B2B Case Study
Marco Rubber & Plastics: Growth-Driven Design

Marco Rubber Finds Growth-Driven Design Produces Higher Lead Generation

Amplify implements quantifiable usability improvements for an o-ring distributor and uncovers actionable insight into purchasing behavior in the process.

Marco Rubber, a leading wholesale distributor of o-rings and seals, has been an Amplify client since 2008. As part of an ongoing growth-driven design strategy, using recorded site behavior and analytics, we uncovered that engineers weren’t navigating a section of our client’s website as intended. Visitors were not spending much time in this section despite its complexity, bounce rates were higher than average, and they were not becoming marketing qualified leads (MQL) at a desirable volume.

Challenges

When choosing o-rings, engineers prefer to read data-laden material such as chemical properties, temperature resistance and other specific material characteristics. This information is difficult to present in an easily digestible and navigable way for hundreds of o-rings at a time – it’s especially difficult to present in a way that facilitates lead conversion. The true challenge was to design a website section that makes an engineer’s decision to select an o-ring easier, and more importantly, to extend usability improvements to the RFQ process for higher lead generation.

Solutions

Working collaboratively, we pinpointed the exact usability problem through a thorough review of the available metrics. From this insight, 8 to 10 things were suggested that could be done, but it was determined what should be done by choosing a solution that was testable, adjustable, and provided the most streamlined path to our client’s business goals.

A list of project activities was developed and a testing period was set. We built new designs, new layouts and new copy for this section of the site. All new digital assets were built specifically to address the usability and conversion problems uncovered through site behavior and analytics monitoring.

To promote future growth-driven design initiatives and lead generation improvements, detailed reporting capabilities were integrated such as inbound call tracking and recording, site behavior recording, UTM tracking, Google Analytics events and goals, Google AdWords and social media conversion tracking, cross-channel and cross-device attribution modeling, comparative performance metrics, and more.

Results

The immediate results were increased marketing qualified traffic (MQT), more advanced reporting for ongoing optimization, and a website section with interactive and usability features that facilitated easier o-ring material selection and RFQ fulfillment.

While lead generation increased, which was a primary business goal for our client, one of the most invaluable benefits of this initiative was insight into engineer’s buying behavior. Advanced reporting features uncovered a few distinguishable characteristics of how engineers prefer to purchase o-rings, as well as the type of information they typically find most important. This information paved the way for further usability improvements throughout the rest of the site to accommodate the needs of an engineering buyer, which, once again, led to increased lead generation.

In a nutshell, this has been the growth-driven design approach we have taken – using a wealth of data along with industry and specifier process understanding — to inform design and development, with the goal of promoting ongoing business growth.

We continue to work with Marco Rubber, using a growth-driven design methodology in much the same way as it was implemented for the material selection portion of the website. This growth-driven design initiative was highly successful, and ongoing efforts continue to produce quantifiably profitable results.