Business Learning Center

Granite Transformations is a company that provides kitchen and bathroom remodeling solutions including granite countertops, cabinet resurfacing and mosaic tiles. Their products have superior durability and a better appearance than the competition, and the installation process is both easier and more ecologically friendly. But the company’s website didn’t articulate this message. They were not converting visitors into customers.

In 2009, Granite Transformations came to Blue Fountain Media with three key objectives and a tight three-month deadline:

They wanted to:

• Increase conversion rates on their website (raising the percentage of visitors who request an in-home consultation).
• Display their innovative counter tops with attention grabbing-graphics and Flash animation.
• Develop a system to allow franchisees to setup their own localized micro-sites through an easy-to-use content management system.

Traffic Sources

Granite Transformations got most of its web visitors from a national television advertising campaign. But this TV-driven traffic hid a problem: the Granite Transformations website did not rank well for product-related terms. In other words, their website was only being seen by people who had already heard of the company. They were capturing branded transactional searches, but ignoring the world of non-branded searches, which was orders of magnitude larger. People specifically searching for granite and table tops (solid potential customers) were being directed to Granite Transformation’s competitors.

The “Back-End” Issues

Granite Transformations is structured as a central business with nearly 100 franchises across the United States. Each franchise has its own “micro-site,” a website specifically targeted to the location and offerings of the particular franchisee. Granite Transformations wanted each franchisee to have the ability to edit their micro-site (to add or remove products, to reach out to visitors, and to interact with the local community).

The Plan of Attack

After an in-depth discussion (actually a series of discussions), we were able to identify Granite Transformations’ business goals and gain an understanding of their business.

Armed with this knowledge, we created detailed specifications for designing and marketing the website.

Some of the key changes to the website were geared to giving visitors easy-to-access examples of featured building materials, and showing them galleries of completed work.

As you can see in the illustration below, we made the navigation of the site simple and intuitive. Visitors can not only look at samples of the materials and the various colors offered, they can “try out” a variety of colors from a convenient palate with a “virtual makeover.”

On the back-end (the internal architecture of the website), Blue Fountain Media developers used PHP, a modern web language, to give the Granite Transformations a content management system that was both easy to use and filled with robust editing tools.

Blue Fountain Media worked with Granite Transformations to put these tools to work. We were able to revamp the content on their site so it targeted new customers, not just people searching for the company itself. We created an extensive network of off-site links, giving the main Granite Transformations site a steady source of new traffic and better rankings. And we created a popular, high-traffic blog that got the site links, traffic—and attention from a national media outlet.

Thanks to a powerful content management system, Blue Fountain Media and Granite Transformations could both spend less time keeping the site up and running, and more time making it great.

The Bottom Line

The results were impressive:

• Over six months Granite Transformation’s traffic nearly doubled.
• Since the beginning of 2010, the site has seen a 50% rise in requests for in-home consultations.
• Thanks to Blue Fountain Media’s search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts, Granite Transformations now gets more than half of their traffic directly through search engines.
• Granite Transformation now ranks on Page One Google results (the Holy Grail of search) for 43 high-value keywords, including “granite,” “counter overlay,” and ”countertop resurfacing.”
• The Granite Transformations blog was twice featured on ESPN.COM for a story about a major league baseball player turned quarry owner.

In Conclusion

An integrated web strategy, development and marketing plan can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. As a company with expertise in design, development and marketing, Blue Fountain Media can put a team together to handle all aspects of a client’s online strategy. If you need any further information or are interested in seeing what Blue Fountain Media can do for you, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.