Client Review on PD/GO Digital Marketing

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This is an unsolicited review of the website created for my company, Simplicity Sofas, by PD/GO Digital Marketing. Our new website has now been functional for 6 months.Simplicity Sofas is a $1+ million furniture manufacturer. 95% of all sales are direct to consumers through our e-commerce website. The furniture ranges in price from $1500 - $8000+, well above the price points typically sold by online furniture retailers. Although our product line consists of fewer than 100 basic items, each item has nearly a dozen possible custom options and also a choice of over 300 different fabrics and leathers. Each of these fabrics can be shown draped on the furniture.Prior to contracting with PD/GO our previous website had been based on a Big Commerce platform. That platform could handle only a small fraction of the total number of option combinations we could offer our customers. Over 80% of customer orders were being taken on the phone. Placing orders through the old website was a complex and time consuming process and in many cases could not be done at all without going through the website's admin function.Although we did not realize it when we first began working with PD/GO, our requirements were well beyond the capabilities of any of the pre-packaged platforms such as Big Commerce, Shopify and Magento. We needed a website with tremendous flexibility for adding new products with hundreds of different options while simultaneously offering our customers a quick and simple experience that would encourage them to place orders through the website without first contacting us by telephone or email.Next week the new PD/GO designed website will have been in operation for 6 months. That is sufficient time for us to make some comparisons between our old website and the new one. The changes were apparent from the very first day we went live with the new PD/GO website. For example:Our very first month on the new system (September 2016) resulted in sales that were more than 50% higher than the previous month and more than 50% higher than the previous September.Every month since we converted to the new website sales have been up by at least 50% over previous year figures. Several months have seen increases of more than 100%.Previously our customers placed 20% of orders through our website. Currently 80% of orders are being placed through the website.Our average sale increased immediately by 25% and has continuing to increase. Prior to the new website we were averaging $1800 per sale. We now have the capability to sell far more expensive options than we could before. Currently our average sale exceeds $2500.Almost all of our customers order fabric swatches prior to placing orders. Over the previous 9 years the percentage of swatch requests that turned into orders had been consistently in the 16% - 20% range. From the day the new website was launched 33% of our swatch requests have turned into orders. Since customers often order more than one set of swatches this means that approximately 40% of the customers who request fabric swatches eventually buy from us. That is a pretty astonishing rate in the furniture industry, especially since our products are not available in retail stores. 95% of our customers purchase from us without ever seeing or sitting on our furniture.The amount of work that went into creating the new website was far beyond what either Simplicity Sofas or PD/GO expected when the project was first started. Both parties greatly underestimated the time and effort required to complete all of the features detailed in the contract. Despite that, PD/GO honored the contract price that had been agreed to. When changes were made outside the scope of the original contract they charged a very reasonable hourly rate.According to Google Analytics, the customers who are finding our new website are looking at more pages and spending more time on the website. The Bounce Rate has fallen from 35% to 20% and we are closing a higher percentage of prospective customers who come to our website.