When Updating Your Online "Home" Makes a Big Impact

When Updating Your Online Home Makes a Big Impact
If you have ever gone through the experience of buying a home for yourself or for your family, you've likely been exposed to a variety of homes throughout the life of your search.

Depending on your budget, location, and specifications for your new home, you've probably experienced looking at houses that are all across the spectrum of quality. There are plenty of very nice homes out there that are clearly well taken care of, updated, and feature a style that is sometime within the last decade. There are also, inevitably, houses that are quite the opposite - they may look like they've been dropped onto the street straight out of 1960 - green shag carpet and all.

You may have even recently given your own home a facelift - they all need it from time to time. Appliances get outdated, styles and decorating trends change, and carpet and paint jobs may just look or feel old and outdated.
 
 

The same thing can happen to your online "home". When was the last time you gave your website a refresh?



Just like any residence, regular updates to your website can keep it looking fresh, up-to-date, and stylish. New technology, design effects, and features are increasingly available to those with online real estate - they are developed even faster than they are for physical houses, so it is important to take a good look at your site every few years to see if it too needs a new coat of paint.
 

Plastics Machinery Group found themselves in much the same situation as many businesses who have had an online presence for a few years or more.


While the Plastic Machinery Group website was built using the latest technologies at the time - it had been a while since it had been designed and developed. PMG found themselves at a crossroads - the website functioned just fine, they really didn't want to change the "guts" of the site, but they knew the front end needed a redesign.
 

PMG has hosted their website through INSYTE eCommerce for quite some time and have been very happy with the services they had received throughout the years. When they inquired if we would be willing to keep their base site and redesign the front end - we were happy to oblige!

INSYTE eCommerce offers website redesign packages where a complete makeover can be given to the front end, with limited or no changes to the back end functionality. If functionality changes are requested - that can be accommodated too.

Once Plastics Machinery Group knew they could continue working with us and keep their current Content Management System (CMS) but receive a completely redesigned site, they were very excited to get to work. Throughout the discovery process of the project, PMG requested the following in their redesign:
  1. Responsive Design - The new design had to accommodate mobile and tablet devices for their on-the-go audience.
  2. New Arrivals - Plastic Machinery Group's core business model relies heavily on the fact that their product catalog is constantly changing, so they wanted to offer a way for their users to access new products right from the homepage.
  3. Advanced Search - The audience PMG serves typically knows exactly what they are looking for on their site, so offering a quick, easy, and efficient way for their users to find their desired products was essential to the design.
  4. Request a Quote - INSYTE wanted to make it even easier for PMG visitors to request a quote for a particular product directly from the product's page. We integrated the "request a quote" form directly into the product page so that users would have one less click-through to get the information they needed.

After the details were ironed out, INSYTE got to work on the new design. After one round of minor revisions - the design was approved and implemented into their existing CMS platform. Minimal changes were made to the back end of the PMG website, which was important to the staff at PMG. Minor re-training was required after the new design build so that their website administrators were caught up to speed with the new features, but 95% of the site was still very familiar to them.

Upon delivery, Plastics Machinery Group was very satisfied with the results. They're website had a fresh, new, responsive design to show off to their users with new features to allow them to more easily search for and find the products they were looking to purchase. Most importantly, the mobile users were now able to easily navigate around the PMG website!
 

So, was the redesign worth it? Based on the new traffic data, we would say so...

Traffic data from Google Analytics acquired since the redesign launch show that visitor engagement on the Plastics Machinery Group website has increased substantially.

Three key metrics that we use use to gage user engagement have all gone up since the redesign launch:
  1. Pages per Session: Users are viewing over 30% more pages once they visit the PMG site.
  2. Bounce Rate: Almost 20% more users are landing on the PMG site and staying. (rather than immediately leaving the site due to poor first impression).
  3. New Sessions: PMG is receiving over 15% more new users on their website than with the previous design.
But don't take our word for it, take it from Plastics Machinery Group representative, Sam Cultrona. After commencement of the project he stated:

"We are very happy with the look and feel of the new website. Secondly, our customers feel it is a user friendly site that is easily navigable. Our old website was very cluttered and outdated, INSYTE helped us streamline our site and clean up the look so it was more appealing to our customer."

Ready to give your site a makeover today? Contact INSYTE to get your website redesign in the works!