Make the overhaul of your company Web site an event that attracts traffic--and customers.
Confronted with a dumbfounding 90% drop-off in revenue at his high-end, custom bicycle business in San Antonio, Texas, Kevin Saunders could easily have closed his shop and resumed a career in finance or aircraft component design. Or he could have put KGS Bikes into retrenchment mode, suspending its marketing and promotional activities until the economy rebounded, and with it, the market for bikes priced more like cars--in the $10,000 to $30,000 range.
Instead, Saunders did just the opposite--he came out swinging.
"I could have taken a breather," he says. "But instead I saw this as an opportunity to jump ahead of competitors who are crying in their beer. I decided to turn the Web site into a world-class site, to make the Internet the center of the business and to really focus on social networking to attract people from around the world to the site. That, I believe, is what is going to put me ahead of the competition when things do turn around. Plus, I'll have a really strong social network and a world-class Web site."
Saunders knew he needed to spend money to revamp the KGS Bikes site. But unlike many small to mid-size businesses, which overhaul their sites under the cover of darkness, with little to no fanfare, he recognized an opportunity to turn the relaunch of his site into a "happening." By making it an event, he could leverage the dollars spent updating the site to attract additional attention, traffic and ultimately, paying customers.
The KGS Bikes Home Page
Using traditional and non-traditional public relations and marketing channels, he created a buzz around the site's June relaunch. What's more, he did it with no additional cash outlay beyond the $15,000 he spent to improve the site.
Creating A Happening
Turning the relaunch of a Web site into a public happening--by making a dedicated public relations and marketing push to tout new site features, or by packaging the relaunch with a special promotion or the roll-out of a new product or service--is an often-overlooked but potentially rewarding undertaking for small businesses seeking new ways to get noticed.
"It's a positive opportunity to engage your partners and the public," says Rob Davis, vice president of business development at Akavit, an interactive marketing firm in Denver. "In most cases, though, it's a nonevent, because the average entrepreneur is so focused on everything else happening in their business, it's one of the last things that gets attention."
For Saunders, the relaunch, plus all the time he invested in the preceding months to build a presence and a following via his blog, an e-zine, and social media vehicles such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, are paying major dividends. "Last year, I had this massive Web site that nobody saw and I was somebody nobody had heard of. Now, people who follow cycling think I'm some sort of rock star."
Saunders says his goal is to convert that newfound name recognition into a three-fold increase in site traffic within a year of site relaunch.
"As a business owner, you want to always be doing what you can to get people to your web site," explains Jay Bower, president of the Crossbow Group, a marketing and communications agency in Westport, Conn. Trumpeting the relaunch of a Web site "is a good context in which to do that. You can do it with very simple tweaks to a site. Usually there's no need to fully reinvent your site or its navigation system, for example. So a relaunch can have a huge impact at a very low cost."
Ajay Goel figures the superficial site redesign his e-mail marketing software company, Chicago-based JangoMail, unveiled in June has already paid for itself with the additional leads it has generated. Simply incorporating a "free trial" button on each of the site's pages has helped yield a 30% increase in leads during the first month following relaunch. Bundling the relaunch with the unveiling of a new feature on the company's e-mail marketing platform also has helped the cause, he says.
The JangoMail Web site
Packaging a site relaunch with a product launch or a promotion can effectively enhance the impact of the relaunch "event," asserts Bower. "If you're a retailer, offering discounts on whatever you sell, or doing something like a one-week sale [timed with the relaunch] can draw people to the site. Really, whatever your business is, some kind of promotion makes sense."
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