Robinson Wood Design

by Brian | May 20, 2017

Robinson Wood Design

Artisanal Carpentry Projects

Creating a Brand

When Nate Robinson needed branding for his newly launched woodworking business, he came to NorthIQ.

With a clear vision of what he wanted, and an understanding that he would be committing himself to a lifetime of beard ownership, Brian and Nate sat down and sketched out some ideas. Nate provided a clear direction, and some preliminary ideas, and Brian refined them to a half dozen concepts.

Settling on a bearded, circular brand design, Nate provided a few final refinements, and the Robinson Wood Design brand was created.

A simple website:

Nate didn’t want to do a lot of website upkeep, and was looking for something that could easily showcase his work from his curated Instagram feed.

We put together a simple, flat, web page with a feed for Instagram, and a link to his Facebook presence, where Nate regularly updates new pieces and adds his availability.

Business Cards:

Fine woodworking is a word of mouth business. Nate needed a simple, but effective business card design that could communicate what he did at a glance, represent the business, and clearly communicate his information.

A simple wood design was chosen for the front, while a two-toned, artistic design was selected for the back.

Literally branding the brand:

Vector files were provided to GearHeart Industries, who crafted a custom Aluminum branding Iron for Nate.

This branding iron is applied to every piece that leaves Nate’s St. Thomas Ontario shop, and adds a lasting reminder of his workmanship on every piece of wood work that he creates.

The Website:

All New Comics

by Brian | Jan 1, 2016

All New Comics

How Canada's Online Comics Superstore achieved 197% Year over Year growth

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Massive Growth, Realized Potential

Comic books are a $1billion a year industry, and there are more than 3,000 dedicated comic stores in North America.

Even with those massive numbers, many rural areas are without a local comic book presence, and it’s not unheard of for people to travel more than an hour to their local comic shop.

This is an industry in need of disruption, and in 2005, All New Comics was formed. The company’s stated goal was to deliver a comic book store experience everywhere in Canada.

All New Comics Before:

By 2015, All New Comics had outgrown it’s old platform. The website was constructed using a custom installation of CandyPress ecommerce software. CandyPress itself was using old ASP technology, and was not very efficient. Despite an upgrade in 2009, All New Comics was still struggling to build fully mobile friendly website even as mobile traffic increased.

All New Comics After:

The new website was built using WordPress on top of the Divi framework, with a custom Divi theme, and a WooCommerce ecommerce back end.

All New Comics was also plugged into the Manage Comics subscription management tool, which allowed store owner Peter to easily track his customers subscriptions.

The Results:

The new website shot up the search engine charts, the fast, searchable, and incredibly usable WooCommerce ecommerce platform allowed All New Comics to dramatically increase their organic presence. With over 2,500 available products, All New Comics is one of the largest online presences in Canada.

NorthIQ put a strong spotlight on the Manage Comics subscription account that All New Comics uses, and as a result of this, their recurring customers increased by 233%, increasing their revenue 197% with $0 in ad spend.

Today All New Comics continues to be one of Canada’s largest online comic book stores, and keeps on growing.

The Website

Manage Comics Subscription Software Service

by Brian | Oct 30, 2015

Manage Comics

Comics subscription software for comic stores

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Partnering with our development friends at Code Elves, NorthIQ set out to build a subscription service for comic shops that will help them manage their weekly “Comic book pulls”, and allow their customers to manage their own subscription orders.

What we’ve created has proven to be a massive success with customers, and resulted in a near doubling of revenue for the pilot store – All New Comics.

A need, fulfilled

There are more than 3,000 dedicated comic book stores in North America, with many of those stores having been around for 20 years or more. In the last decade, the comic book industry has been assaulted by a bevvy of entertainment choices, and comics, while still a $1billion a year industry, are finding it harder to keep their market share than ever before.

Technology has the ability to put comic shops on a level footing with competitors like Amazon, and the customer base they have cultivated remains fiercely loyal, but consumers are increasingly looking for more transparency into what they are getting and they continue to look for ways to stay up to date.

With over 6,000 monthly products being delivered to comic shops every month, technology can play a key role in improving their ability to serve their customers, and their profitability.

The store front end:

Each store gets its own front end, and a unique URL. The store front end can be customized with a unique logo, and the store colours, to provide branding, but all stores leverage the same template, and a shared image pool. This allows each store to stand out, but ensures that all stores are completely mobile responsive, and adhere to website best practices.

View the Manage Comics Example Shop

The management console:

The management console is the heart and brains of a store, giving the owner full insight into changes to customer lists, current order totals, current subscription revenue, and full reporting tools which can report on revenue, taxes, and much more.

Content marketing with the Manage Comics blog:

In its first year in business, Manage Comics did zero marketing, growing exclusively through word of mouth, however in May of 2017, we began posting frequent blog posts to a dedicated Manage Comics blog. In the beginning, we posted information adjacent to Manage Comics, but we quickly started posting informational posts like “How to Promote an Event for Your Comic Book Store on Facebook”, and “How to use Instagram for your Comic Book Store”.

The Manage Comics blog became about more than promoting Manage Comics, and instead became about helping retailers to succeed.

The site saw steady growth, and has seen an increase in the number of requests to demonstrate Manage Comics, all with no advertising spend.

See the Manage Comics Blog

The Manage Comics Guide

The Manage Comics guide is a 32 page getting started guide that tells prospects how the site works. It uses an Unbounce landing page to add users to a Mailchimp mailing list, where they are automatically sent a copy of the guide.

Get the Manage Comics Guide