Timber Block Engineered Log Homes

Timber Block Engineered Log Homes

by | Mar 21, 2016

Timber Block Engineered Wood Homes

Updating a website and consolidating technologies

Triage, then improve

TimberBlock Engineered Homes are marvels of modern engineering.  The houses they build are engineered in a factory, and have the traditional look of log homes, but modern conveniences including an R36 insulation value.

Showcasing this technology on the internet and generating sales ready leads was an important goal for this Quebec based company. NorthIQ was brought in to fix their internet presence.

The website was built on WordPress, and was using a variety of different technologies, as well as some proprietary plugins that required a ton of work to maintain. The website had not been updated in a number of months, and the site was unstable and fragile.

Timber Block asked NorthIQ to provide ongoing search engine optimization, search engine marketing, lead nurturing, content marketing assistance, and lead generation for their business.

Timber Block Before:

As a bilingual website, Timber Block required two discreet versions of the site to be maintained. The site also featured differences between Canadian and US versions, including the removal of Canadian addresses in the United States and vice versa.

In addition to a website, the Timber Block site also supported an ecommerce store located at an external provider. This store allowed customers to purchase a plan book in digital and physical formats.

This was all wrapped up in a custom theme that required updates to the actual templates in order to adjust basic information such as hours of operation or changes to pages such as the home page. With the added complexity of multi-language, these pages became even harder to update and maintain.

Timber Block After:

Using Divi and WordPress Multi Language (WPML), we were able to create a flexible, user centric website that showcased the most important aspects of the Timber Block brand.

We also improved the calls to action, and created clear conversions paths across the website by introducing the concept of “tiered conversions”, with low friction “Level 1” conversions for basic downloads, and progressively higher friction conversion paths throughout the website.

By combining both the ecommerce and website into one location, and implementing Woocommerce, we were able to improve and integrate the experience. New purchases were pushed into the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software as leads, and were followed up on.

 

The Results:

This new website was incredibly easy to update, which increased the frequency of updates, and allowed the marketing team to take control of more of their website than ever before.

The tiered conversion paths resulted in a 357% increase in leads over the first year and would result in the need for a comprehensive lead nurturing program (which we provided as a follow up project).

Sales of the Timber Block plan book increased 112% in the first year, as a result of the increased presence, and greater search-ability of the plan book.

All of this has led to an increase in revenue for Timber Block.

An Evolution in Sales

Our changes to the website were just the beginning. In collaboration with TimberBlock senior management, we built multi-stage nurturing programs in their newly acquired Hubspot CRM, creating deep, multi-step lead funnels that allowed logged in users to access content in new ways.

We worked directly with sales to improve the lead generation, and created funnels of sales ready leads which sales were able to quickly follow up on and create an inbound pipeline of pre-warmed sales opportunities.

The Website

All New Comics

All New Comics

by | 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

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

Manage Comics Subscription Software Service

by | 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