After spending hours searching the Web, it has become easy to see that there is the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to pallet industry websites. As companies increasingly search the Web for business partners and suppliers, taking some time to re-evaluate and improve your website may translate into new business leads and sales increases.
Many pallet companies have a “Set It and Forget It” attitude toward their website. But this is short sighted. What is even more amazing is that some pallet companies don’t even have a basic website, which is akin to keeping your company out of the phone book in this digital age. Pallet companies don’t have to invest lots of money or time to at least have a basic presence on the Web. Neither do companies have to become content publishers to get seen.
After looking though more than 40 industry websites, I did not see a single one without some glaring need. There were no Web stars in my book. But I did find many good websites that could use a minor tweak or change here or there. Just because I mention a company here doesn’t mean that they do everything right. In some cases, the website may have poor graphics or a hokey color scheme, but it did something well. And that is what you should notice. See the adjacent box to read about some of the common problems that I found.
This article covers my honest reflections on what I found highlighting the best practices that I saw. If you don’t like my assessment or advice, that’s OK. Before anyone throws fireworks at me, please know that I am aware that the Pallet Enterprise website could use a facelift. It has had the same basic look for more than five years. We are in the process of analyzing this need, which is one of the things that prompted this article.
One of the websites that came to the top of search engines as well as had some intriguing content was Larson Pallet & Crating (http://www.larsonpallet.com/). Scrolling on the homepage are a number of customer testimonials that highlight Larson’s ability to solve customer problems and deliver high quality product on time. There is a prominent link to a good video detailing the benefits of working with Larson. The only negative about the video is that it renders fairly small and can’t be expanded to a larger viewing window. Larson features a number of videos on its Website covering a wide variety of topics from pallet design to recycling to wood grades and pallet standards.
Larson offers a basic primer on pallets and crates covering pallet designs and terms. One of the most interesting sections it has is “Ten Dirty Tricks that Some Pallet Vendors Pull.” This section alone might be enough to build goodwill and confidence with potential customers. See what I mean at http://www.larsonpallet.com/all_about_pallets/ten-dirty-tricks.html
The one big negative of this website is that it is not maximized for various screen resolutions. When I visited it, everything was aligned to the far left with a lot of blank space on the right side of the browser. It did show up well when tested on a mobile smartphone device.
Larson promoted in its main video a free Buyers Guide handout for customers that explains various pallet sizes, terms, and things to consider when buying pallets. Its website also has a downloadable company brochure. All of these are good ideas to consider.
Pallet One (http://www.palletone.com/), which is the largest pallet manufacturer in the United States, shows up toward the top of the search engine rankings. It has a simple design and presents information on pallet basics to educate customers. It offers a glossary to define pallet terms. This is a good idea for two reasons, it puts more potential keywords in your website while offering information to visitors.
Most importantly, the request for quote pitch is right at the center of the homepage. You can’t miss it. Your website should be designed so that customers don’t have to look for ways to connect with you. This means a request for quote form and your contact information should be easy to find on the top half of your homepage. Also, the website lists the various Pallet One locations, which can help in terms of search ranking for queries covering areas close to a Pallet One facility.
The PalletOne website has stayed about the same for a number of years. Some people might think it is time for a facelift. But on the other hand, others tend to think if it works why tinker with it? At least once or twice per year, changes should be made on the homepage and content pages to reflect keyword research and any changes in the company’s goals for the website.
Another website that comes up high in the search rankings is IFCO Systems, the nation’s largest pallet recycler. IFCO buys placement via Google Adwords as well as works to develop pages targeted to specific terms. The pages are known as conversion pages because they reflect a particular goal. A perfect example of this technique is (http://palletsbyifco.com/). Notice the contact page directly on the landing page. This reduces the steps it takes to generate the desired outcome, which in this case seems to be potential customers submitting a request for pallets. To the left of the form is a description of the benefits and strategic differences of working with IFCO, such as its online pallet management system and need assessment process.
Keeping with the current popularity of green packaging options, the IFCO website offers a tool to calculate the environmental impact of using IFCO compared to other options. The site even has a wood vs. plastic pallet section. A full description of pallet specifications and glossary terms provides resources to help the pallet novice.
The Pallet Factory in Memphis, Tenn. (http://www.thepalletfactory.com/) gets your attention on its website with a large video viewer and video that starts automatically when you visit the site. The video focuses on the company’s key selling points (quality and on-time delivery), mentions its national service potential through the PALNET Network, and promotes the company’s leadership in the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association.
The Pallet Factory website promotes its heat treatment service prominently on the homepage as well as offering a separate video on the service. Its site has a nice Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section explaining basics about the company and pallets in general.
One of the best uses of testimonials belonged to Valley Pallet Inc. Of Salinas,Calif. The homepage on this site features testimonials from major companies, including Tanimura & Antle Fresh Foods, Georgia Pacific and Bengard Ranch. This shows that Valley Pallet can serve blue chip clients. The news section of the website is updated with at least a few articles per month on items of interest to the industry.
The Valley Pallet homepage also focuses on logistics, which is a key part of any pallet operation. And it has integrated links to its social networking outreach, including Facebook page, Twitter feed and PALNET.
Some companies want to use their website to regularly communicate with customers or upload content that may boost ranking in search engines. A good way to do this can be a blog, which is basically an online journal featuring short pieces of editorial. Many companies provide a few paragraphs in commentary about a news item or link to a hot topic. One of the best uses of this I saw for the pallet industry was done by Lovett Pallet in Indiana (http://www.lovettpallet.com/). The homepage prominently features a letter from the president of the company, Paul Lovett. The homepage has a link to Paul’s blog (http://lovettpalletrecycling.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/welcome-to-lrp-blog/) a list of services, a service coverage map, links to its social network outreach, and a link to highlight its participation in the SmartWay transportation program. The “Facilitiy” section shows a number of pictures of its pallet operation so that potential customers get a feel for the operation.
Pallets Inc. of Fort Edward, N.Y. (http://palletsincorporated.com/) does a good job of promoting news coverage of its company. One of the company executives was featured in a CBS evening news piece from 2007. Also, the media section mentions that three generations of the Binley family have led the company with a picture of coverage from the Pallet Enterprise.
Some pallet companies focus on a niche market. If you fit that description, you should tailor the content on your site to attract and demonstrate your unique capabilities. The website for Lannes Williamson Pallets (http://www.williamsonpallets.com/), of South Side, West Va. does this well by focusing on its ability to meet GSA requirements and serve federal agencies.
The website for Northwest Pallet Supply of Belvidere, Ill. features a good promotional video that is hosted off YouTube. See the video at http://www.northwestpallet.com/video.php. YouTube can be an easy way to post video online if you can’t easily post it under your own domain name.
A & I Pallets of Los Angeles, Calif. tries to monitor the success of its website by encouraging visitors to call and get a special offer just for mentioning its website. Building in some way to track the source of business leads is a good idea to identify what marketing efforts work best for you.
You will want to make sure that your homepage hits the key selling points you want customers to remember. Penn Pallet of Saint Marys, Penn. (http://www.pennpallet.com/) makes sure that visitors know its key focus by detailing mold treatment and export pallet capabilities. Its website also lists company leaders so that potential customers can connect with the right person. And it has a page for job openings as a recruitment tool to help bring in new workers.
The website for John Rock Inc. of Coatesville, Penn. (http://www.johnrock.com/) prominently displays the company logo, ties it in with a background well while strategically placing a video on the homepage. The site also markets the company as “America’s Premier Pallet Manufacturer” focusing on quality and on-time delivery.
Pallet Services of Mount Vernon, Wash. (http://www.palletservices.com/) is one of the largest pallet recyclers in the Northwest. Its website design features one big picture that rotates through various images promoting various sales messages. It looks kind of like a big billboard. Also, the site ties in with Google Maps to help visitors easily find its location.
Pallet Unlimited of Long Island, N.Y (http://www.palletsunlimited.com/) has bought a number of domain names that reflect keywords it believes people will search on for pallets. It uses those domain names (such as woodenpalletsforsale.com and cheappalletsforsale.com) to drive traffic to its website. Its homepage is very professional looking with a clean, easy-to-read design. It has contracted with a private company to develop and update a pallet blog at http://www.woodenpalletsforsale.com/.
One of the most creative use of advertising imagery belongs to Atlantic Pallet Exchange (http://www.atlanticpallet.com/) of Albany, Ga. It plays off the company initials A.P.E. to promote its service with phrases like “Go Ape.” The cartoon image on the homepage is memorable without being hokey. The homepage features information on the company’s wide geographic coverage area. The APE website even has a page about buying pallets and its typical rates for various sizes.
The messaging on the website for Buckeye Diamond Logistics of South Charleston, Ohio is clear – this pallet recycler has positioned itself as much more than just a pallet company. The Buckeye website (http://www.buckeyediamond.com) uses the tag line “Innovative Packaging Solutions from your Single Source Partner.” The homepage prominently features a HT certification logo identifying the company as capable of supplying export pallets. The homepage also features a link to its product catalog of various industrial packaging products where customers can directly place orders online. The website has a section called “Partnering” which explains its strategy for working with customers to develop custom pallet and packaging management programs. It also offers information for military packaging specialists.
Finally, Ongweoweh Corp. of Ithaca, N.Y., (http://ongweoweh.com/) targets corporate purchasing agents on its homepage by offering to provide pallet management services that typically save customers about 25%. Ongweoweh offers a unique customer tracking and pallet management program over the Web called NativeTrax (http://www.nativetrax.com/). NativeTrax provides Web-based real-time access to information about pallet movements, repairs, costs, inventory, etc. It can be used to manage a private pool or in conjunction with any public or industry pool.
There are a lot of things you can learn from other companies just by visiting a few of them and using the best as a benchmark for your own web marketing efforts. While I am sure that there are other good sites out there that I missed, this is just a primer to get you started. So what condition is your website in today?
1.) Inspect your current website.
If you want to give your website a makeover, the first step is to analyze your current website. Pull out a blank sheet of paper and visit your website using at least two of the following browsers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari. Try various size monitors and settings to really get a good feel for what your customers see. You may also want to see how different smartphones render your website. The second step is to make a list of keywords that you think customers might use to find you when searching online. Enter these search terms and see where you come up when conducting searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing. If you don’t show up in at least the top 2-3 pages, figure you are pretty much as good as invisible to others because people generally don’t look at more than a few pages of their Internet searches. You may be shocked at what you have discovered. Are there broken links? Do some graphics align over text? Do some pages take too long to download? Is your phone number hard to find? How does your website compare to others you found when doing a Web search?
2.) Set your own goals for your website.
Don’t just rush to follow what somebody else did. Stop to consider what you want to achieve with your website and the message that you want to send to your visitors.
Some business owners see what others are doing and jump to follow the lead of others. This may be a wise move. But you should first stop to consider the objectives of your website. Do you want to appeal primarily to prospects or existing customers? Are you primarily concerned with education and telling your unique story or offering a portal for the transaction of business? Do you want to allow customers to access count information or place orders online? If you have more than one location, you may need to preserve these distinct locations or at least setup prospect forms to email inquiries to the correct sales person. Are you willing to spend time to optimize your website to compete for top search engine ranking? Remember, this is not a one-time decision. Will you keep information updated? Who is responsible for watching this in your company?
Once you have figured out your business objectives with your website, you can then work on messaging. This is especially critical if your main objective is to use your website to attract new business or boost organic growth. Having visited a lot of industry websites, I have seen all sorts of messaging. Some of the most common themes are high quality standards, low cost supplier, green packaging, just-in-time delivery, pallet customization, family-owned business, lasting relationships, solution providers, export pallets, heat treated/certified pallet experts, strategic geographic location, wide variety of pallet materials and sizes, industry leader, customer service, logistics expertise, pallet management, consulting and packaging design services, automated/efficient operations, ISO certification, full service pallet and reverse logistics, colored much, top quality lumber, etc.
You have to decide what you want your key selling points to be and make sure that it is prominently promoted on your website using text, pictures, even video. This should be on your homepage. Whatever are the top three reasons people use your company, those should be the focal point of your online messaging.
3.) Search engines are your friend or could be your enemy.
Many people who go on the Web looking for something use search engines to direct their search. The search engines are not the end game. But they are a useful tool and must be considered when designing your website. This is particularly true when it comes to the wording on your website and its design.
You should make a list of the top search terms that you want to optimize your website to cover. You can actually make landing pages that are designed to attract customers looking for different things. For example, a customer searching based on the phrase “sustainable packaging” or “green packaging” will expect to see different messaging than somebody who searches under “quality pallets” or “export certified pallets.”
An easy way to pick these search terms is to use a number of online tools. You an use the Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) tool to calculate the popularity of your search terms, the amount of competition for them, and a list of similar terms. If you think it will be too difficult to get prime position on a major keyword, you can always try phrases or words that are similar, which may be a bit easier to dominate. A bunch of free videos and keyword tools can be found at https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
You may want to create a spreadsheet that lists all of your keywords, the results of your popularity search and the results of your competition. Choose the keywords with the best popularity to competition ratio. These are our targets. Then you can use a program, such as www.RankingCheck.com or Advanced Web Ranking (http://www.advancedwebranking.com/) to see where you rank on all of your keywords.
4.) Online PR is good PR. Let us help you tell your story.
If somebody else says something good about you or quotes you, make sure to connect that to your company website. On this front, I was very disappointed with the pallet industry to see how few have taken advantage of the ability to link for FREE to Pallet Enterprise content, especially company features. While we do require companies to pay a small fee if they want to take an article and put it on their website, we do not charge at all if you want to link to specific articles on our websites.
So let’s say we did a plant feature on your company two years ago. You can go to the Pallet Enterprise website (www.palletenterprise.com), do a search under your company name, click on the link, copy the link and headline, and then paste those on your website. It will take your webmaster a few minutes. We get the benefit of extra links to our website. You get the benefit of informing visitors that you have been featured in a major industry trade publication. Our electronic archive goes back to January 1999. If you can’t find your company and know you were featured, let us know. We will help you locate the article link. Email me at chaille@ireporting.com.
You can also link to articles that we publish covering topics of interest to you or your customers. For example, we publish articles on environmental issues, ISPM-15 updates, manufacturing concerns, pallet rental developments, pallet design, and many other notable topics.
5.) Develop some regular marketing vehicles and connect it to your website.
If you are not regularly communicating with your customer, maybe your competitor is. Pallet companies can do a wide variety of things to communicate with customers and prospects. This includes e-newsletters (with content of interest to them), website videos, webinars on current topics, blogs, brochures, social networking, phone consultations, etc. Your website can be used to help augment and connect these communication methods.
Don’t try to do everything. But you should do one or two of them and do them well. Be willing to experiment and see what benefits you the most.
6.) Appoint a website champion on your staff.
Many times websites appear like an afterthought because they are. Nobody is tasked with making it a priority on their to-do list. You have to find someone who has the tools to help champion your website development and maintenance. This person doesn’t have to be a webmaster or know HTML code. Although these skills can help, the main thing is to find someone who is at least proficient with computer technology, has the ability to research and has the drive to spearhead the effort. You will need to give the person taking this role a budget, a set of of business objectives, and a limited amount of authority to request help from various departments in your company.
7.) Consider redesigning your website to include a Content Management System.
Many of the websites I visited in the pallet and lumber industries appear to be nothing more than a number of HTML pages with no back-end management system. This may be okay for your first website, but if you want to be able to make changes without having to hire or pay a webmaster all the time, you should consider having a basic Content Management System orchestrate what appears on your website. A CMS basically manages the layout of your website using database, templates and what-you-see-is what-you-get editors that anyone can use to change the look and content of a website.
CMS options have come a long way over the last few years. There are a number of free CMS programs that a webmaster can use to setup your website. The most widely used programs are Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. There are a number of others including: ImpressCMS, Made By Frog CMS, Cushy CMS, MODx CMS, Silver Stripe, CMS Made Simple, and Movable Type.
It may cost a little more to get a website setup with a CMS. But in the end it will be worth it unless you want to pay the webmaster every time you want to make a change.
Seven Proven Tips for Improving Your Website
