Revolutionizing a Digital Presence: From the Wilderness to the Web
Overview
Top Ten Percent Hunting is a hunting goods store specializing in top-level archery, custom firearms, hunting accessories, and land management out of Michigan. Decades of experience and one of the region’s most respected bow techs support their services. Their social media platforms garner thousands of followers who look to them for their professional advice. They approached Savage Innovations to develop a website and e-commerce platform that showcased what stood them out from the rest of their industry. Our approach provided them with a website they could be proud of and an e-commerce platform with so much potential that it grew from a single category of products to over 160 different products and variations.
Problem
Create a website design and e-commerce platform directly tied to the tricky and sensitive firearm industry.
Goal
Raise brand awareness and ultimately transition brick-and-mortar store to web-based shop.
Table of Contents
After
Before
The Challenge
Marketing a business with heavy ties to the embattled Firearm industry provides its unique challenges. Top Ten Percent Hunting wanted a website to showcase their unique professional services and social media content to potential customers. After creating the initial site, they desired to integrate an e-commerce platform to promote and sell their thermal optics and custom firearms.
Roles & Responsibilities
Development
Design
Marketing
Considerations
Scope
Top Ten Percent Hunting required a modern website that showcased its services, original content, and social media presence. It also needed to be flexible and scalable to accommodate a robust e-commerce platform later.
Constraints
The social and financial stigma carried by the firearm industry heavily restrains it. Popular e-commerce payment providers like Stripe and Paypal will not touch anything tied to this industry. Circumventing this required hours of research and phone calls to find the perfect bank willing to work with our client’s to meet their needs.
This same stigma follows the industry onto many social media platforms regarding advertising. Facebook, for instance, will not allow the advertisement of firearms, or in Top Ten Percent Hunting’s case, firearm accessories. These factors required our marketing team to get creative in targeting and steering potential customers to Top Ten Percent Hunting’s website, all while staying within the realm of the terms and conditions of the platform.
Process
Our team listened to our client to fully understand every aspect of what they wanted and what they wanted to acheive.
While our management team gathered the original media content and products, our design team mapped out the future website. Creating a roadmap to success that we would get the clients approval on.
Our design team followed this roadmap, laying out the new website and e-commerce platform page by page while incorporating the imagery and media the client provided. They set up categories to organize the product data accurately, enabling the customer to discover what they were looking for effortlessly. For ease of access and to improve client/customer relations, a customer portal was created on the website so that customers can subscribe to updates for marketing materials and track their orders.
Once the design process was done, our project manager worked directly with Top Ten Percent Hunting’s in store employees to upload hundreds of products to the platform along with their images and data. After hours of discussions and discovery, our development team was able to implement the payment API keys that would allow the customer’s to make purchases.
Once the website was complete and all the integrations were in place, we thoroughly tested every page and utilized test cards to simulate purchases of various products and situations.
Savage Innovations built a modern, refreshed website showcasing its original content and social media presence. It was structured to be highly scalable and flexible to accommodate any changes in business models and growth. For their e-commerce presence, we integrated with WooCommerce and Heartland as the payment processor. They were both easy-to-use platform and processor that was friendly to selling merchandise tied to the firearm industry. WooCommerce also gave our clients a simple, easy-to-use platform to manage their online shop.
Once all the product data was added and organized, we set up a giveaway from the website to help drive traffic and sales.
Outcome
Conclusion
The resulting website gave Top Ten Percent Hunting a platform they could be proud of and show off to their current and future customers. Their e-commerce platform proved successful and easy to use, so we expanded their initial product line to include over 160 different products and variations. To kick off the site’s official launch, we ran a giveaway of one of their custom rifles that tied directly to their in-house product lines on Woo-commerce. Our SEO efforts on the main website and the e-commerce platform showed results almost immediately by doubling organic traffic within two weeks of the site’s launch.
