Case Study - Colorfill page
Background
Colorfill is a coloured joining compound used to bond and repair worktops and laminate floors. The client runs a successful online trade and diy (do it yourself) store and had noticed increased interest, sales and demand for this product.
Although the client was able to offer colorfill when a customer purchases a worktop or laminate flooring, they wanted to increase awareness of the product in its own right.
Previously the client hap adopted the use of more traditional marketing techniques, for example, placing an ad in the Yellow Pages (Yell as it is now called), Thompson local, and other publications, newsletters, papers, magazines etc. Unfortunately the return was often low and not cost effective. Placing a year long ad in one publication could cost £200 to £400 each. The totals would add up and the advertising last for only that year.
Brief
The client commissioned a website to be designed and created for the purpose of promoting a particular product – colorfill. The aim was to increase awareness of the product and brand, drive traffic to the client’s website and increase sales.
Although a basic site in functionality, the client wanted it to be aesthetic, accessible, easy to navigate, search engine friendly, and above all, user friendly.
Consideration that the client would want to update the site themselves, and potentially further expanded to include ecommerce and other functions at a later date.
Solution
After several concept ideas were worked through, the final decision was to use black and white as a frame work, with an image of the product. Colorfill uses a specific range of colours in their product branding, which were used to colour co-ordinate the text (the colour palette was amended to web safe accessible colours). This would also help draw the eye along the black frame work to where use of colour attracts attention. For the background on navigation boxes, different worktop and laminate floor images were used to assist in creating a theme.
Navigation was a challenge for what was to start life as a one page website but potentially into something much larger – how to keep the look the same without disrupting the flow of the page? The remedy decided upon was to use the titles of pages yet to be added, acting as information only to begin with, and later links would be added to them to new pages on the website.
Results
Since going live the site has attracted traffic which has been divided into three categories: people searching for information which can be found on the site, people linking to other websites from adverts placed on the site, and people linking directly to the client’s website, with a number making purchases not only of colorfill but other products the client sells.
Within 6 months, the colorfill website generated enough income to pay for the original outlay. This return comprises of advertising revenue (adverts placed on the site), as well as direct sales of colorfill and other products on the clients main website.
Having already exceeded a full return on the initial investment within 6 months, the client was able to look forward to the return in the following 6 months with no further outlay.
Better still, with the website already built there would be no further significant expenditure in subsequent years. The only overheads being the renewal of domain name registration and hosting.