How We Rebranded, Redesigned & Redefined a Small Business
A Case Study on Innovative Sleep Solutions, Surrey, BC
Our team loves helping small business owners rebrand-from bringing website redesign ideas to life to increasing engagement on social media.
It’s not only because we’re passionate about the work, but also because we love seeing our entrepreneurs succeed.
Now, I know it’s almost silly to mention how challenging a year 2020 has been for small businesses. I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times!
But the fact that it was such a difficult year for many small businesses made the rebranding work we’re doing for a small business like Innovative Sleep Solutions that much more impactful.
Innovative Sleep Solutions’ original website wasn’t supporting or increasing leads or sales at all. They had a finicky shopping cart system that was challenging to use.
The site featured an outdated design and a lack of compelling SEO copy. There was no mention of their values or health-centred approach, which are what set them apart from the big-box stores.
In the past, Dave and Terry had also been using more traditional advertising campaigns such as radio, TV, print and even boards at Rogers Arena to attract the attention of Canucks fans.
With numerous technical and marketing/branding issues, they weren’t getting any online sales.
While they were getting in-store purchases before COVID-19 came along, the pandemic put a stop to that.
Innovative Sleep Solutions needed to pivot fast and create a robust eCommerce site and implement a new online marketing strategy.
It was time for a fresh approach, so this is how we modernized Innovative Sleep Solutions’ brand to give them a competitive edge going into 2021.
A complete brand and website redesign.
From the logo to the product pages, we made sure Innovative Sleep Solutions’ branding was consistent and engaging across all pages of the website.
Like we do with every client, we started with an in-depth brand analysis to define their unique selling proposition (USP), target audience, company vision, brand positioning and more.
This analysis reinforced the need to give their existing logo a brand refresh. It was not only outdated, but it did not reflect the healthy vibe that was needed to position them differently from other mattress and bed sellers.
The logo redesign process was a collaborative one bringing David and Terry into the mix every step of the way, ensuring the final design was one they loved and knew represented their brand positioning accurately.
Another one of our website redesign initiatives was to come up with a new tagline to differentiate the company from their big-box competitors. Because the owners pride themselves on selling natural, organic and made-in-Canada products wherever possible, “Sleep Healthier. Live Better” was the winning statement.
Our next step was to develop our website tech specs, keyword analysis and site mock-ups. (A mock-up is a layout that shows what elements will be on a web page. You don’t just start creating menus, slapping on images and putting in links on a live page!)
It’s important for small business owners to understand there’s so much more to a website redesign than picking logo colours and font sizes!
For example, a big part of the process is taking the user experience into consideration. What process flow will they go through to ensure an easy experience while on the site?
When designing and developing the Innovative site, we wanted to make sure site visitors immediately know they are in the right place and can easily find the products they need.
Additionally, ensuring a site looks great on any device, from desktops to smartphones is critical. Images and font sizes may look perfect on your computer but break or look crowded on a phone screen.
While there’s a great deal of creativity involved in implementing website redesign ideas, a lot of your success depends on well-executed web development.
Since we don’t use cookie-cutter templates, purchased themes, or DIY 3rd party site builders, our clients know they are getting the best quality-built site that will showcase their brand perfectly.
The Innovative site was built in WordPress using a customized WooCommerce plugin for the shopping cart system. We also integrated Constant Contact for list building and having the ability to send abandoned cart emails to those who leave the site without finishing their purchase.
As you can see, unless you’re a marketing/technical/designer guru, rebranding your business isn’t a DIY project. There are too many important branding, programming and implementation elements at stake. No matter what industry you’re in, you should consider hiring a full-service professional web design and development company.
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Read: The Importance of Brand Messaging for a Successful Website Redesign
I’m sure you’ve landed on someone’s website and felt like something was just… wrong; or maybe you were suddenly turned off without even knowing why.
Chances are, you quickly clicked back to find a competitor’s website, where you felt more comfortable and secure.
Your visitors could feel the same way if you don’t pay attention to how you come across to your target audience. That’s why it’s crucial to identify your brand style before you redesign your website.
In this article, I’m going to share five questions you need to answer to determine your business brand identity and create the most effective website possible.
More on online.
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Compelling, benefit-driven copywriting.
People aren’t going to buy from a small business if the copy focuses heavily on product specs or lacks a cohesive story. It’s when you start to talk about why someone wants what you’re selling that you can truly reach your target audience.
An additional challenge for Innovative Sleep Solutions: they’re selling high-end products at the lowest price, but buying a mattress is still a considerable investment.
So, we knew we needed to quickly capture people’s attention with the right copy, rather than highlighting price points.
As part of our online marketing strategy, we looked for what problems each product solved. For example, a lifestyle adjustable bed is ideal for not only people with a medical condition such as acid reflux, but also for folks who like to read or use a laptop in bed.
Similarly, we learned a magnet therapy mattress acts like a mini electric heating pad to stimulate blood flow and deliver nutrients to repair and heal damaged tissues while you sleep. You wake up pain-free and rejuvenated.
Isn’t that much more interesting than product specs?
Innovative Sleep Solutions’ online marketing strategy also includes landing pages and blog posts with carefully chosen keywords to further explain the benefits of their products and maximize SEO for more organic traffic.
Strategic ongoing SEO, SEM & social media campaigns.
Our work doesn’t end when the website is complete! To help Dave and Terry stay competitive, make sales, increase leads and engage their audience, we have now turned our focus to concentrated SEO, SEM and social media campaigns.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a non-paid online marketing strategy that centres around optimizing your website and content with words and phrases that people would type into a search engine.
By doing keyword and competitor research, we created target keywords to use across the website and within copy.
SEM stands for search engine marketing, also known as paid search. The most commonly used paid search tool is Google Ads.
By buying traffic that drives to the website, we’re fast-tracking the site’s way to the top of the search results, and hopefully increasing sales.
We do this effectively by:
? Targeting geographic areas
? Creating ad campaigns that speak to the target audiences in those areas
? Writing relevant ad copy that will entice and compel their target audience to click on the ad
? Monitoring continually for clicks, impressions and conversions
SEM can be a great online marketing strategy to ramp up at the time of a site launch; you can then reduce your paid ad budget as you move higher up in the organic search results with SEO.
We’re also sprinting forward with an Instagram-centric social media campaign that visually showcases their healthy sleep solutions.
The process of bringing website redesign ideas to life is a collaborative, iterative one. It takes proper planning, working with a professional marketing team and testing and tweaking as you go!
It took lots of communicating and working together to get to the finalized Innovative Sleep Solutions site. But we love the process, and we now have another website and rebranding project to be proud of!
To your business success,
Susan
