40-Year-Old Logistics Company Modernizes Web Presence With Redesign

Outcome

We helped the company modernize their marketing, building out a web presence that could serve as the foundation for future online marketing campaigns.

Background

We were contacted by a 40-year-old nationwide transportation logistics firm to help them launch a new website that would give them more control over their web content and generate additional leads outside their parent distribution network.

The logistics firm had recently joined a global $4 billion dollar distribution services network. The network was generating few leads for the firm but the biggest benefit was access to resources that made it easier for them to fulfill their shipments nationwide.

One of the trade-offs for access to these resources was that the parent network controlled the firm’s web presence. The firm was essentially merged into a network of hundreds of other logistics companies who were all branded the same to create the impression of a giant, cohesive service provider.

However, the logistic firm felt like they had lost their identity. And this identity was important to them as this was a family run business and on its third generation of leadership. They had real values that weren’t, and couldn’t be, displayed on their current website.

The firm had to use a website that looked just like hundreds of other partners’ sites under the network down to word-for-word duplicate copy, no company logo and nothing that set the firm apart from their competitors. Additionally the website was hosted and managed by the network’s preferred support vendor which made it difficult for the firm to take control over building more business online.

Process

We partnered with them to guide them through the website redesign process. The first thing we did was we audited their digital presence.

Issues we found included:

• Multiple domains over the years that were indexed in Google. Their company email addresses were tied to a third separate domain. We advised them to consolidate everything to one domain which would reduce confusion and maximize their search engine optimization efforts. We put in place redirects to ensure people who visited the old domains still landed on the company’s website.
• Multiple phone number, address and business name combinations listed across the Internet. Over 40 years, the company had moved offices and had conflicting information listed on YellowPages.com, Yelp and other online directories. We helped them correct the misinformation.
• Inaccessible content management system. Their current website was managed by a third-party vendor and had limited editing options. We suggested the company move to WordPress so they could expand their website content and make edits themselves.
• Lack of content. Due to lack of access to add new content, the website wasn’t showing up in Google and wasn’t turning visitors into leads. We helped them plan out and develop new pages for services, the company history and the leadership team.

With these issues out of the way, we were able to get them ranking #1 on Google for their brand terms which they weren’t showing up for at all previously.

After the website audit we:

• Consulted on how to best walk the line between putting the firm first while leveraging the power of the parent company’s brand.
• Contracted a website design and development company to build out a new WordPress website and managed the content migration process.
• Provided technical support as they migrated email services away from their parent company’s servers and onto ones they had more control over where they could use their branded domain for email.
• Consulted on how to invest in online marketing to grow the business and be less reliant on existing client relationships.
• Recommended a customer relationship management (CRM) system to automate business processes including email marketing.