JACKSON, MI--(Marketwired - Aug 13, 2013) - On August 6th, EverLast® Lighting, Inc. took home one of the coveted crystal stars issued by tED Magazine in Chicago, Illinois at its Annual Best of Best awards ceremony in recognition of its website as a supplier under $250 million in sales. Osram Sylvania was recognized with EverLast® for Best of the Best website as a supplier over $250 million in sales. tED magazine's Best of the Best awards program honors marketing excellence and recognizes creativity within the electrical industry. With three divisions for distributors and two for manufacturers to allow competition to occur between like-sized companies, awards were presented in 14 categories. Judged by a panel of industry and marketing experts, the award recognizes industry excellence and that their work is highly regarded within their own industry. Other category winners included Van Meter, Inc., RAB Lighting, Madison Electric Products, Phillips Lighting, Leviton, and General Electric.
"Our previous website was lacking in usability, design standards, information architecture, social media and content management," explained Daniel Wolfe, I.T. and Design Manager at EverLast® Lighting, Inc. "Our goal was to increase our daily unique visitors and overall visibility. We also wanted to direct the increased traffic to specific pages to produce an intended response, such as quote requests being filled out or a social media interaction."
The 'EverLast® 2.0' website redesign was launched on April 10th, 2012, and had a direct impact increasing sales and brand awareness for the EverLast® energy efficient lighting products. The average unique daily visitors increased by 70 within two months of the launch and have grown to over 800 per day. Initially, EverLast® saw a 20% increase in online quote requests, and by the last quarter of 2012; 30%. Similar patterns coincided with an increase in phone inquiries.
Most importantly, overall sales increased by 5 percent. "We also needed to understand and familiarize ourselves with what tools we could provide our representatives," Wolfe commented. "We invited top EverLast® Representatives to look at our information, and asked them what would help them approach the lighting industry. As a result a rep portal was created as a repository of information that includes a marketing material ordering forms, videos, white papers, software, branded emails and media branding kits."
EverLast®'s authorized manufacturer's representative firms actively make use of the sales/training portal. The website garnered over 3,000 email subscriptions to EverLast® Essentials allowing the company an opportunity to secure valuable user information. EverLast® Essentials delivers the latest company news broken down into multiple categories, such as Tradeshow Tuesday's, Follow Friday's, Exploring EverLast®, along with standalone posts about events, awards and our involvement in the community.