From an 80,000-square-foot facility in Columbus, Ohio, the company's staff of 50 delivers superior technical support, product customization and value-added service across these four specialty manufacturing operations: Roughly 60% of Buckeye's annual $6 million in sales is derived from the enclosures group, which services industries ranging from industrial sound and audio measuring equipment to test devices.  Buckeye's deep draw metal forming business supports such military applications as Lockheed Martin's Hellfire missile, while Buckeye's seamless drawn can is used by consumer-facing companies like Yankee Candle, and alternatively for such industrial uses as ink and asphalt sampling containers.  The knob business's fully customizable designs illustrate Buckeye's commitment to flexible, functional manufacturing.

Challenge: Build an online experience that pulls qualified prospects to the site

Over the past decade, Buckeye's growth has been steady but not stellar.  Many customers had longstanding relationships with Buckeye, placing fairly consistent orders over the years, both in the quantity and type of product purchased.  Yet there was relatively little cross-selling among them.  Further, finding new customers was a challenge.  New customers typically found Buckeye by word-of-mouth or were identified through expensive, labor-intensive cold calling.

Company president Ken Tumblison determined that Buckeye needed to increase its visibility in the marketplace, which would not only build the company's image and reputation, but also make it easier for prospects to find the Ohio manufacturer.  But how?

Though Buckeye had recognized the importance of the Internet to its business early on, its initial web undertakings failed to provide marketing efficacy and strong positive results.  Launched in 1998, Buckeye's first website was, according to Mr. Tumblison, "vanilla-plain and lacking in detail about the company's offerings."  A follow-up effort in 2001 was still unable to help customers identify their product needs and locate the proper solution.  Plus, it wasn't appearing frequently enough by search engines and was therefore failing to "pull" prospects into the site.  The company also realized an emerging market for its deep draw metal forming business.  Could an improved website help develop that business for Buckeye?

Diversification also made it tough to achieve efficiency across the varied units of the organization.  Without an efficient, automated, enterprise-wide method of displaying, marketing and selling its products, Buckeye was devoting too much valuable resource to manual processes, often duplicating efforts from one unit to the next.

"We knew our website needed to be a dynamic, living reflection of our company," said Mr. Tumblison.  "Our mission was to find a partner to create the essential web presence that would help us strengthen our brand and articulate it to new Buckeye prospects."

Solution: A Website to Attract Visitors and an Online Catalog to Make them Customers

Over several months in 2007, Mr. Tumblison and his colleagues evaluated the capabilities of a number of possible web services partners.  Although their search had been a thorough, rigorous exercise, their choice of ThomasNet was, in the end, an easy one.  Buckeye had an existing relationship with ThomasNet, having advertised on ThomasNet.com, a successful program that resulted in numerous clients.  ThomasNet had already proven its understanding of the industrial marketplace.  He referenced their "industrial expertise" and "technological horsepower" as pivotal criteria in the selection process.  "I'm confident ThomasNet is the ideal partner to help Buckeye Shapeform improve its visibility, drive traffic and increase sales," he observed.

Much hard work occurred over the next several months, as members of the two companies formed a true and highly productive partnership.  By carefully studying its client's manufacturing capabilities, products, sales process, and customer buying needs, ThomasNet gathered the information it needed to construct a robust new website with expert search and navigation technology.

The single most significant change involved the incorporation of an online catalog, a highly effective and resourceful method of displaying the company's vast array of products in each of its 16,000-plus configurations.  While that breadth might seem overwhelming, a sophisticated search capability along with a new Compare Function helps to ease the pursuit for exactly the right product, letting prospects evaluate up to five items at a time, side by side And once precisely the right item is identified, the site makes it simple to purchase.  That functionality is surely welcome to a prospect when you consider that the knob category alone has some 10,000 options.

"The online catalog helps us achieve one of our primary objectives — helping visitors know exactly what we have to offer," said Mr. Tumblison.  "A typical page in our enclosures catalog may contain close to 5,000 items, but through a sophisticated search functionality, a customer can quickly and easily drill down to precisely the product and configuration he's looking for"

Furthermore, better and more precise content on the website helps the Buckeye URL rise to the top of internet searches as opposed to being discovered by accident or showing up on the fourth or later page in a Google search.  From the detailed product information to the better search results, Buckeye's website now worked like a high performing member of the company's sales team.

Results: Hefty Increases in Page Views, Conversion Actions and Sales

The new website has already produced a wealth of benefit for Buckeye.  Since launching the site, the company has reported a 120% increase in average pages viewed, from 2.5 pages in 2007 to over 5.5 pages in 2008.  And conversion actions steps bringing a visitor closer to a sale, like viewing a new page or submitting an inquiry have exploded.  After recording about 10,000 conversion actions in 2007, the number increased more than tenfold in 2008, to better than 110,000.

"The more engineers visiting our site, and the longer they view the pages they open, the better the chance they'll find and buy the solution they need," said Mr. Tumblison.  "

Though page views and conversion actions are important statistics, Buckeye's most essential and useful metric is its lead-to-sale conversion rate.  In 2008, the new site generated over 1,000 leads (28% of which found Buckeye through ThomasNet.com). These leads produced sixty new clients and nearly $100,000 in new business, especially significant figures given Buckeye's typical sales cycle of 12-to-18 months.

The nature of how information is conveyed and collected on the new online catalog brings other efficiencies that help to qualify prospects and ultimately shorten the sales cycle.  A series of steps to elicit detail from the visitor at the site helps assure that once a Buckeye staffer becomes engaged in the inquiry, it's already been determined to be a valid sales opportunity.

Mr. Tumblison credits the robust functionality of ThomasNet's online catalog for the success of Buckeye's new website.  "By efficiently illustrating better than 16,000 different iterations of our products, the online catalog has performed beyond our wildest dreams," he noted.  ".  Our catalog lets our customers drill down into the vast array of products, selecting precisely the specs, features, colors and quantities they require."

What's ahead for Buckeye?  Mr. Tumblison is excited about plans to incorporate ThomasNet's CAD solution, allowing engineers to design, download and insert 3D CAD drawings directly into their project.  Because ThomasNet's CAD tools are compatible with the applications engineers and architects use every day, those customers will be able to instantly specify standard and customize Buckeye products in their designs; an invaluable decision-time functionality for any manufacturer.

"At the end of the day, working with ThomasNet gives me the expertise to help our small company compete with the biggest players in the industry, and on a global level," said Mr. Tumblison, conceding that Buckeye Shapeform might not be such a small company for long.