Small change has big affect
Alveley-based internet company, StinkyInk.com has already started to benefit from winning Shropshire's Best Small Business of the Year Award and it's only taken the change of one word on the website.
As part of their prize StinkyInk.com received a full business and marketing analysis from business growth specialists Peter Lisney and David Mack from the Quantum Organization.
One item to come out of this analysis was to simply change one word on the website's homepage that would encourage more visitors to check the price of their ink cartridge. The result was a nine per cent improvement in the number of visitors that stayed on the site to get a quote for ink.
"When it was suggested we change the word 'buy' to 'find' on our cartridge search field I really wasn't sure how one word could make such a difference. However, the great thing about trading on the web is that you can make changes and see the results immediately. Within a day I could see that more visitors were requesting a quote which instantly meant more sales," said John Sollars, StinkyInk.com's owner.
"I realise now we were asking our visitors to buy from us before we had even shown them that our prices were better than they could find elsewhere. We work very hard to get people to visit our website and track these details closely. However, before working with Quantum we hadn't paid much attention to why visitors might be leaving the site before buying. With over 2,000 unique visitors to our site each day its amazing how one word can make such a difference."
StinkyInk.com was founded by John Sollars in 2002 working from his garage after he couldn't find an ink cartridge for his son's printer. Four years on he now occupies a 2,500 sq ft distribution centre in Alveley, near Bridgnorth, and employs seven people, including his son Rob who inspired the whole venture.
