Bashlin Industries, Inc., located in Grove City PA, is a privately-owned company with manufacturing and shipping facilities staffed by nearly 60 employees. Since 1926, they have provided safe and innovative products for linemen, arborists, and industrial workers. Beginning with the design and fabrication of power utility tool belts, their products continue to be manufactured of leather, nylon, and a variety of durable fabrics.
The Bashlin team knew that a company’s website is important for first impressions when attracting new customers, as well as being user friendly to retain existing customers. Their site was functional, but had been developed using a platform that would be obsolete and no longer provide technical support. It needed to be updated in its design and ability to be mobile responsive. If not addressed, these issues would lead to lower sales conversions, weaker brand favorability, slower inventory updates, and less convenient support service. In addition, their online catalog of products included a significant number of SKUs that required revisions and updated photographs and descriptions as they desired a convenient shopping cart for customers to make purchases. While the company has internal staff who monitor quality and make content changes, they were unsure if the site needed a complete renovation. They requested assistance from NWIRC to identify requirements and resources towards having a more appealing and effective website. NWIRC introduced Bashlin to various qualified website developers with experience in ecommerce systems and assisted with vetting the best resource based on project requirements. A provider was chosen for the work, to include new website development and digital marketing services. They designed, developed, customized content, and deployed the site with improved functionality.
To support Bashlin Industries’ advancement of their information technology systems, NWIRC identified an applicable Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) mini-grant for the project. The objective of the AMT grant program was to help manufacturers accelerate the adoption of new or improved digital technologies. The new website was built using a contemporary content management system and shopping cart software to provide both the functionality of a sophisticated ecommerce platform, with intuitive content management functions. With secure hosting, analytics tracking, and refresh of the content, the site functions with calls to action for organic search performance and visitor conversion. The online and print catalogs were brought into alignment, with improvements to online sorting for customers and an easier process of updating/adding/removing products.
“Even well-established businesses require fresh content and new ways to be accessible to the next generation of customers,” said Brad McGill, President of Bashlin Industries. “While our social media platforms achieved part of that goal, updating and integrating the website with e-commerce and mobile capability really closed the loop. As a result, our web orders have increased, we have had direct inquiries due to sharing our sales staff contact information on the site, and we have a great tool for featuring products on a dynamic basis.” As the primary online marketing tool, the new website reflects a professional image for the company, its products, and values.