web Solutions designed and printed pocket-sized postcard mailers to distribute at trade shows for promotion of the new website. To emphasize a unified branding identity consistently across all online and offline marketing platforms, the direct mailers were modeled to reflect the design of the website. To extend the brand distinction further, DRWS created and printed an 8'x8' canvas mural for the lobby of their facility, also conceived to echo the aura of the site.

Website Success

At the end of the project, it was evident that the revamped Quick Start website was a lucrative improvement, one that would have a favorable effect on sales and drive a larger market to their business. The affordable website designed by Direct Response Web Solutions will also experience higher organic listings on search engines like Google and Yahoo, and will greatly advance online promotional activity by generating a higher number of hits and discoveries.

All the advantages of a successful visual, emotional and direct response design, coupled with increased search engine traffic, provides Quick Start with a winning combination that will maintain their business and keep it moving forward.

For more information about affordable web design and how a marketing website can positively effect your business credibility contact Chicago area web designer Direct Response Web Solutions today.