Viaflo, an existing e-commerce development and integration client of Polar Design agreed in early 2008 to attempt a short, “boostrap”  search engine marketing campaign to evaluate the effectiveness of search marketing as a method of increasing unsolicited site visitors and product sales. The campaign involved less than 80 hours of effort in building search positioning for a site that had none.

Prior to the inception of a search engine optimization and marketing campaign, visitors primarily found the website by searching “Viaflo” or some form of the company name. After the short link building campaign and implementation of more targeted key phrases, addition of a variety of key phrases in meta tags, Viaflo appeared on the first page of results in Google, Yahoo, and MSN for key search terms such as pipettors, electronic pipettors, handheld pipettors, benchtop pipettors, etc. This contributes to the growth of website visitors.

Link popularity development led to an increase from March 2008 through July of 2008 of links to 24 confirmed, one-way links with an increase in Pagerank from 0 to 6 within the same period. These links and pagerank increase directly affected traffic and new customer signups as the visitors growth chart indicates.

Viaflo also desired a way to try the effectiveness of this marketing without making a major commitment in order to determine its potential ROI.  In order to make this possible, Polar Design implemented its conversion tracking tool to identify which keywords generated the most registrations and began an aggressive link popularity campaign.

Polar Design’s search engine optimization and marketing campaign has created a 291% increase in visitor sessions from its inception in March 2008 to July 2008. This upward trend is expected to continue as the number of link exchanges increases.

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An example of the success of Polar Design’s full-service approach, Criminal Watchdog, Inc. (CWD) turned to Polar Design to build its brand, technology and online marketing from the ground up.  Our team consulted with CWD to define its target audience and create a compelling visual message.  This included a logo and look and feel that, in concert, portrays a company that is established yet technology driven.  Our design team carefully engineered a look that utilizes photos and colors to convey peace of mind, stability, without completely falling prey to stereotypical corporate web design approaches (the interface and design also features unique design elements).

Upon completion of the branding and design phase, we developed a technical design document outlining in detail CWD’s business requirements and functionality, as is part of our standard process.  Following review and revision of this document with the CWD, our development team developed the solution following the document guidelines, including the background search tools, e-commerce, user security and transaction modules of the site.  Programming progressed quickly thanks to the web site and software architecture planning done ahead of time.

Finally, we launched an aggressive link popularity campaign that has grown visitor traffic and revenues by approximately 20% month to month since inception in July, 2004. The site was able to break even on marketing, hosting and maintenance costs after a 7 month campaign, and has now moved to provide the owner a solid return on his investment.  Best of all, based on the nature of link popularity and unlike pay-per-click or banner advertising, were the client to cease marketing expenditures tomorrow; its sales would continue to generate the same level of monthly sales achieved at the end of the search engine marketing campaign.

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Homebin approached Polar Design to begin a total design of a MLS integrated database and a fresh new look to the site.  The main goals of the design were to improve conversion of first time site visitors to home buyers/sellers, make the site easy to use, and set Homebin apart from other agencies that do not provide FSBO or discounted commissions.  A second goal was to increase sales with minimal cost by dramatically raising the number of visitors that come to the site due to search engine positioning or links from third party web sites.

Homebin obtains its real estate clients by attracting them to this site, which requires them to register to access the full MLS search and other interactive features.  Thus, the more usable the site and the more visitors that come to the site, the more clients Homebin will garner.

Technically the site is extensive, featuring advanced and basic search of the MLS database, which is downloaded and reorganized on the Homebin server.  Polar Design also created a easy to use interface that combines an attractive design with interactive features such as advanced MLS search, an integrated Google Map, resource directories, town comparisons and the ability for registered users to save homes they like to their “portfolio.” These improvements led to an increase in conversion for visitors to registrants from 5% to 6%.

Polar Design also implemented a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign that led to an increase in the number of visitors due to search engine positioning from 0 unique, daily visitors in 2006, to 60 in July, 2007, and an average of 130 as of January, 2008.

The increased visitor traffic and conversion has led to an average of 150 monthly registrants.  Homebin previously spent $3,000 on pay per click to accomplish this result – with its new positioning, it does not have to pay for this flow of prospects even after the campaign ends.

Polar Design focused on an aggressive organic search engine optimization campaign to drive visitors and increase conversion. Since the launch of Kalahari’s newly redesigned site, conversion of visitor to customer has nearly doubled. The new site is also assisting with the rapid acceptance of Kalahari Tea in the broad tea drinking and blogging community.

Polar Design designed the new package design for Kalahari’s tea, using the branding strategy developed for the e-commerce site.

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